BEIRUT: The alleged case of “false witnesses” linked to the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri is only a political issue and involves no judicial file on record, a senior judicial source told The Daily Star Monday.
“The issue of false witnesses does not exist within the judiciary,” the source said, days after Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah called on Prime Minister Najib Mikati to address the issue of false witnesses to give justice to four high-ranking security officials who were imprisoned from 2005-09.
“I ask Prime Minister Najib Mikati to commit to justice … which stipulates you do justice to those treated unjustly, and they are the four former officers, who include two Sunnis,” Nasrallah said in a speech last week during which he also addressed the government’s funding of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.
But the judicial source said that the Cabinet cannot transfer a file that does not exist. “How can the Cabinet transfer to the Judicial Council a case that does not exist and there is not even one paper that the case can be built on,” said the source.
According to the source, the country's judiciary found three Syrians guilty of misleading the investigation into the assassination of Hariri.
“Syrian nationals Ibrahim Jarjoura and Akram Mrad were put in jail for two years and a third Syrian Husam Husam fled to Syria and the Syrian government did not hand him over to Lebanon,” the source explained.
Regarding the infamous witness Mohammad Zuheir Siddiq, the source said that Lebanon’s judiciary accused Siddiq of being involved in the assassination of Hariri, based on his testimony that implicated Syrian officials, but the French government refused to extradite Siddiq to Beirut.
“Apart from these four, there are no other false witnesses,” said the source.
For the issue to be addressed, “either the justice minister calls on Jarjoura and Mrad to appear before the court, so that he can prepare a case based on their testimonies.
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