Daily Star - Mansour denies Al-Jazeera Sadr report, April 12, 2012

BEIRUT: Foreign Affairs Minister Adnan Mansour denied recent reports that remains believed to be of revered Imam Musa Sadr were discovered in Libya, a local daily said Thursday.

“There is no truth whatsoever to the Al-Jazeera TV report,” Mansour, who is currently in Libya, told Al-Akhbar newspaper in an interview published Thursday.

Quoting Nasser al-Maneh, an official spokesperson for the Libyan government, Al-Jazeera TV reported that remains believed to be Sadr’s were discovered in a graveyard near Libya’s capital Tripoli.

Maneh, according to the Qatar-based TV station, said a committee operating under the Libyan ministry responsible for the families of martyrs and missing persons had discovered the remains in a cemetery in Tajoura, east of Tripoli.

The remains were transferred to Tripoli’s central hospital for DNA tests. Results are supposed to emerge Saturday, Al-Jazeera reported.

Mansour, who headed to the Libyan capital Sunday to follow up on the case of the fate of Sadr, told Al-Akhbar that he had discussion with Libyan officials in Tripoli on developments in the investigation.

“The investigations are still ongoing and we have taken significant steps in this regard,” Mansour said.

Sadr and two of his companions, Sheikh Mohammad Yaacoub and journalist Abbas Badreddine, went missing in August 1978 during an official visit to Tripoli upon the invitation of then-Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

Gadhafi and six of his aides were indicted in the Sadr case in 2008 by the Lebanese judiciary.

Speaking to The Daily Star Wednesday, a Lebanese source familiar with the case of Sadr called for awaiting the results of official investigations rather than speculating over the fate of the missing imam.

“We do not want to get ahead of ourselves and speculate; there is a delegation that is performing its work,” said the source, referring to the delegation headed by Mansour in Libya.

“The delegation traveled for the second time to Libya and its mission is to follow up on investigations into [the fate] of Imam Sadr and his two companions.”

Mansour paid an earlier visit to the Libyan capital for the same purpose in January when the Libyan general prosecutor was tasked with commencing investigations into Sadr’s case.

Lebanese judge Hasan Shami was assigned at the time to handle the judicial aspect of the case. Sadr championed coexistence and dialogue between different Lebanese factions and worked on bringing sects together and alleviating the socio-economic hardship of Lebanese who suffered from political and other types of marginalization.

In late March, Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar newspaper reported Sadr had died in a prison in Tripoli a decade ago.

It said that Sadr was transferred to Abu Salim prison in Tripoli for unknown reasons in 1997 after spending previous years in a prison in southern Libya with his companions.

The paper said that Sadr, who suffered from diabetes, was in solitary confinement supervised by Abdel-Hamid Saeh, known to be among the most brutal intelligence officials in Gadhafi’s regime.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Politics/2012/Apr-12/170012-mansour-denies-al-jazeera-sadr-report.ashx#axzz1ro7gJB2A