Syria orders committee to investigate Hariri killing
Beleaguered Syrian President Bashar Assad ordered the creation of a special judicial committee yesterday to investigate the murder of a former Lebanese prime minister, as Damascus continued its scramble to ease intense and growing international pressure.
Eight days ago the UN investigation of the February 14 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri issued a report that linked top Syrian and Lebanese security officials to the killing and said that Damascus had been uncooperative in the probe.
Syria also said yesterday that the offices of Islamic Jihad, one of a number of militant anti-Israeli groups that formerly operated out of Damascus, had been closed years ago.
On Friday, the Quartet – the US, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia – called for Syria to shut the Islamic Jihad office. The Quartet has laid out a “road map” peace plan to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
An unidentified Syrian Foreign Ministry official was quoted by SANA, the official news agency, as saying that Islamic Jihad’s military activities were planned from the Palestinian territories and not in Syria. The group claimed responsibility for a bombing on Wednesday that killed five Israelis.
By issuing a decree to set up the special judicial committee to probe the bombing that killed Hariri and 20 others in Beirut, Assad appeared to be responding positively to Tuesday’s call by chief UN investigator Detlev Mehlis for the Syrians to conduct their own investigation to “fill in the gaps” about who orchestrated the terrorist act.
SANA said the committee would be made up of Syria’s prosecutor-general, the military prosecutor and a judge to be named by the justice minister. They will be ordered to question Syrian “civilians and military personnel on all matters relating to the UN investigation commission’s mission”.
In addition, Syria faces unrelenting charges from the US and Iraq that it allows militant foreign fighters to cross its border into Iraq to join the Sunni-led insurgency.
While Damascus has always contended it was nearly impossible to control its 370 mile eastern frontier with Iraq, the authorities now say thousands of foreign fighters have been captured in recent months as they tried to slip into Iraq.
Yesterday, the Interior Ministry ordered border guards to pay special attention to men between the ages of 18 and 30 who arrive in the country to stop “suspects planning to carry terrorist acts inside the country”, SANA reported. Suspects were to be deported immediately.
In announcing the Syrian probe of the Harii murder, he said the commission would cooperate with the Mehlis investigation and Lebanese judicial authorities. The Lebanese have arrested and charged four pro-Syrian Lebanese generals in the Hariri assassination.
The US, France and Britain are working on a Security Council resolution that will be unveiled tomorrow and is expected to threaten the Syrians with sanctions if it failed to co-operated with the UN inquiry.
