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S E C R E T BEIRUT 002034 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
NOFORN 
 
NSC FOR ABRAMS/WERNER/DORAN/SINGH 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/20/2016 
TAGS: PTER KCRM PINR KISL ASEC LE SY UN
SUBJECT: MGLE01:  UNIIIC AND THE DEFENSE'S CASE FOR JAILED 
GENERAL JAMIL AS-SAYYID 
 
REF: BEIRUT 1823 
 
Classified By: Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman.  Reason: 
Sections 1.4 (b) and (d). 
 
SUMMARY 
------- 
 
¶1.  (S)  Reftel reports that UNIIIC Commissioner Serge 
Brammertz is deeply worried that the evidence against the 
four jailed Lebanese generals, suspected of complicity in the 
Hariri assassination, may not be strong enough to justify 
their continued detention.  Release of the generals would 
have a seismic effect on the political scene in Lebanon. 
General Jamil as-Sayyid, former head of the Surete Generale, 
has been held, like the other three generals, since August 
30, 2005.  As-Sayyid is represented by an attorney who is 
requesting as-Sayyid's immediate release from prison.  His 
arguments are based on procedural and substantive grounds 
that are discussed below.  This attorney also told us that he 
would be approaching PM Siniora, Sa'ad Hariri, Walid 
Jumblatt, and Amine Gemayel with the offer that if as-Sayyid 
were to be released from prison, as-Sayyid would respond 
cooperatively by departing the country within 24 hours. 
As-Sayyid's attorney's largely procedural arguments may or 
may not be meaningful elements in an eventual trial before an 
international tribunal.  The real question, by our own 
informal legal analysis, is whether the UNIIIC and Lebanese 
prosecutors have gathered sufficient evidence to justify the 
continued detention of as-Sayyid and the three other 
generals.  Brammertz's concern about the eroding basis for 
continued detentions prompts us to report these legal issues 
in greater detail.  End Summary. 
 
THE ARRESTS 
----------- 
 
¶2.  (C)  On August 30, the Lebanese judicial authorities 
issued a restraining order authorizing the detention of four 
generals at the headquarters of the UN International 
Independent Investigation Commission (UNIIIC) of four 
generals.  The four, who continue to be held in Lebanese 
facilities, were General Jamil as-Sayyid, former Director 
General of the Surete Generale; General Ali Hajj, former 
Director General of the Internal Security Forces, General 
Raymond Azar, former head of military intelligence for the 
Lebanese Armed Forces; and General Mustapha Hamdan, who was 
at the time of his arrest still serving as director of the 
Presidential Guard.  They were, a few days later on September 
3, subjected to an arrest warrant issued by the Lebanese 
examining magistrate Elias Eid.  Eid was acting at least in 
part on the recommendation of then-UNIIIC Commissioner Detlev 
Mehlis.  Mehlis had also conveyed the arrest recommendation 
to Lebanese Prosecutor General Said Mirza.  The four generals 
have been held in Lebanese detention ever since. 
 
AS-SAYYID'S CASE 
---------------- 
 
¶3.  (S)  Upon Jamil as-Sayyid's detention in August, he 
engaged as his lawyer Akram Azoury, a respected and able 
attorney known for an interest in human rights issues. 
Azoury has since submitted to the UNIIIC about ten legal 
memoranda on as-Sayyid's behalf, as well as related requests 
to the UN SYG.  Azoury has met discreetly with the DCM on 
several occasions during the past six months to apprise the 
U.S., as a permanent member of the UNSC, of his case for 
as-Sayyid.  The most recent meeting took place on June 16. 
Azoury also meets with other P-5 missions in Beirut and the 
UN SYG's personal representative Geir Pedersen.  Azoury has 
shared with us most of his legal memoranda.  His latest memo, 
dated May 23, was addressed to Serge Brammertz as UNIIIC 
Commissioner.  The memo makes the points discussed in paras 
4-6 below. 
 
¶4.  (S)  Azoury wants as-Sayyid released from detention.  To 
that end, he requests from Brammertz three actions: 
 
--  That the UNIIIC issue an opinion favorable to the release 
of as-Sayyid. 
 
--  That written notification of this opinion be transmitted 
by the UNIIIC to Lebanese judicial authorities. 
 
--  That the Commission formally retract its early September 
2005 (arrest) recommendation to the Lebanese examining 
magistrate, in order to allow the Lebanese judiciary to 
determine for its own part whether Jamil as-Sayyid should 
continue to be incarcerated. 
 
¶5.  (S)  UNIIIC Commissioner Brammertz has answered this 
memorandum with a terse but significant reply.  Brammertz, in 
a June 6 reply to Azoury, which Azoury has also passed to us, 
said that, "I regret to tell you that I cannot follow up your 
memorandum, in as much as the points that you raise rest 
exclusively within the jurisdiction of Lebanese judicial 
authorities.  For this reason, I have transmitted your 
memorandum to the Prosecutor General."  Azoury explained this 
reply to DCM as signifying the following:  While Mehlis in 
September had recommended to the Lebanese authorities that 
they arrest the four generals, Brammertz is suggesting that 
in his analysis of his role as a Commissioner, such a 
recommendation for arrest would have been beyond his 
authority.  Accordingly, Brammertz is suggesting now that a 
retraction, by him, of the Mehlis September arrest 
recommendation would also be an act beyond his authority. 
Therefore, he passes the issues surrounding the detention of 
Jamil as-Sayyid wholly over to Lebanese authorities.  He 
possibly implies these questions should have been adjudicated 
in the first place without any suggestions or prompting  from 
UNIIIC Commissioner Mehlis. 
 
¶6.  (S)  Azoury, in his latest memorandum of May 23, as well 
as previous memoranda, lays out a case for why Jamil 
as-Sayyid should be released from detention.  The five 
principal arguments that Azoury makes are as follows: 
 
(a)  The original arrest and detention of Jamil as-Sayyid 
violated normal procedural practices and was essentially a 
political act.  UNIIIC Commissioner Mehlis exceeded his 
authority in recommending arrest, the Lebanese judicial 
authorities examined the evidence only briefly before issuing 
the arrest warrant, and as-Sayyid was initially interrogated 
without the presence of a lawyer.  As Azoury told us orally, 
"the policeman (Mehlis) was acting like a court, and the 
court was not asserting is proper responsibilities." 
 
(b)  Jamil as-Sayyid has never been permitted to confront his 
accusers, nor the witnesses of who have provided evidence 
against him, nor any of the evidence itself.  The most 
important of these witnesses would be the Syrian national 
Zouhair as-Saddik. 
 
(c)  UNIIIC, and perhaps Lebanese government interrogators, 
have persistently confronted as-Sayyid with hypothetical 
versions of how the Hariri assassination was planned and 
executed.  In each case, they say, "You had to have known 
something about this. . . "  This practice gives additional 
weight to the argument that as-Sayyid's detention is based 
more on politics than evidence of participation in a crime. 
 
(d)  The controversial "black box" issue, which revolved 
around a Surete Generale slush fund of about USD 30 million 
for special operations including possibly the Hariri 
assassination, has been satisfactorily resolved.  The "black 
box" was legitimately authorized, and there are written 
records to confirm the justifiable expenditures from the 
"black box." 
 
(e)  UN investigators have used illegal and unprofessional 
techniques in their interrogation of as-Sayyid.  Here, Azoury 
gives special attention to former UNIIIC chief investigator 
Gerhard Lehmann.  He describes, in some detail, Lehmann's use 
of the game "prisoner's dilemma" with as-Sayyid.  In this 
classic gambit, Lehmann offered special treatment to 
as-Sayyid if as-Sayyid would reveal more to him than the 
other three detained generals, and told as-Sayyid that he 
(Lehmann) was making the same offer to the other three. 
(Comment:  We do not know whether "prisoner's dilemma" 
violates international legal norms, but Azoury treats it as 
though it does.  End Comment.) 
 
THE OUTLOOK 
----------- 
 
¶7.  (S)  That Brammertz is worried about the GOL's continued 
ability to detain the four generals is cause for us to worry 
as well.  Azoury's largely procedural issues discussed 
immediately above may or may not be meaningful elements in an 
eventual trial before an international tribunal.  The real 
question, by our own informal legal analysis, is whether the 
UNIIIC and Lebanese prosecutors have gathered sufficient 
evidence to justify the continued detention of as-Sayyid and 
the three other generals.  Brammertz, in his June 6 reply to 
Azoury, begs this question by referring it entirely to the 
Lebanese judicial authorities.  Azoury, in his five arguments 
above, does not really reach the issue of the weight of the 
evidence, since he has maintained that as-Sayyid never had 
anything to do with the Hariri assassination, including 
foreknowledge that something might be up. 
 
¶8.  (S)  An interesting aspect to all this is that Azoury 
informed DCM on June 16 that he, as as-Sayyid's attorney, 
would soon be approaching Lebanese PM Fouad Siniora, Future 
Movement leader Sa'ad Hariri, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, 
and Phalange party leader Amine Gemayel to make a proposal. 
The proposal would be that if Jamil as-Sayyid were released 
from jail, he would depart the country within 24 hours.  The 
incentive to Lebanon's political leaders, presumably, would 
be that they would have as-Sayyid out of their way soon, 
rather running the risk of having him released for lack of 
evidence and then mobilizing his pro-Syrian friends against 
them all in Lebanon.  We note here that the four political 
figures mentioned by Azoury are members of the 
pro-independence March 14 coalition.  We will follow up 
quietly with them for their views on as-Sayyid and the other 
generals. 
 
FURTHER ELEMENTS 
---------------- 
 
¶9.  (S)  Azoury, in the course of our June 16 meeting with 
him, made several other comments about the unfolding UNIIIC 
investigation.  Among them, he said that Jamil as-Sayyid, as 
head of Lebanon's Surete Generale, had never met Syrian chief 
of military intelligence Asef Shawqat, an object of UNIIIC 
interest.  Azoury, for his part, said that he had never met 
Jamil as-Sayyid until taking on his case.  He reported that 
he meets three times per week with as-Sayyid.  He reported 
that controversial former chief investigator Gerhard Lehmann 
continues to travel to Lebanon, and disclaimed any knowledge 
of what he is up to, but said he had seen Lehmann in a Beirut 
restaurant this past month. 
 
¶10.  (S)  The Syrian national Zouhair Ibn Mohamed Said Saddik 
remains an enigma.  Former UNIIIC Commissioner Mehlis appears 
to have drawn in part on Saddik's testimony in writing the 
October 2005 conclusions about Syrian and Lebanese 
intelligence complicity in the Hariri murder.  Azoury said 
that Saddik had approached the UNIIIC on his own accord, 
suggesting that he was a Syrian intelligence set-up.  Saddik 
was then sent to France, which has no extradition treaty with 
Lebanon or Syria, thus protecting him.  There was a 
conspiracy, of which Saddik was a small part, and one of his 
roles was to bring about the incarceration of General 
as-Sayyid.  The Syrians are nervous, especially about the 
information that might have been provided to the UNIIIC by 
the Syrian witness Houssam Houssam in Damascus.  Meanwhile, 
Azoury wondered, who is paying Saddik the USD 2,000 or so per 
month that it must cost him to live in France.  Azoury 
thought that 99.5 percent of what Saddik told the UNIIIC was 
probably false or contrived, but the .5 percent was real, and 
Brammertz is trying to find that .5 percent. 
 
COMMENT 
------- 
 
¶11.  (S) Azoury, despite his objections to as-Sayyid's 
detention as a "political" matter, is advocating a purely 
political solution to his client's problem, approaching 
Jumblatt, Hariri, and Gemayel, none of whom have any judicial 
authority.  It is not even clear to us what authority Prime 
Minister Siniora has to make a decision to release as-Sayyid. 
 From our perspective of advocating judicial independence, 
this would probably not be a step in the right direction. 
 
¶12.  (S) Comment, continued:  In any case, Jumblatt, Siniora, 
Hariri, and Gemayel could be expected to ask whether 
as-Sayyid -- like his longtime ally, Hizballah -- might be 
highly selective in how he chose to uphold his end of the 
bargain, much as Hizballah has been in the National Dialogue 
talks.  They might wonder how quickly he would leave 
following his release -- Azoury's promise of departure within 
24 hours notwithstanding -- and how long he would stay away. 
In the end, they might well prefer the possibility of 
as-Sayyid being released in the future to the certainty of 
him being released now. 
 
¶13.  (S) Comment, continued: However, in two separate 
meetings last fall, senior justice Ralph Riache, President of 
Lebanon's Criminal Court and the Ministry of Justice's 
official contact with the UNIIIC investigation, told emboff 
that the government of Lebanon has the legal authority to 
hold individuals suspected in crimes of state indefinitely. 
Riache mentioned this clause on two separate occasions, in 
direct response to emboff questions about the legal status of 
as-Sayyid and the three other incarcerated security chiefs. 
While the Embassy does not claim expert legal opinion on 
Lebanese penal codes, it appeared during our last meetings 
with Riache that the MOJ felt no obligation to release 
as-Sayyid and no reservations about holding him indefinitely. 
 
¶14.  (S/NF) Comment, continued:  Besides having a seismic 
effect on the political situation here, as-Sayyid's release 
might well have security implications for us as a diplomatic 
mission.  If as-Sayyid gets out, he is going to be angry and 
seeking payback, and he is going to see the United States as 
at least partly responsible for his interrogation by the 
UNIIIC and his long months in detention.  A released 
as-Sayyid might conceivably quickly reconstitute a network of 
contacts and clients in the security apparatus, his task made 
easier and his influence enhanced by the public perception of 
a pro-Syrian resurgence that his release would cause. 
Working with Hizballah and the Syrian regime, as-Sayyid -- 
despite his close cooperation with us over the years before 
Hariri's assassination -- could potentially employ that 
network, when the right time came, to do us harm.  End 
comment. 
FELTMAN