DAMASCUS, Nov 28: A Syrian witness who has accused the son of Lebanon’s slain former prime minister of bribing him to testify falsely to a UN murder inquiry, said on Monday his testimony was the main evidence against Syria. Hosam Taher Hosam said a report by chief U.N. investigator Detlev Mehlis to the Security Council implicating Syrian and Lebanese officials in the Feb 14 assassination of Rafik Al Hariri was based mainly on his false allegations.
“It depended on my testimony by as much as 40 per cent,” Mr Hosam, a barber, who said he had been an agent for Syrian and Lebanese intelligence in Lebanon, told a news conference.
Taher Hosam, who said he had fled to Syria from Lebanon on Sunday after two failed attempts, said Saad Al Hariri had told him he was convinced Damascus was behind his father’s death.
“He had a feeling without proof that Syrian intelligence killed his father,” he said.
A spokesman for Saad Hariri denied Mr Hosam’s statements. “This claim is fabricated. It is a lie and it is baseless,” spokesman Hani Hammoud told Hariri-owned Future Television in Beirut.
“No person from the Hariri family met this character or had direct or indirect contact with him,” he said.
The U.N. International Independent Investigation Committee (UNIIC) confirmed Mr Hosam was a witness and said he had signed a statement on Sept 1 that said he was testifying voluntarily and had not been forced, threatened or given incentives.
“On several occasions, Mr Hosam expressed fear to UNIIIC that he and his family could be harmed by Syrian security elements,” the inquiry said in a statement released in Beirut.
It said Mr Hosam had identified himself as a former Syrian intelligence agent, but made no comment on his assertions about the weight placed on his testimony in Mr Mehlis’s interim report.
DOUBT CAST: Ibrahim Al Darraji, spokesman for Syria’s own investigation into Rafik Hariri’s death, said Mr Hosam’s new testimony might discredit the conclusions of the report Detlev Mehlis submitted last month.
“From a legal point of view if the report is based on this testimony then it has collapsed,” Mr Darraji, an international law expert, said in the joint news conference with Mr Hosam.
Taher Hosam, reiterating remarks he made on Syrian television on Sunday, said an elaborate scheme of torture, threats and bribery had forced him to testify against Syrian and Lebanese officials.
His appearance came after Damascus agreed to allow five Syrian officials to be questioned by Mr Mehlis at UN offices in Vienna in connection with Mr Hariri’s assassination.
Mr Hosam said followers of Rafik Hariri and other anti-Syrian officials had held him for a while in Lebanon and had wanted him to go to Vienna to confront the Syrians to be quizzed by Mr Mehlis.
He said his captors had wanted him to implicate Maher Al Assad, a brother of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, and his brother-in-law and military intelligence chief, Maj Gen Asef Shawkat.
Mr Hosam said he had been tortured, injected with drugs and offered $1.3 million by Lebanese Interior Minister Hassan Al Sabaa to tell the investigators he had seen the truck used in Mr Hariri’s killing in a Syrian-controlled military facility.
Mr Hosam also accused Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt and Telecommunications Minister Marwan Hamadeh of arranging for other witnesses to testify falsely to Mr Mehlis.
He identified an anchorman at Future Television of playing the topmost role in the scheme.
Mr Mehlis has interviewed more than 500 people about Mr Hariri’s killing, diplomatic sources say. His report did not name Mr Hosam. —Reuters
