BEIRUT, Jan 25: Former Christian warlord Elie Hobeika taped “evidence” on the Sabra and Shatila massacres during Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon before he was assassinated, a Beirut newspaper said on Friday.

The Daily Star said the evidence allegedly implicated Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who was defence minister at the time of the massacres in the Palestinian refugee camps of Beirut.

“On a pair of occasions ..., including one just two months ago, Hobeika told editors from this newspaper that he has recorded his account of Sabra and Shatila,” said the Daily Star.

It said Hobeika, a former minister and intelligence chief of the Lebanese Forces militia who was killed in a Beirut car-bomb attack on Thursday, had told the newspaper that he “entrusted copies of the tape to lawyers.”

“According to him, he had evidence that would implicate Sharon even more directly than is widely believed,” said the English-language daily.

An Israeli commission of inquiry in 1983 found Sharon “indirectly responsible” for the camp massacres in which Christian militiamen slaughtered between 800 and 2,000 Palestinian refugees in September 1982.

It charged that Hobeika ordered the massacres, which took place as the Israeli army held positions near the two camps.

“Hobeika feared being assassinated” because of the trial being filed against Sharon in Belgium by survivors of the massacres, said An-Nahar, another Lebanese daily. “What will become of his secrets?”

It also asked what “revelations” he could have made to a delegation of Belgian senators he met secretly in Beirut earlier this week.—AFP