Mehlis Rounds up Sayyed, Hajj, Azar, Summons Hamdan, Addoum

http://www.naharnet.com/domino/tn/NewsDesk.nsf/getstory?openform&F66D2F44F48C654AC225706D0029E12D

Police rounded up several former Lebanese security chiefs who served under
Syria's defunct tutelage at daybreak on Tuesday for interrogation by the
U.N. commission investigating ex-Premier Rafik Hariri's assassination.
Prominent among those detained were Brig. Gen. Jamil Sayyed, former head of
Lebanon's General Security Department known as Surete Generale, Brig. Gen.
Ali Hajj, ex-commander of the Internal Security Forces (ISF) and Brig. Gen.
Raymond Azar, former commander of the army's intelligence service.

Witnesses said all three officers were escorted under heavy security from
their Beirut homes to the countryside headquarters of the U.N. Commission of
Inquiry at the mountain resort of Monteverde southeast of the Lebanese
capital.

Under Lebanese law, those held for questioning can be detained for up to
four days, but the order may be extended. Afterward, the detainee is either
released, freed on bail or formally arrested.

Brig. Gen. Mostafa Hamdan, commander of the army's Presidential Guard
Brigade, was instructed to report 'at once' to Monteverde for interrogation
and he was still there several hours later.

Hamdan is President Lahoud's closest aide de camp and is known as Lahoud's
inseparable shadow. Hamdan, physically a giant of a man, has long been a
fixture in official delegations Lahoud had taken with him on state visits
abroad.

Hamdan shadowed the president in Pope John Paul's funeral in the Vatican
last April and Lahoud is reportedly planning to take Hamdan as a member of
his entourage to the U.N. General Assembly annual session in New York next
month.

The CNN said former State Prosecutor and Justice Minister Adnan Addoum also
was summoned 'at once' to the U.N. Monteverde command post. But Addoum
personally called Beirut TV stations to assert that he was not summoned and
is at his home.

Police also raided the Beirut house of former parliament member Nasser
Kandil, who was Syria's noisiest propaganda drummer during its ruthless
reign of Lebanon. But his wife told the raiders that her husband was in
Syria.

All seven Beirut TV networks interrupted their regular broadcasts to flash
out the news of the arrests as German Prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, who heads
the U.N. commission investigating Hariri's Feb. 14 murder, was huddled in a
closed-doors conference with Premier Fouad Seniora for hours at the Grand
Serail.

Mehlis then met with Justice Minister Charles Rizk in the presence of state
Prosecutor Saeed Mirza, who had earlier given Mehlis the green light to
stage the house raids and supplied him with the necessary police units to
carry out the operation.


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