TIMMERMAN: Fear grips democracy in Lebanon

OP-ED:

BEIRUT, Lebanon.

As the Special Tribunal for Lebanon begins hearings in The Hague in the politically charged investigation into the murder of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri four years ago, a climate of fear has gripped Lebanon.

You know the mood is tense in Beirut when the person picking you up at the airport offers to get you a gun. “For your own security, sir,” he says.

The day I arrived in the Lebanese capital, a pilot for Middle East Airlines was murdered on the airport road on his way to work. Just one week earlier, the information technology manager for that airline, the national carrier, was abducted at the airport itself. “A professional job, that left no traces,” a former Lebanese intelligence officer told me.

Dark rumors circulate about these events. Sources close to Hezbollah made it known they suspected one of the men of being an Israeli spy. As if to substantiate these claims, Hezbollah handed over a car dealer to the security forces the day after the IT manager disappeared, claiming he had installed satellite tracking devices in cars sold to Hezbollah in south Lebanon over several years.

Others believe the men were killed because they had important information about the Hariri assassination that neither the Syrians nor Hezbollah wanted exposed.

Four Lebanese generals have been arrested as suspects in the Hariri murder case. Special prosecutor Daniel Bellemarre left Beirut last Wednesday after receiving assurances from the Lebanese government it would transfer the suspects to The Hague for trial, where they were be interrogated by a panel of international jurists and four Lebanese judges.

The Lebanese judges are so fearful for their lives that even their names were kept secret until after they had left the country. An attempt by this reporter to meet one through a trusted contact failed, because the judge feared for his life.

In a report to the United Nations secretary general in October 2005, German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis accused Syria and Lebanese intelligence officers of plotting the assassination. Mr. Mehlis soon resigned, apparently after receiving death threats. But his initial work led to U.N. Security Council Resolution 1757, adopted on May 30, 2007, that established the international tribunal, and the arrest by the Lebanese authorities of the four generals.

Imagine for an instant the reaction of ordinary Americans if the Justice Department announced it was arresting the head of the CIA, the director of national intelligence, and the directors of the FBI and the Secret Service, on charges of having plotted the assassination of the speaker of the House of Representatives. And imagine the disbelief most people would have felt if the president said he knew nothing about the plot.

That’s what happened in Lebanon. The four generals were Jamil Sayid, head of general security; Raymond Azar, director of military intelligence; Ali al-Hajj, head of the Internal Security Forces; and Mustapha Hamdan, chief of presidential security. Two are Sunni Muslims, one is a Shia, and the fourth a Maronite Christian.

Shortly before he was taken into custody, Gen. Sayid made a public plea to then President Emile Lahoud to defend his generals or go down with them.

Mr. Lahoud feigned ignorance, and left office last year. But Mr. Lahoud was known as a “micro-manager” of the intelligence services, the former intelligence officer told me. “None of them could have done anything without him. He should have been arrested.”

For Roger Edde, a prominent Lebanese businessman and Maronite Christian politician, the latest killings are just the calm before the storm as Syria and its Iranian-backed ally, Hezbollah, gird for war.

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