The Lebanese Generals Are Freed: Electoral Impact Likely

The four Lebanese generals who have been held since 2005 in connection with the Rafiq Hariri assassination have now been freed thanks to a decision by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon meeting in the Netherlands. The result is likely to have a major impact on the June elections, as well as to further muddy the waters of a case that has everything but a Grassy Knoll.

The four are former General Security Services Director Maj. Gen. Jamil al-Sayyed, former Internal Security Forces director Gen. ‘Ali al-Hajj, former Military Intelligence head Brig. Gen. Raymond Azar, and former Presidential Guard head Brig. Gen. Mustafa Hamdan.

All four generals had close links to Syria and there were allegations they had links to the Hariri assassination, but the prosecutors in the case (not the defense, the prosecution) told the Tribunal that there was insufficient evidence to charge the men. The Tribunal then ordered their release. They had been held by Lebanese authorities in Beirut.

Addressing a cheering crowd at his home, General Sayyed denounced the four year detention without charge and explicitly thanked Hizbullah Secretary-General Hasan Nasrallah for his support and advocacy of their release.

Though many had anticipated that the Tribunal would lack the evidence to charge the generals, this is a political bombshell, coming as it does in the runup to the June 7 Parliamentary elections. Sa‘d Hariri, Rafiq Hariri's son, heads the Future Movement which is at the core of the current government majority. The opposition, especially Hizbullah, has supported freeing the generals.

Clearly, the opposition sees this as a victory. Hizbullah is openly proclaiming it "the last nail in the coffin" of the US-backed democracy movement. Since some readers may not choose to click on the Hizbullah website or may be in countries where it is blocked, here's a quote from Hizbullah's Al-Manar TV:

Today was another unforgettable day for half of the Lebanese people, four families and fading project.

The pictures of the four Generals were raised again, but this time not as the “Cedars Revolution” wanted to portray them, but as free men.

The four Generals are free and their freedom was the last nail in the coffin of the most complicated and politicized era that was intended to establish theories of how to rule based on monopolization for personal ends.

Three years, seven months and twenty nine days; a long time during which some have exploited the slogans of security and judiciary to distort fixed national standards and divert them to fit the so called “New hybrid Middle East” and canned democracy.

Today, the 29th of April, 2009 was catastrophic for the conspirators who had sought to raise the slogan of short-of-evidence vengeance.

Back in 2005, in the heady days of the "Cedar Revolution" and Syria's withdrawal of its troops from Lebanon, the arrests of the generals was seen as part of a genuine democracy movement and a triumph for democracy and a defeat for Syria. But there was no follow-through. One key witness reportedly recanted, and charges were never lodged against the generals. In 2006 Hizbullah strengthened itself politically by absorbing and rebounding from a direct Israeli assault; and by this year the long detention of the generals without a charge had turned the case from a democratic victory to a virtual human rights abuse.

There are a great many things about the Hariri case that suggest high-level involvement on the part of the security services. That was the conclusion of the Mehlis Report back in October 2005. And the prosecutors in the Netherlands made clear that if sufficient evidence emerges in the Tribunal, the generals could be re-arrested.

The key witness who recanted his testimony may have been coerced into the recantation and another key witness died in a car wreck (possibly an accident, but there are skeptics). The evidence has been so compromised at this point that it remains to be seen what the UN Tribunal can do. It consists of international and Lebanese jurists and is meeting in Leidschendam near the Hague.