Mehlis committee returns back to Beirut shortly

The UN office in Beirut said on Friday that the UN investigation committee to the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri will return back to Beirut to notify its chairman Detlev Mehlis on the result of its mission in Syria.

The UN office explained that Mehlis visited Damascus last Tuesday in order to listen to Syrian witnesses in the framework of the investigation, noting that a team of the UN experts continued the mission in Syria and will be returning back "within a short time" to Beirut where the UN investigation committee is stationed since the mid of June.

A source close to the meeting asked to be anonymous said that the mission in Damascus was carried out in a way better than Mehlis feared, but not to the extent he hoped.

So far, the UN refused to disclose the identity of the Syrian officials interrogated by the committee. However, Lebanese dailies said that the committee listened to the Syrian deputy foreign minister Walid al-Muaallim, the current Syrian minister of interior and former chairman of the security and reconnaissance department in Lebanon Ghazi Kanaan and his successor Rostom Ghazale and two of Ghazalle's assistants in Beirut, Muhammad Khallouf and Jame Jame.

Damascus has expressed its satisfaction over dealing of the UN investigators with the Syrian officials who were secretly interrogated in Damascus in the framework of the investigation to the assassination of al-Hariri and no other details were given.

Damascus also renewed its denial of assassinating al-Hariri, stressing its determination to cooperate with the committee because disclosing the reality is in its interests to remove doubts surrounding it.