Shame on Gov’t for Detaining 4 Innocent Officers”

Hanan Awarekeh




(Archive)

01/11/2008 Head of the Marada Movement and former Minister Sleiman Franjieh said on Saturday that the four officers arrested in claims that they were in connection with the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri were innocent.

“Shame on the government of Lebanon and Lebanese judiciary system for keeping the four officers detained,” Franjieh told reporters after meeting with former Prime Minister Omar Karami.

Franjieh questioned how the four officers could be transferred to The Hague when the court had, as yet, failed to summon them.

The Marada leader’s comments come after the head of the UN-commissioned Special Tribunal for Lebanon, Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare, requested Lebanon’s Justice Minister Ibrahim Najjar explain or deny reports that he had said the tribunal intended to transfer the four officers to The Hague.

Franjieh met with Karami at the latter’s residence in Tripoli where the pair discussed political and security developments in Lebanon, particularly in Tripoli and the North, as well as the situation across the Arab world.
After the meeting, Karami told reporters that “No doubt … everyone is working for peaceful elections” in 2009.

“Seven months separate us from the elections,” Karami added, which he said was ample time for different conditions to surface in Lebanon and that he doubted alliances would materialize before January.

“The [electoral] battle depends on the circumstances and nothing can be judged now,” he said.

AOUN: “NEUTRALITY IS NOT A VIRTUE”
Meanwhile, head of the Free Patriotic Movement leader MP General Michel Aoun said Saturday that neutrality is not a virtue.

Speaking in front of a student delegation at his residence in Rabiyeh, General Aoun said, “There is a significant difference between a consensus president and a neutral president.”

MP Aoun said everyone in Lebanon should have a “clear stance” and was “forbidden from falling into contradiction.”