Paris is accused of involvement in the disappearance of a witness in the probe into the assassination of ex-Lebanese Premier Rafiq Hariri. "The French authorities helped facilitate the disappearance of Mohammed Zuheir al-Siddiq with the aim of his being liquidated by another party or they liquidated him themselves," Imad al-Siddiq, the brother of the Syrian witness, said on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said that the witness, a former intelligence officer, had disappeared from his suburban home in the French capital. He was under house arrest at the time of his disappearance.
Siddiq was detained in October 2005 in a Paris suburb in connection with the February 2005 assassination of Hariri. He was then under an international arrest warrant requested by a Lebanese prosecutor.
Paris refused to extradite him to Lebanon because it had not been given guarantees that he would not be held liable to the death penalty there if convicted of a crime. |