Hatoum as well as cameramen Abdel-Azim Khayyat and assistant Mohammed Barbar were released after paying a bail of L.L. 500,000 (about 330 dollars) each, judicial sources said.

Last month, General Prosecutor Said Mirza accused the men of breaking into the Beirut apartment of Mohammed Zuhair Saddiq, a key witness in the Hariri assassination.

He also accused them of stealing documents that constituted "important evidence" in the Hariri case from Saddiq's apartment in Khaldeh.

The three, if convicted, face jail sentences of between three and 15 years.

Saddiq, a Syrian, was freed from a French prison last February because of a lack of guarantees that he would not face the death sentence if extradited to Lebanon, French judicial officials said at the time.

The witness was detained in Oct. 2005 when the U.N. commission investigating Hariri's murder recommended his arrest on grounds he gave false evidence to investigators.

Lebanese prosecutors have since charged him in absentia and want him extradited for giving false testimony to mislead the U.N. probe and playing an indirect role in Hariri's killing.

Picture: Reporter Firas Hatoum ( C) cameramen Abdel-Azim Khayyat (R) and assistant Mohammed Barbar

Source: Naharnet, Ya Libnan