Sayyed suing Abdo in Paris court

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Former head of Lebanon’s General Security Directorate Jamil Sayyed said in a statement issued on Monday that General Prosecutor in Paris has examined the lawsuit filed by him against former Lebanese Intelligence chief Johnny Abdo, on charges of libels seconded by false witnesses.

According to the statement , the Prosecutor accepted to submit Abdo to the Criminal Court in Paris to try him according to the charges targeting him. Reportedly, the Court would soon set a date to start the procedure.

Sayyed who along with three other senior Lebanese officers were jailed for four years in a Lebanese prison in connection with the assassination of former PM Rafik Hariri were released in April 2009 for lack of sufficient evidence .

Following his release from jail Sayyed accused a number of government officials and MP’s of misleading the investigation, including MP Marwan Hamadeh; Johnny Abdo; current head of the Internal Security Forces Intelligence department Wissam al-Hassan; Hariri advisor Hani Hammoud; and Future movement journalist Fares Khashan; and Judges Saqr Saqr and Public Prosecutor Said Mirza.

About Johnny Abdo

Lebanon’s former Intelligence Chief Johnny Abdo publicly accused Syria’s secret service apparatus and affiliated Lebanese security departments in President Lahoud’s regime of assassinating former PM Rafik Hariri, asserting that President Assad was aware of the murder beforehand.

Abdo, who headed the army’s intelligence apparatus during the 1976-1982 reign of the late President Elias Sarkis in the early years of the civil war, made the charge in an interview aired by Hariri’s FUTURE-TV network on April 28, 2005. The accusation was highlighted by the Beirut press the following morning.

Asked by interviewer Ali Hamadeh whether he believed that Syrian President Bashar Assad was aware that these intelligence services have assassinated Hariri, Abdo said “yes.”

Hezbollah

Syria was initially accused by March 14 of being behind Hariri’s murder , but a report in May 2009 in the German magazine Der Spiegel revealed that Hezbollah was behind the assassination of the the former Lebanese PM who was assassinated o February 14, 2005.

But many observers in Lebanon believe that Hezbollah could not have done it without Syria’s help, because Syria’s intelligence was in total control of the country at the time of the assassination.

The Special tribunal for (STL) was formed by the United Nations security council to try the killers of the former Lebanese PM.

In his speech on Thursday July 22, Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah admitted that some of his party members would be named in the tribunal’s formal charges but stressed that he will reject the indictments . In an another speech on Friday July 16 he questioned the STL’s credibility, calling it an “Israeli project” designed to create sectarian strife in the country.

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