Is this Lebanon ??
Lebanese
Forces
3/6/98
The news
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Mars 1998
Maj Keitel Hayek, on trial in connection with the 1987 assassination of
former
premier Rashid Karami, admitted yesterday he had masterminded the
planting of
a dummy bomb on Karami’s grave.
However, the retired army officer denied charges that he was derailing
investigations into the murder, arguing that he wanted to scare leaders
who
intended to hold a commemorative ceremony at the graveyard 40 days after
Karami’s death.
These leaders were known to be against the Lebanese president and the
army
and I wanted them to be afraid and cancel the ceremony, he told judge
Mounir
Honein, head of the Judicial Council.
The ceremony transferred to Karami’s home town of Tripoli after the
discovery
of the dummy bomb, which, according to the indictment, was placed on
orders of
the Lebanese Forces (LF) militia.
Only one of the two servicemen who are believed to have planted the bomb
Sgt
Camille Rami, Hayek’s brother-in-law is in custody. The LF, whose
leader
Samir Geagea is being tried for plotting the murder, wanted
investigators at
the time to think Karami’s killers were residents of Tripoli, the
indictment said.
Hayek denied he had any links with the LF and said he had worked on his
own to
set up two groups of Lebanese soldiers in the Bekaa which staged several
bombings against Syrian posts.
I was their guru and trained them to stage a guerrilla war against the
Syrians, he said, claiming he had been motivated by a strong patriotic
feeling.
Asked where he obtained the money to pay his followers, he said he was
on the
payroll of the US Drug Enforcement Agency and similar agencies in France
and
Germany in return for supplying them with lists containing names of drug
traders and cultivators in Lebanon during the 80s.
Hayek, who had been tried in absentia, attended his trial for the second
time
yesterday. He was released with 101 other Lebanese detainees from Syria
earlier this month.
Last year he was sentenced to 12 years in absentia for plotting to kill
Gen
Ghazi Kenaan, head of Syria’s military intelligence in Lebanon, and will
be
retried in May as part of the same case.
Hayek, who faces life imprisonment if convicted in Karami’s case, was
taken to
Syria in 1994 for his involvement in plotting to kill Kenaan.
His brother-in-law, Rami, was sentenced in Kenaan’s case for ten years
in jail
and faces life imprisonment in the Karami case.
After questioning Hayek, the court ordered all journalists out for a
secret
reading of documents supplied by Rami in Karami’s case. The information
in
the documents could place Rami’s family in danger if leaked to the
press,
judge Honein said. He later adjourned the trial until Wednesday.
Lebanese
Forces
Email: laba-a@rocketmail.com
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