We have Received Calls from Siddiq, but We Don”t Know His Whereabouts

We have Received Calls from Siddiq, but We Don”t Know His Whereabouts

The international tribunal”s chief prosecutor, Daniel Bellemare, said that the U.N. commission investigating former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri”s assassination has received several phone calls from key witness Mohammed Zuheir Saddiq, but added that "we don”t know his whereabouts."

"We have received several calls from Zuheir Siddiq, but we don”t know his whereabouts," Bellemare told New TV.

Siddiq, who was under an international arrest warrant requested by a Lebanese prosecutor, was detained in October 2005 in a Paris suburb in connection with the assassination.

France refused to extradite him to Lebanon because it had not been guaranteed that he would not face the death penalty if convicted, and the former intelligence agent had since been living in the Paris suburb of Chatou.

Siddiq was quoted in newspaper reports in 2006 as saying that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his Lebanese counterpart at the time, Emile Lahoud, ordered Hariri”s 2005 assassination in a massive Beirut car bombing.

There have been conflicting reports about Siddiq, with some saying he disappeared, while his brother claimed that France had "liquidated" him. France denied the charge.

On the four detained Lebanese generals, Bellemare said they would be transferred to The Hague "as inmates."