Beirut, January 25: A Lebanese TV has broadcasted audio recordings, alleged to contain caretaker Premier Saad Hariri’s conversations with the false witnesses, misleading his father’s murder case.
Speculations have built up after the recordings were aired by the Lebanese Local channel “New TV” and watched by thousands of people across the country, the Lebanese capital of Beirut.
The Lebanese opposition groupings have accused Hariri of being influenced by the United States, which backs the tribunal investigating his father and former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri’s 2005 death.
Christian opposition leader, Michael Aoun, has specifically accused the victim’s son of cooperating with false witnesses, who testified to the Washington-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL).
The producers at the TV station say they got the evidence from certain sources, who could not be reached for comment.
The recordings include short conversation between the interim official and a man named Mohammad Zuheir Al-Siddiq, whom the opposition considers primary false witness.
Al-Siddiq is a wanted criminal in Syria and Lebanon and is believed to have lied under oath to the UN-based probe.
This meeting has shocked the Lebanese public, especially those who believe that the issue of the witnesses had to be dealt with before the release of the STL’s indictment.
The court is said to be likely to incriminate some members of the Lebanese resistance movement of Hezbollah in a move, which has been denounced as, a means of sowing discord within the country. The movement has strictly rejected any involvement in the incident.
Washington has, meanwhile, been applying “intensive” pressure around the matter under the slogan of “no discussions before indictment is issued,” leading Lebanese newspaper As-Safir has written.
——–Agencies