Lebanese television station Al-Jadeed released another titillating episode in its series “Haqiqa Leaks” a few days ago, this time featuring the notorious Hussam Hussam, a Syrian intelligence agent who came forward early in the Hariri investigation with information incriminating Syrian and Lebanese security officials.
Hussam, like Siddiq (who was the star of his own Haqiqa Leaks primetime special), would later recant his story and claim that he was pressured by March 14th figures to fabricate his testimony. The leaked recording is from an interview conducted with him by a member of the U.N. investigation team in Damascus in 2007. It’s full of all kinds of accusations, among them that he was tortured by Gerhard Lehmann in a subterranean building abutting the headquarters of the Special Tribunal in Monteverdi (a residential neighborhood just northeast of Beirut), and that he was offered $5 million by Saad al-Hariri to round up other false witnesses to help substantiate the tale that he was made to tell.
According to the STL, neither Siddiq nor Hussam’s testimonies are part of the evidence presented to the pre-trial judge, having been deemed unreliable once they recanted. This will not stop many from continuing to argue, however, that the entire case is based on false witness testimony…
And whether or not one chooses to believe a word that the guy says, it’s obvious that whoever is behind these leaks knows just how damaging they will be to the Tribunal’s credibility in Lebanon. Does al-Jadeed have their own Bradley Manning deep in the bowels of the STL’s offices in The Hague? How much more embarrassing material is waiting to be revealed, and when will we see other parties circulating their own “leaks” to counter the Al-Jadeed narrative?
More importantly: don’t you just love Lebanese politics? Not content to be the first country ever to trigger a UN Special Tribunal devoted to the prosecution of a political murder, we are also the first country to coopt the Wikileaks phenomenon (and brand) in the service of undermining said Tribunal. Ghazi Kanaan didn’t know who he was dealing with when he told the Lebanese to stick to entertainment and leave the politics to Syria. Talk about a false choice.
(I’ll be traveling for the next few days, so please behave yourselves in the comment section…)
Qifa Nabki 
Not going to Switzerland, Georgie?
“Junior,’ soon your Daddy, the one who paid off cops and judges when you were young to get you out of one scrape after another, and continued to do so well into your adult(?) life, the ‘Godfather’ of the Bush Crime Syndicate will depart from this Earth for his just rewards.
Ditto for James Baker, the Bush Mob’s ‘Consigliere,’ fixer and attorney who knew who to pay off to either shut up or fix those elections, will be joining ‘Poppy’ on the other side.
What then, GW? You’ll go about your usual, drunken frat boy ways and sooner or later, step in it Big Time.
When you, the ‘DICK,’ Condi, Dougie, ‘Rummy,’ Wolfowitz, Blair, and your enablers are either serving lifetime prison sentences or ‘Dancing on Air,’ then we can hoist that banner that says, ‘MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.’
Our dead troops, murdered since the barbaric inside Job of 9/11 by you gang of cutthroats, deserve no less.
GB won?
Posted by cvghfx | February 7, 2011, 9:48 amHello everyone,
I’ve received enough complaints about the changing character of the QN discussion section that I’m going to propose some new guidelines. Violate them at your peril!
Comments should be related to:
1. The subject of the post in question
2. Lebanese politics in general.
3. Issues that have a direct bearing on the discussion in question.
I’m not going to stop people from bringing up other topics of interest, but simply cutting-and-pasting large chunks of material from other websites and dumping them here to prove an ideological point serves no purpose, clutters up the discussion board, and contributes to the potential for carpal tunnel syndrome among those readers who are following along on their iPhones.
People who consistently violate these guidelines are going to be warned gently at first (I’m thinking of you: Jhon, cvghfx, Jim, Anonymous #2) and then suspended from commenting for at least a week. Queequeg I have no problem with because s/he at least goes to the trouble of actually engaging with people and writing his/her own responses instead of just quoting endless tracts from anarchist websites.
Capiche? Mafhoum?
Thanks guys.
Posted by Qifa Nabki | February 7, 2011, 10:46 amOne more thing: anyone who intentionally uses multiple monikers will be suspended indefinitely. You may think you’re being clever but your IP addresses give you away.
Jhon/cvghfx/Jim/Anonymous #2: these names are no longer active. Pick a single moniker and stick with it.
Thanks.
Posted by Qifa Nabki | February 7, 2011, 10:58 amAND THATS THAT 🙂
Posted by V | February 7, 2011, 11:15 amSHA has spoken on the revolution…has anyone found an English translation?
Posted by Nasser V | February 7, 2011, 12:23 pmI am the only person who responded to the subject matter of the post ya QN…
Word is that Wissam Eid was working on Israel hits on Lebanese politicians and others in car bombings and that is why he was taken out pronto….
Hussam Hussam is a Syria/CIA creation to confuse/distort and disorient the investigators away from the Infamous White House Murder INC, and Asef Shawkat’s goons.
Posted by HK | February 7, 2011, 12:27 pmHK
You’ve selected your moniker. Stick with it. Any more fancy-dress games and you’re gone.
Posted by Qifa Nabki | February 7, 2011, 12:40 pmNasser,
http://nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=238311
Posted by RandomThoughtOfTheDay | February 7, 2011, 12:52 pmI got to give it to SHN.
He brilliantly exploited the situation.
Now Israel are damned if they do and damned if they don’t deal with Hizballah.
Posted by RandomThoughtOfTheDay | February 7, 2011, 12:59 pmMarch 14 will not be part of the next government.
Now the fun starts 🙂
Posted by RandomThoughtOfTheDay | February 7, 2011, 1:17 pmBack in April 2009, I had this exchange with a Foggy Bottom source.
Egypt had the most crooked elections in between, and Mubarak was able to get away with it until the Revolution…
How come that nothing was done or said by USA between 2009 and 2011, when the writing has been on the wall for so long?
Tuesday, April 14, 2009 8:08 PM
Subject: Egypt
I hear Mubarak is facing a potential full scale rebellion from two factions:
The non-religious young people who are as about as fed up as their colleagues in Greece with the economic collapse…
and the Muslim Brotherhood, which blames Mubarak for not assisting their Hamas brethren in Gaza.
That comes from State Dept. source.
Posted by HK | February 7, 2011, 1:23 pmThanks RToD
Posted by Nasser V | February 7, 2011, 1:29 pmGhassan,
As the saying goes, “the reports of QN’s death are somewhat premature”.
There’s just not a whole lot going on in Lebanon at the moment. All eyes are on Egypt.
Although I do appreciate the new rules about spamming us with unrelated ideological materials. 🙂
Posted by Bad Vilbel | February 7, 2011, 2:51 pmA potent essay by Fouad Ajami.
http://www.newsweek.com/2011/02/06/demise-of-the-dictators.html
Posted by RandomThoughtOfTheDay | February 7, 2011, 5:42 pmThe fate of the Middle East has been conducted behind closed doors for way too long and people have had enough.
Posted by RandomThoughtOfTheDay | February 7, 2011, 6:10 pmThe STL held today its first open session. The discussions among the judges centered on defining the responsibilities of leaders who may have either ordered the assassinations, or have known about them in advance. The term leader could mean anything like a president, PM, minister, public figure or a military authority. Differences between Lebanese and international laws were compared as to how easch defines such responsibility. It was made clear during the discussions that all the scenarios were hypothetical as none of the judges have any knowledge of the upcoming indictmens, expected to be made public sometime in March.
It is likely based on the above that both Bashar and HNA (or even Khamenei himself) may face indictments.
It will be interseting to see the so-called ‘infallible despots’ finally put on trial, even if that were to happen in absentia.
Posted by anonymous | February 7, 2011, 10:27 pmThe ability to imagine is the foundation of true intelligence… It happens because of related or seemingly unrelated bits and pieces stored in our brain, collected over years of dedicated interest in a subject matter, and how the information or ‘clues’ get processed by an individual’s brain to suggest a possibility…and an outcome based on solid clues and other evidence gathered since 1996…
Some call it ‘sniffing the wind”. Some people call it foresight… Some people have it some don’t…anyone with it is probably shunned by most of the planted Western/Israeli intelligence creeps who have infested STL/TSL from its inception….because the agenda is to defame, demonize and attempt to weaken the Resistance in Lebanon and beyond…STL is just such western/israeli tool…and I would say that if STL was really objective and looking for real truth, it will indict George W. Bush, Ariel Sharon, Dick Cheney, Meir Dagan, and the Infamous White House Murder INC,….
http://newhk.blogspot.com/2011/01/components-of-white-house-murder-incs.html
Posted by HK | February 8, 2011, 4:10 am“ It is very simple to make something complex and very complex to make something simple…”
http://newhk.blogspot.com/2008/12/uniiic-ii-report-revisited.html
Posted by HK | February 8, 2011, 4:30 amAnonymous,
The opposite of what you suggest seems to me to be quite likely. The Office of the Defense has mounted a strenuous challenge to the possibility of indicting anyone with “command responsibility.” The Prosecutor is arguing for including “command responsibility” or “Joint Criminal Enterprise” within the subject-matter jurisdiction of the court based on the fact that it is mentioned in Article 3 and it was an acknowledged element of international criminal law at the time the crimes were committed. The Defense Office is arguing that the Statute only authorizes the use of Lebanese law, not international law, and that Article 3 of the Tribunal’s Statute, which covers command responsibility is too vague to actually constitute black-letter law. Article 2 says that the Lebanese Criminal Code will be used to define the criminal acts, but then Article 3 vaguely brings in modes of criminality as defined by international law. It seems possible that the Prosecutor will be hamstrung by a poorly written Statute when it comes to attempting to prosecute any high authorities (and he may not even try).
Posted by Jonathan | February 8, 2011, 4:45 amHaving said that, Anonymous makes a good point in that if Fransen, who does know the detail of the indictments, asked the question about command responsibility, then it seems likely that command or “superior” responsibility is at issue in the indictments already under pre-trial review. So the first set of indictees may not only be foot-soldiers. But I doubt they will go very high.
Posted by Jonathan | February 8, 2011, 11:34 amFoggy Bottom or Bust
The ability to imagine is the foundation of true intelligence…
HK,
Speaking of imagination and “true intelligence”, do your conspiracy theories extend beyond blaming everything on Jews, Israel and the US?
Posted by Akbar Palace | February 8, 2011, 2:16 pmAP,
Can you cut the crap and understand what you are reading.
What I posted is an actual exchange of emails with a Foggy Bottom source which I am still holding in my files. I stumbled on it since the Egypt story developed and I was stunned at how precisely the State Dept. had predicted back in 04/2009 what we are seeing today on the streets of Cairo…
So, your wild extrapolations about my views re: Egypt are unwarranted…
You can find a picture of Hilary dating back to 04/2009 at this link in support of the premise of the “source” if you like…
and it is a positive remark about our diplomats who know exactly what’s on the ground…but actual policy doesn’t follow in time to instigate changes….
http://geoplotical.blogspot.com/2011/02/hillary-clinton-strives-to-protect-her.html
Posted by HK | February 8, 2011, 2:44 pmHK’s Conspiracy Funhouse, Ltd
I was stunned at how precisely the State Dept. had predicted back in 04/2009 what we are seeing today on the streets of Cairo…
HK,
I guess you didn’t get the memo. EVERYONE “predicted” Egypt was going to erupt one day. EVERYONE knew Mubarak was disliked by most Egyptians and that his government was teetering.
You can find a picture of Hilary dating back to 04/2009..
How do you say “So what?” in Arabic?
Posted by Akbar Palace | February 8, 2011, 9:27 pm