Beirut: Four Lebanese generals detained over the killing of Rafik Hariri were held without legal basis, a UN investigator told US diplomats three years before they were freed, the Daily Star newspaper said on Monday.
The English-language daily's report, which cited leaked diplomatic cables from the US embassy in Beirut, is likely to fuel perceptions in Lebanon that the international investigation into Hariri's 2005 assassination was flawed and politicised.
The leaked documents could not be found on WikiLeaks sites and the Daily Star said it obtained them exclusively.
The newspaper also revealed that the investigators were frustrated by "insane" internal UN bureaucracy and a lack of cooperation even from countries publicly supporting the investigation. The UN sleuths were also eager to obtain US satellite imagery.
Influential figures
At the time of the assassination, Major-General Jameel Al Syed, Brigadier-General Mustafa Hamdan, Major-General Ali Haj and Brigadier-General Raymond Azar were seen as pillars of a Lebanese state that was dominated by neighbouring Syria.
They were arrested in August 2005 at the request of German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, who headed the early stages of a UN investigation into the killing and suggested that prominent Syrian and Lebanese figures were behind it.
Less than a year later Mehlis's successor, Serge Brammertz, said there was no legal basis for their continued detention and suggested that political reasons were preventing their release.
"Brammertz explained that, if any sort of international legal standards were applied, the four generals would be released immediately," the paper reported one cable as saying.
The generals were eventually released in April 2009 after being held for nearly four years without charge.
Revenge mission
Another cable cited by the Daily Star highlighted diplomats' concerns that the generals might seek revenge when freed.
Since the generals were arrested five years ago, media reports have suggested the investigators' focus may have shifted from Syria to the Shiite group Hezbollah.
Hezbollah members are expected to be named in draft indictments later this month but the group, which has denied any role in the killing, says the tribunal is a deeply politicised project serving the agenda of Hezbollah's enemy, Israel.
Other cables showed Brammertz's frustration at the lack of cooperation from European countries including France, which strongly supports the tribunal in public.
