Beirut: In what must be the most devastating testimony taken by prosecutors at the UN-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon that is meeting at The Hague, a childhood friend and confidant of the late Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, Ghaleb Al Shama’a, revealed that Syria’s chief intelligence officer in Lebanon, Rustom Ghazali, received monthly stipends for nearly a decade.

Ghazali, who hails from Dar‘a in Southern Syria and was born into a Sunni family, is both the Commander of the Syrian National Police as well as the Head of the Syrian National Intelligence Agency. In December 2002, President Bashar Al Assad appointed him head of Syrian military intelligence in Lebanon to succeed Gazi Kana’an, who died of a gunshot wound to the head on October 12, 2005 about a month after Detlev Mehlis, the UN International Independent Investigation Commissioner, interviewed him as a “witness” probing the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and 22 others. The Syrian regime alleged that his death was caused by suicide.

Ghazali oversaw Lebanese affairs, including the lucrative drug trade and other smuggling ventures from his headquarters in Anjar (Beka’a Valley), where he kept a residence, and from where he commuted to Damascus.

According to Shama’a, Hariri aides delivered envelopes stuffed with tens of thousands of dollars in cash to Ghazali, which probably amounted to more than $10 million (Dh36.7 million) between 1993 and 2005. The witness further testified that Hariri did not consider the monies paid as a pay-off or a bribe, but that the Lebanese felt compelled so as to be able to “continue to serve Lebanon. He was not paying this voluntarily, and it was not a donation,” Shama’a underscored, though he added that were Hariri to refuse, “Ghazali would have placed many obstacles in the face of his career and of course he would have exerted greater pressure on him.”

A sum of $67,000 were handed over each month, though Ghazali would apparently and often demand additional ad hoc sums, sometimes more than $100,000, which Hariri always obliged. “Once he said he had to refurbish or renovate his house, on another occasion he wanted to buy a car,” Shama’a said. The payments, Shama’a said, were intended to placate Ghazali, who oversaw the vast Syrian security network in Lebanon. “The money was paid to please him, to keep him happy. ... We were not expecting anything in return.”

Open secret

In what was an open secret widely known in Lebanon among politicians as well as ordinary men and women who interacted with Syrians, the witness affirmed that Ghazali was the country’s kingmaker. “No politician was able to carry out his functions or any other projects ... easily and smoothly without pleasing [Ghazali] first,” Shama’a told the court.

While defence attorneys expected to cross-examine the witness on Thursday and Friday, his damaging testimony about a particular event, which occurred on 13 February 2005, was bound to be hugely contentious. Ghazali apparently sent word that he had not received his monthly sum for February 2005 and, according to Shama’a, this “was the first time he made such a claim.” Despite being “sure and confident” that Ghazali had in fact received envelopes filled with $67,000 in early February, Hariri dispatched his trusted security aid Abu Tareq to Ghazali’s house in the Beka’a Valley to deliver a second sum.

When Abu Tareq returned, he appeared shaken by his encounter with Ghazali who had apparently made exceptionally uncivil comments about Hariri. “I remember the last words Abu Tareq said to me, declared Shama’a: “God help us.” Abu Tareq perished alongside Hariri the following day in the massive blast that created a hole over 11 metres wide and nearly 2 metres deep in front of the St Georges Hotel.