Naharnet Newsdesk - Siddiq Left Paris Home on March 13

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Siddiq Left Paris Home on March 13

A key Syrian witness in the probe into the murder of Lebanese ex-premier Rafik Hariri who has gone missing in France disappeared a month ago, officials said in Paris Wednesday.
"All we know is that he left his home on March 13," said a foreign ministry spokesman.

The comment came a day after Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner announced that French authorities no longer knew the whereabouts of Mohammed Zuhair Siddiq, who had been living in the Paris suburb of Chatou.

Police sources there said Siddiq had not been under police surveillance, was not under house arrest and was able to come and go as he pleased.

Siddiq's brother, in a Syrian newspaper interview published on Wednesday, accused France of involvement in killing the man.

"The French authorities helped facilitate the disappearance of Mohammed Zuhair Siddiq with the aim of his being liquidated by another party or they liquidated him themselves," Imad Siddiq told Al-Watan.

Daniel Bellemare, the head of the U.N. panel probing the Hariri murder, said Tuesday that Mohammed Zuhair Siddiq "is not in our custody, has never asked to be entered in (our) witness protection program."

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 of Hariri.

France refused to extradite him to Lebanon because it was not given guarantees he would not be liable to the death penalty here if convicted of a crime.

Newspaper reports in 2006 quoted Siddiq as saying that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his then Lebanese counterpart Emile Lahoud ordered the Hariri assassination in a massive Beirut car bombing.(AFP)

Beirut, 09 Apr 08, 19:04


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