Judge Madi Says FBI Team Tasks 'Limited' to Offering Technical Assistance
Prosecutor General Judge Hatem Madi stressed on Friday that he cleared to the FBI investigation team “its limits,” setting its task to providing the Lebanese security agencies with the technical assistance only in the probe into the assassination of Internal Security Forces Intelligence Bureau head Brigadier General Wissam al-Hasan.
“The FBI team will not interfere in the investigations,” Madi said in comments published in al-Joumhouria newspaper.
Madi told the newspaper that the Lebanese investigation team will “report to him personally” and he will successively give them their tasks.
He pointed out that other countries might offer the same “aid” to Lebanese authorities, ruling out that any political team might reject this support as “the foreign investigating teams' tasks are limited.”
The FBI team arrived in Beirut on Thursday and began gathering evidence at the scene of a bombing that killed Hasan along with two others.
As Safir newspaper reported that France will delegate an investigation team to Lebanon, similar to the U.S. investigation team, to offer all the support in the investigations of last week's bombing.
The March 14-led opposition has widely blamed Syrian President Bashar Assad for the attack, as it did in 2005 when former premier Rafik Hariri was killed in a huge Beirut blast.
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