"The evidence of these offences has been concealed for the last five years by the prosecutor", Sayyed's lawyer Akram Azoury told a judge in The Hague, recalling that false witnesses caused his client's detention without charge from August 2005 to April 2009.
This concealment may result in "universal impunity of the perpetrators", Azoury told a hearing before pre-trial judge Daniel Fransen into a bid by Sayyed to gain access to his docket, held by the prosecutor.
The former general warned that the tribunal may not "be able to bear the consequences" of what he called prosecutor Daniel Bellemare's "foot-dragging" and "delaying tactics" in providing the material. "Those who doubt the tribunal and think it is politicized are those who can see this mountain of false witnesses Mr Bellemare does not want to see," he told Fransen. "I am one of these people. I can see this mountain of false witnesses. The issue of the false witnesses has become a problem for the entire Lebanese society."
Sayyed, a former security services director, is one of four generals who were arbitrarily detained following the martyrdom of Hariri and 22 others in a car bomb blast on February 14, 2005.
Ekkehard Withopf, for the office of the prosecutor, told the court that Sayyed "has no right to access the office of the prosecutor's evidential holdings". Jeopardizing confidentiality may put the ongoing investigation at risk and threaten the wellbeing of witnesses, he claimed. "The prosecution fears that the applicant will make public use of the material if he gets access to it."
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