A Tale of Four Generals...Bye Bye "Cedar Revolution"?

In a record speed and a clear political background, the March 14 bloc spread accusations against the four detained officers of standing behind the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005. Their main slogan was ‘down with the Lebanese-Syrian security system."

Hours after the assassination, the well designed pictures of the four officers with different but unified and well organized comments, were raised during ‘spontaneous' demonstrations where March 14 media outlets were mobilized against the four security officers as well as judicial and political figures.

Although accusations have never been linked to evidence, the "Cedars Revolution" camp - a term that then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the March 14 movement - had built its revolution on the glittering slogans of freedom, sovereignty and independence, and of course chastising the culprits, always written under the officers pictures.

When some of the public opinion and most of the international opinion was had fallen under the magical effect of Lebanese flags, revolutionary spirits and anti Syrian and Iranian slogans, it was time to move to the second phase: ‘Truth'

Then key witness in the Hariri case, Mohamad Zuheir Siddiq, had made false testimonies to the UN investigation panel headed by Detlev Mehlis to request the Lebanese judiciary - after slight changes were made to this body - to arrest the officers.

"The Truth" was the slogan that was feeding the March 14 campaign, however it was the political means for the Qornet Shehwan members and their allies to garner as much political gains as possible in the framework of the so called Cedars Revolution.

The four officers were detained based on this fictional slogan.

They have spent nearly four years in solitary confinement and harsh conditions without charges and without trial. Even the Washington, the sponsor of the Cedars Revolution, described the Generals' detention as arbitrary.

These senior officers are:

Major General Jamil Sayyed, former General Security chief.
He served in the Lebanese army for 30 years and served another seven years in the General Security apparatus, until the fifth of June 2005.

Major General Mustapha Hamdan, Presidential Guards chief.
He was the only General -of the four officers- to remain in his post after the Hariri assassination.

Major General Ali Haj, former Internal Security Forces General Director.
He was appointed in 2004 as chief of the ISF.

Brigadier General Raymond Azar, former Military Intelligence chief.
He rarely appeared in public and had very little to do with the political and media milieus.

With their release ends a long and exhausting period of delusions and fact distortions to derail the search for the true killers of martyr Hariri, particularly after this case had been purely politicized and diverted from the true and factual course that would eventually lead to the killers and perhaps compensate the four officers who lost four years of their lives behind bars, not knowing why.