The Syrian Gambit Unravels - When the main witnesses recant, you don't have a case

The effort to demonize Syria and, in effect, Saddamize its ruler, Bashar al-Assad, has run up against a brick wall: the recantation of the prime witness, who says he was bribed, intimidated, and tortured into going along with the narrative being sold by UN prosecutor Mehlis – that Syrian intelligence pulled off the Feb. 14 assassination of Lebanese entrepreneur and politician Rafik Hariri in Beirut. The New York Times reports:

"Hussam Taher Hussam, said he had been held in Lebanon by supporters of Saad Hariri, the son of the former prime minister, and subjected to torture and drug injections to force him to testify. Saad Hariri, he said, offered him $1.3 million if he would lie about senior Syrian officials. …

"He said Mr. Hariri and his associates had asked him to tell investigators that he had seen a truck used in the assassination at a Syrian military camp, and to present false evidence implicating Maher Assad, the younger brother of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, and Asef Shawkat, the president's brother-in-law, in the killing in February."

Hussam's statement on Syrian television was well-received in Syria, where his references to the vagaries of Alawite minority rule and other details gave it added credibility. Naturally, Syria's enemies rejected this new testimony, just as they had hailed Hussam's previous statements as proof positive of Syria's perfidy. What they didn't – couldn't – acknowledge was that their chief witness is effectively discredited, and he isn't the only one. As the various threads of the "Syria did it" scenario unravel, the whole conspiracy theory is coming apart like a badly made sweater.

In the Mehlis report – or at least the "preliminary" and highly speculative document released last month – Hussam was the "masked" witness whose identity supposedly could not be revealed because his life was in danger from the Syrian authorities. His "evidence" was the key link in tying the highest echelons of the Syrian regime to Hariri's assassination. That he has now shown up on Syrian television – looking presentable, sounding articulate, and showing no signs of having been intimidated or even having a single hair on his head ruffled – has the anti-Syria crowd looking pretty silly. Even worse for them, however, is the news that yet another prominent figure in the narrative woven by Mehlis, Muhammad Zuhayr al-Sadiq, has also been discredited.

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