Public Hearing at STL to Hear Sayyed's Bid for Access to Case File

The international tribunal will hold a public hearing on Friday to discuss former Lebanese security chief Maj. Gen. Jamil Sayyed's demand to see the evidence that led to him being jailed as a suspect in ex-Premier Rafik Hariri's assassination case for nearly four years.

The hearing at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in the Hague will play out against a backdrop of political turmoil in Beirut after Hizbullah and its allies brought down the government.

A Lebanese judge ordered Sayyed, Lebanon's former chief of general security, placed in temporary detention in August 2005 on an arrest warrant issued at the request of an international commission of inquiry into the deaths of Hariri and 22 others in a car bomb blast in Beirut on February 14, 2005.

Sayyed and three other pro-Syrian officers were freed from a Lebanese jail in April 2009 for lack of evidence.

He claims false witnesses framed him and wants access to their evidence so he can sue them in local courts.