Maj. Gen. Jamil al-Sayyed

LEIDSCHENDAM, Netherlands – A former Lebanese army general asked an international court on Tuesday to release his secret case file in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri to learn why he was jailed for nearly four years without charge.

The hearing by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon is the first since Maj. Gen. Jamil al-Sayyed, the former chief of general security, and three other pro-Syrian army officers were freed from a Lebanese jail for lack of evidence in April 2009.

Despite being limited to procedural issues, the hearing revived attention to a case that has been languishing. No other suspects are in custody and prosecutors won’t say how their investigation is progressing.

The four officers were detained for six months after Hariri and 22 others died in a massive truck bomb explosion in Beirut, and suspicion fell on Syria and its Lebanese allies. Hariri, a billionaire businessman credited with rebuilding Lebanon after its 15-year civil war, had been trying to limit Syria’s domination of Lebanon in the months before his assassination.

Addressing the pretrial judge in Arabic, al-Sayyed said his detention was based on false statements and he wants to seek a “legal remedy” against those responsible, which he said can only be done if he has access to the prosecution’s case file.

He said he had applied more than 100 times to the tribunal and to the Lebanese authorities for access to his file, but was never allowed to see any of it.

“We fall into a legal vacuum, a procedural vacuum,” he told Judge Daniel Fransen.

Al-Sayyed, speaking after his attorney laid out legal arguments that the court has jurisdiction to order the case file released, said his detention was based on statements from at least 10 witnesses, some of them Syrian nationals.

Perjury from one person could be a mistake, he said. But “this was truly a large-scale plot” and he said it was important to uncover the reasons behind it.Prosecutors objected, saying the tribunal has no authority to deal with al-Sayyed’s demand since its mandate is limited to prosecuting those responsible for the Feb. 14, 2005, bombing and “to bring terrorists to justice.”