From Beirut to the Beltway

The family of slain politician George Hawi today released more pictures showing Husam Husam at the site of the blast that killed Hawi on 21 June 2005.

In a statement read by Hawi's stepson today, the family said it was perplexed as to why a Syrian agent who had just contacted, or like he says tortured by, the UN investigation team, was hanging out at the site of Hawi's assassination, hours after the blast (around 6pm, the statement estimated).

According to the statement, Husam apparently also visited Hawi's widow's clinic on 20 September, after the UNIIC said he signed his testimony, accompanied by another guy and claiming poor eye sight (she's an ophthalmologist). He and his buddy were carrying handguns and Husam identified himself as Abdel Mohammad Hassan (b. 1985).

The statement added that Husam was also spotted near the New TV station on 21 November.

The Hawi family will now ask the Lebanese authorities to interrogate Husam as a suspect in the murder of Hawi.

Here are the new pictures. Find the ones released by Elaph last week here. Read the transcript of Husam Husam's interview here (Arabic). In it, he details how he was held in captivity, terrorized and captured for nearly four months. In these pictures, we see him as a free man, hanging out at the crime scene of a murder his Syrian intelligence bosses are believed to have ordered.

Also, note the similarities between a sketch of a suspect in Hawi's murder and Husam's picture (hat tip Ya Libnan).