Jamil Al Sayyed

Jamil Al Sayyed (born 1950) is the former head of Lebanon's Sureté Générale or Lebanese General Security Directorate. He was detained for four years, from 2005 to 2009, due to his alleged involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. He was released due to lack of evidence on 29 April 2009 and was never charged with a crime.

Early life and education
Sayyed was born into a Shia family in the Bekaa village of al Nabi Eila, near Ablah, in 1950. He graduated from al Hikmeh school in Beirut.

Career
After graduation, Jamil Al Sayyed served in the armored corps of the Lebanese army. He worked in Beirut until March 1976 when he joined the First Brigade in the Bekaa valley under brigadier general Ibrahim Shaheen, who at that time established the Vanguards of the Arab Lebanese Army under Syrian supervision. In 1977, Sayyed began to serve in the intelligence branch of the first brigade after it was reincorporated into the Lebanese army and became army intelligence. Next, he was appointed chief intelligence officer in the Bekaa Valley in 1984. From 1989 to 1990, he served as head of the security for former Lebanese President Elias Hrawi. Sayyed was commonly considered as the most influential security official in Lebanon after the 1975-90 Lebanese civil war. In 1992, he was appointed deputy chief of military intelligence. During this period, Sayyed reported the activities of then army commander Emile Lahoud to the Syrian government.

Six years later, in 1998, then Lebanese President Emile Lahoud appointed him as the director-general of the interior ministry's general security department. Lebanese general security directorate acted as Syria's leading Lebanese gate-keeper during this period and had a close liaison with Hezbollah, which had a sophisticated paramilitary apparatus independent of Lebanese state control. Sayyed had long-standing associations with Bashar Assad and the Assad family when he was appointed head of general security. During the Ghazi Kanaan's term as head of the Syrian intelligence in Lebanon, Sayyed reported directly to Kanaan, often bypassing the Lebanese authorities. Sayyed was also close to Asef Shawkat, the then deputy chief of Syrian military intelligence, in 2000 in that Shawkat tried to give him more responsibility instead of Kanaan.

Additionally, Sayyed was assigned with the task of cross-examining potential candidates for the soon-to-be-formed parliament and cabinet in 2000. Sayyed was a member of the committee that was founded on 6 December 2000 to receive the Lebanese detainees from Syrian prisons and investigate their files.

Resignation
Sayyed resigned from office on 25 April 2005 as a result of the heavy pressure from the anti-Syria opposition in Lebanon after Rafik Hariri's assassination on 14 February 2005. He was one of seven pro-Syrian officials whose resignations had been requested by the Lebanese opposition after the assassination. These demands were initially not taken into consideration by Lebanese regime. Wafiq Jizzini succeeded Sayyed as general security chief on 5 October 2005.

Rafik Hariri assassination
See also General Jamil Al Sayyed controversy

At the time of the assassination of Rafik Hariri, four Lebanese military and intelligence officers including major general Jamil Al Sayyed, head of the Lebanese general security directorate, brigadier general Mustapha Hamdan, head of the presidential guard, major general Ali Al Hajj, director of internal security forces, and brigadier general Raymond Azar, former military intelligence chief, were considered as pillars of the Lebanese state under the domination of Syria. In other words, their first loyalty was allegedly to the Syrian government rather than Lebanese government. They were all arrested on 30 August 2005 at the request of German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, who was carrying out the UN investigation about the assassination. Sayyed was described as one of the persons who decided to assassinate Rafik Hariri in a leaked draft version of the Mehlis report along with other Syrian high-rank intelligence and security officers and officials, namely late Assef Shawkat, Maher Assad, Hassan Khalil and Bahjat Suleyman. More specifically, the Mehlis report dated October 2005 quoted a witness stating that Sayyed cooperated closely with Mustapha Hamdan and Raymond Azar in the preparation of the Hariri assassination and that Ali Al Hajj knew about the attack in advance. However, later reports about the assassination did not repeat the allegations against Sayyed and other three Lebanese generals. Sayyed was detained in Roumieh prison, northeast of Beirut from 2005 to April 2009. He and other three generals were released from the prison upon the order of the Special Tribunal Lebanon pre-trial judge Daniel Fransen due to the lack of evidence. They were not charged with any crime.

Another controversy Sayyed involved in was about financial, but again about Rafik Hariri. In his testimony after his arrest in 2005, he stated that Hariri gave him $10 Million check and another check with the same amount Ghazi Kanaan, and that they made money from Hariri, so they had no reason to kill him.

Michel Samaha case
Sayyed is a close friend of Michel Samaha. In September 2012, various Lebanese media outlets, including The Daily Star, argued that Sayyed had been allegedly in the car with Samaha who had been detained since August 2012 along with a third person while transferring explosives from Syria to Lebanon to carry out terrorist attacks. In response to this claim, Sayyed slammed the chief of the internal security forces Ashraf Rifi and the then information branch head late Wissam al-Hassan, arguing that they had been behind the reports and were trying to implicate him in the Samaha case. Sayyed further stated "Whether I was with Samaha in his car or not, I am not denying or confirming it but I don’t think Samaha’s car would fit two donkeys," 14 March MP Okab Sakr also expressed the same claims against Sayyed in December 2012.

After prison
Sayyed visited Damascus and met Syrian President Bashar Assad in 2009 after his release. They reportedly discussed various political issues as well as the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. Sayyed tried to bring cases of false witnesses in the Hariri investigation in Lebanon, but his attempts were unproductive. He filed a suit against Mehlis in France in 2009 for "manipulated investigations." Sayyed further accused German police commissioner Gerhard Lehmann, Mehlis's assistant in the Beirut investigations, of blackmail. In December 2009, he filed a lawsuit in Damascus against various defendants who he alleged were involved in false testimonies intended to point to the involvement of Syria and its supporters in Hariri's assassination.

After these events, Sayyed went to France for a week, and the prosecutor-general, Said Mirza, issued a summons for him to answer questions over his statements. On his return to Beirut in 2010, Sayyed was met at Beirut international airport and escorted home by armed Hezbollah supporters. He stated on his return that Saad Hariri supported false witnesses who misled the investigation into Rafiq Hariri's assassination. On 17 April 2010, Sayyed applied for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon requesting the material related to his four-year detention. Prosecutors claimed that the tribunal did not have jurisdiction to meet the Sayyed's request, since its task is limited to deal with Hariri's death.

Personal life
Jamil Al Sayyed is described as smart and smooth, but one with the tendency to blink under pressure according to the military records of the Lebanese army. He is a Shi'ite Muslim and has close ties to the Iran- and Syria-backed Shi'ite group Hezbollah. His son, Malek Sayyed, is a lawyer.