Assad, Iran, Hezbollah accused of Hariri death

A Syrian defector has revealed a secret decision for security and intelligence bodies to watch Syrian diplomats living abroad lest they too defect from Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad's regime. Syrian security services are following the same scenario followed by Gaddafi earlier with diplomats and putting their families under house arrest. He cited to the Saudi Al-Youm newspaper repressive intimidation procedures towards some Syrian diplomats and figures whom the Syrian regime expected to dissent. Mahmoud Souleiman Hajj Hamad, the head inspector of the country's defence ministry said that this was one of the main reasons which delayed the announcement of his defection, while insisting on Assad's involvement with Iran and Hezbollah in former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri's assassination. The defector praised Saudi Arabia's position which uncovered Assad's regime and added that the kingdom had a great role in changing many things in Syria. Hamad said that Assad's regime was stoking sectarianism in Iraq and that Syrian intelligence was behind the preparations and implementations of explosions attributed to Al-Qaeda Safavid Persian project in Iraq. Al-Youm met with the head inspector of the country's defence ministry somewhere on the outskirts of the Egyptian capital Cairo.