MTC Denies Staff Arrest Claims over Lebanese PM Assassination

Last Tuesday, the Information Division of the Lebanese Interior Security Services visited the offices of the GSM network operator, MTC Touch in Beirut, as part of their investigation around the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafic Hariri. MTC Touch says that it demonstrated full cooperation with the investigating team by putting their human resources, records and all the necessary information requested at the disposal of the investigative team.

The company however is denying local media report over the weekend commenting on the alleged arrest of engineer Roula Abou Daher, and reiterates its confidence in both Roula Abou Daher and Engineer Majed El Khatib, as well as all its employees. There had been reports that Khatib was detained last week on charges of hiding information and "giving contradictory statements regarding several facts including the deletion of information from the company's central data regarding certain phone lines."

In an interview with The Daily Star on Monday, an MTC Touch official reiterated that the company's top engineer, Rola Abu Daher, "was not detained by the ISF, and she had left on Saturday night after she was questioned."

The phone lines are reported by local media to be somehow connected to an apparent cellular phone jamming exercise that occurred at the time of the former PM's assassination. In interviews, Communications Minister Marwan Hamade claims that jamming of of the network used by the former PM's motorcade occurred between 9am and 2pm. in the vicinities of parliament, Solidere, St. George and Phoenicia Intercontinental Hotel.

MTC Touch is a division of Kuwait's MTC-Vodafone.

A UN mandated investigation into the assassination, headed by the German prosecutor, Detlev Mehlis is due to issue a report into the murder later this month."

Posted to the site on 5th October 2005