Jailing the Generals

MOHAMMAD ZAATARI / AP

Hariri supporters celebrate the arrest of the security chiefs

As commanders of Lebanon's security and intelligence services, four generals were once among the most powerful and feared officials in the country. But last week, they languished in underground Beirut cells after Lebanese judicial authorities formally charged them with involvement in last February's assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. Lebanese police arrested all four suspects — Jamil Sayyed, Raymond Azar, Ali Hajj and Mustafa Hamdan — as part of a United Nationsled investigation headed by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis.

If top Lebanese officials and their backers in Syria had hoped to evade Mehlis' probe, they've since been...

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