By Nayla Assaf
Daily Star staff
Saturday, February 19, 2005
BEIRUT: Australian Federal Police said the men the Lebanese government has identified as suspects in the murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri are not linked to the assassination.
The denial by Australian police comes after Lebanese Justice Minister Adnan Addoum said Beirut police were on the trail of 14 suspects who left Lebanon for Australia within hours of Hariri’s assassination.
Addoum said: “They left for Australia from Beirut airport a few hours after the attack. Traces of TNT powder were found on the seats some of them had occupied.”
Addoum added the suspects are understood to have links with fundamentalist circles, but he did not specify if they were linked to the little-known group that claimed responsibility for Monday’s assassination.
He said: “I can’t say more because the investigations are taking their course.”
But Jane O’Brien of the Australian Federal Police said federal officers interviewed the men but did not believe any were linked to the attack.
Sources close to the Public Prosecutor’s Office told The Daily Star that 14 bearded men had initially left Beirut International Airport, but that two of them left the group after the plane stopped in the United Arab Emirates.
The men, all of whom are Australian nationals, had reportedly spent 25 days in Lebanon.
Prior to that, they had allegedly spent a few days in Saudi Arabia to perform the Hajj pilgrimage.
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