Family of Tarek RABAA accuses foreign intelligence agencies of conspiring to unseat him from Alfa

Family of Tarek RABAA accuses foreign intelligence agencies of conspiring to unseat him from Alfa, a photo by sherihane on Flickr.

Via Flickr:
The Rabaa's family has confirmed that the orchestrated and continuous defamation campaigns against the innocent engineer Tarek RABAA since the beginning of his detention in July 2010 until today aim at hindering his release and to distort his reputation. Tarek RABAA is still in the trial phase and he is not yet sentenced, he is surely innocent of the charges we have proven by evidence they are fabricated. ‎

The family declared "our reply on the organized defamation campaigns is by exposing the conspiracy to unseat Tarek RABAA from his post in Alfa, then using his case to protect the real collaborators involved with the Israelian's intelligence, and how the conspiracy is linked to the leaks from the Special Tribunal for Lebanon to Der Spiegel journal on May 23, 2009.
We accuse foreign intelligence agencies to cooperate with the Israelian intelligence to plan through their collaborators in Lebanon for conspiring to imprison Tarek RABAA in order to displace him from his work in Alfa aiming at protecting the effective collaborators inside the telecom sector and to entrap the "resistance" to get involved in his case, and to slander Tarek for a period of time as an anticipated step to discredit the Special Tribunal for Lebanon's indictment (which was based on the analysis of cellular phone calls data) before its issuance on June 30, 2011".

The family stated "the conspiracy on Tarek Rabaa is divided to two correlated parts which are obviously planned by foreign and local parties to fabricate irrelevant charges to Tarek. The plot can be easily concluded from the quasi synchronization in the dates between what was the Special Tribunal for Lebanon's preparing and what was happening inside Alfa. ‏
Therefore, part of the conspiracy is related to accusing the Special Tribunal for Lebanon four members affiliated to the resistance to kill Rafic Hariri and another part is related to inside the company of Alfa and its relationships with telecoms equipment suppliers in Lebanon".

The family clarified "the plan to conspire on engineer Tarek RABAA started in 2007 when Alfa decided to send him escorted with the engineer Cesar Saleh to France to attend a training course at Alcatel-Lucent premises in Lannion from 22 to 26 October 2007. This trip to France was followed on November 13, 2007 by assigning Daniel Belmar as head of international investigation committee for the case of Rafic Hariri's assassination. Few days later, the major Wissam Eid was assassinated on January 25, 2008. Afterwards, the process of promoting the importance of cellular phones records' analysis to reach those involved in Rafic Hariri's assassination has been triggered and a message had been propagated about the link between the work of major Wissam Eid on the data analysis and his assassination".

The family added "between April 11, 2009 and 2010 most of those defendants accused in Lebanon to collaborate with the Mossad had been recruited by the Israelian intelligence in 2007, and what has been disclosed lately about the so called prisoner X (Ben Zygier) who leaked the names of two collaborators (Ziad Homsi and Mostafa Ouwada) to the Lebanese authorities is a strong indicator that the Mossad, after the war of July 2006, had purposely targeted some Lebanese to recruit them in order to deliver their names, deliberately to the Lebanese authorities to arrest them. The Mossad's officer known by "Shawki' had used deliberately the same international number to call many collaborators in order to ease the task of reaching other collaborators based on data. The Mossad then provided few names who received international phone calls from the officer Shawki who called others in Lebanon also. By checking the cellular phone records, the Lebanese investigators reached easily many others collaborators. Therefore, the promotion of cellular phone records has become stronger in 2009 after the initial promotion in January 2008 and this was a huge preparatory step before accusing, based on cellular phone calls analysis, four members affiliated to the resistance to be involved in the assassination of Rafic Hariri."

The family explained "after assassinating the engineer Wissam Eid on January 25, 2008 Alfa approved on February 11, 2008 a project known by BTS swap out in Beirut (BTS is a cellular base station) when Marwan Hmadeh was the minister of telecoms. The project which was strangely approved aimed at replacing all the equipment used in the cellular stations in Alfa network in Beirut area from the provider Ericsson to the provider Nokia-Siemens. The project ended quickly on 11 November 2008, two days before assigning Daniel Belmar and 20 days before ending the management contract with Fal-Dete (the company which operated Alfa from 2004 till 2008). After the departure of Ineke Botter (Alfa's CEO from 2004-2008), she was accused without evidence, by some newspapers, to collaborate with the Israelian intelligence and this was an anticipated step used by the Resistance to discredit a likely accusation by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon based on cellular phone calls. Moreover, most of the suspected cellular phone numbers to be used in the assassination of Rafic Hariri were numbers from Alfa which were connected on BTSs provided by Ericsson. By finishing the BTS swap out project, this means the BTSs and the BSC (Base Station Controller)‎ were replaced also by Nokia-Siemens, thus the GSM network parameters in Beirut were altered before issuing the Special Tribunal for Lebanon its indictment and before starting leaking it in May 2009. From another side, the intelligence bureau in Lebanon finished its initial report on data call analysis in the case of Rafic Hariri's assassination in May 2006 and the document was handled to ex general prosecutor Saiid Mirza who transferred it to others. This document remained neglected in the drawers of the international investigation committee until end 2007 when Daniel Belmar took the helm of the committee. The latter was attracted by this document prepared by the Lebanese Intelligence bureau, and then more investigations had been carried out after the assassination of Wissam Eid until defining a fifth "purple network" of anonymous cellular phone numbers which have been linked, by analyzing the co-location and geographic handover of cellular phones, to the disappearance of Ahmad Abou Adass (he recorded a video after the assassination) and subsequently to members from the resistance. ‎

The family announced "the CBC's report broadcasted on November 21, 2010 has disclosed an additional goal behind the sudden arrest of many collaborators when they said that the problem according to many sources is how to convert the data call analysis to acceptable evidence which can withstand in the court.
Also, regarding the collapse of collaborators' networks in 2009, the first arrest started with the general Adib Al Alam on April 11, 2009 and it was followed by the release of four generals (arrested in 2005 in the case of Rafic Hariri's assassination) on April 29, 2009 by Daniel Belmar. On May 23, 2009, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon leaked to Der Spiegel an information about its orientation to accuse, based on cellular phone records, members in the resistance for being involved in killing Rafic Hariri."

The family considered "the arrest of employees in the telecoms sector was an anticipated action taken by the resistance to discredit the indictment based on phone call records.
As long as the Special Tribunal for Lebanon didn't publish until today who has leaked the indictment to Der Spiegel and CBC, we are accusing this tribunal to pave the way for conspiring on Tarek Rabaa and to detain him in order to give a space for the resistance in Lebanon to secure a pretext to defend itself before issuing the indictment"

The family confirmed "Tarek Rabaa has been accused to collaborate with the Mossad based on a wrongly identified French call he received on his mobile when he travelled to France in 2007 to attend a training course. Therefore, because Tarek is for sure innocent, this means that such error is possible in other files and consequently the error might be in the indictment of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon which is relying on data analysis to identify the indictees, and as such this issue is hindering the release of Tarek Rabaa whereas the politicians in Lebanon are apparently divided on the credibility of the data".

The family added "when Tarek Rabaa was assigned a project manager in February 2008 to modernize the tranmsission network of Alfa by using IP/MPLS technology instead of SDH, he prepared a tender specification in an environment where many employees were biased to Alcatel-Lucent which was the supplier for transmission backbone network since 1994. The result of the offers analysis revealed Huawei, a Chinese supplier, as the winner in the tender and Tarek was experiencing threats and pressures from many sides to not issue a report showing Huawei as the winner. Tarek told us, and the family asked him to resign from Alfa. Tarek continued his work transparently and he had issued his report to his managers whom in turn issued their report to the ministry of telecommunications and the decision was taken to introduce Huawei equipment starting from January 2009. The suppliers Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Siemens and Ericsson were provoked by the loss of a market share in Lebanon in front of Huawei and Tarek was experiencing a strong harassment inside Alfa.
In 2008, the ministers of telecoms, allied with the resistance, have taken the helm in a timing the resistance was searching for collaborators to discredit the Special Tribunal for Lebanon's indictment. As a result, after the arrest of Charbel Kazzi (ex employee in Alfa arrested on June 24, 2010 then released on December 13, 2012) the military intelligence in Lebanon had been instigated to arrest Tarek, and therefore they kidnapped him on July 12, 2010 in a timing the new CEO for Alfa, Marwan Hayek, has decided to displace Tarek's line manager starting from August 2010 and the opportunity to promote Tarek to head of engineering department was very likely...but Tarek was kidnapped and detained until today based on fabricated charges in a country they said about it the country of law and institutions". ‎

The family explained "what has been disclosed by the deputy Ghazi Youssef in his press conference dated January 29, 2013 regarding the scandals of deals with telecom suppliers after the arrest of Tarek proves that there are many parties who didn't want Tarek in his position as head of unit working transparently and they were thinking about how would be their situation if Tarek was promoted to head of department.
Also, in spite of the scandal which has been revealed regarding the antenna in Sfarray which is still working until today, the scandals in the mobile companies as well as the scandalous file of Tarek Rabaa which was based on a Taxi number, commercial camera, torture and arbitrary detention, the military court is releasing the prisoners who confessed to collaborate with the Mossad and they are not deliberately releasing the innocent engineer Tarek by blackmailing him to submit to a politicized sentence.

The family confirmed "the engineer Tarek RABAA didn't submit in the past to the threats, he will not submit today to blackmailing and we will not accept a wrong and politicized sentence against him...we know now the whole conspiracy and those involved in it".


source: NNA