Mehlis Calm but in Danger
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Detlev Mehlis kept his calm even as he relayed to the Security Council recently that his life, and those of the more than 100 investigators on his team probing the assassination of Lebanon’s Rafik Hariri, might be in danger. “He did not complain,” the German ambassador to the United Nations, Gunter Pleuger, told me recently. “He just said there were threats.”
After spending a week of much-needed rest in an undisclosed location, Mr. Mehlis will be back in Beirut soon, but his presence will loom large over Turtle Bay this morning, when foreign ministers vote on a council resolution that threatens sanctions against Syrians.
Threatening leaflets were distributed in southern Lebanon, Mr. Mehlis told reporters last week, refusing to characterize the nature of the threats any further. Nevertheless, he did put the council on notice that the assassins he is investigating surely harbor homicidal ideas.
“You are not always dealing with university professors,” Mr. Mehlis said recently about his investigation, repeating a point often made by experienced prosecutors worldwide.
How did this 56-year-old native of Berlin come to risk his life, turning into an international superstar in the process? He was not Secretary-General Annan’s first choice in April, when he was instructed by the Security Council to start an inquiry into the February 14 assassination of Hariri. A Belgian judge turned down Mr. Annan. A Spanish magistrate said he was otherwise engaged.
Finally, one European pointed out Mr. Mehlis, and only then did Mr. Annan call Ambassador Pleuger and ask him to locate the prosecutor, who happened to be on vacation.
“Had he been known to us earlier, he would be the perfect candidate,” Mr. Annan’s spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, told me.
In his 25 years as a German prosecutor, Mr. Mehlis specialized in international investigations, and specifically in terrorism. He pursued Johannes Weinrich, the top aide to the terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal; got convictions against two Palestinian Arabs in a case involving a bombing of the Bonn based German-Arab Friendship Society, and became famous in Germany after solving the 1986 bombing of the La-Belle club in Berlin, in which two American servicemen were killed.
The La-Belle case pointed to Libya, and President Reagan reacted by bombing. If America and its allies are successful in this morning’s council vote, another Mehlis investigation is likely to spark actions against another country: Syria.
There was no U.N. precedent to the criminal investigation of the Hariri killing, and hopes were not high in March as Mr. Mehlis was named to lead it. The United Nations has had a history of inquiry commissions that returned empty-handed. Adverse findings were often blunted – or “Annanized,” as some recently began calling it.
Indeed, the report Mr. Mehlis finally produced last week seemed Annanized. The four Syrian officials named as the main plotters against Hariri, including President Assad’s brother, Maher, and his brother-in-law, Assef Shawkat, were deleted while Mr. Mehlis sat at Mr. Annan’s office.
Facing a discontented U.N. press corps a day later, Mr. Mehlis said Mr. Annan had nothing to do with the editing. “I am not one who would accept changes from the outside,” he said, although his calm, confident voice convinced no one. In another press conference several days later, Mr. Mehlis was just as calm, allowing reporters to interrupt him in midsentence to better hear their argument – undoubtedly a technique learned during years of interviewing bad guys.
Despite the deletions, the central finding – that the assassination could not have been carried out without the involvement of top Syrian and Lebanese officials – was enough for America and France to demand that Syria fully cooperate.
Full cooperation, Mr. Mehlis told me, means Syria should start its own investigation into the Hariri killing. An honest Syrian probe, however, is impossible under the current regime. As the Mehlis report points out, Mr. Shawkat attempted to cover his tracks by coercing a phony videotaped confession in the Hariri killing.
It is such findings that now allow American and French diplomats to initiate measures that might rid Damascus of Mr. Assad and his cronies, which could lead to a new push for the democratization process in the Middle East. Mr. Annan’s luck in stumbling upon Mr. Mehlis might, in this case, have been a very good thing.