Mohammed Zuheir Siddiq, a former witness in the inquiry into the assassination of ex-PM Rafik Hariri, was sentenced Monday to six months in prison and deportation from the UAE for entering the country on forged passport.

The sentence was handed down by Abu Dhabi Supreme Court.

Siddiq, a former Syrian intelligence agent, came into the United Arab Emirates with “a false Czech passport provided to him by French intelligence services,” his lawyer Fahd al-Sabhan told the supreme federal court on Monday, the daily Gulf News said.

The lawyer said that Siddiq, arrested in the UAE, had asked for refuge in the country, whose authorities knew he was heading there, the Gulf News said.

Contacted by AFP, Sabhan refused to comment on the case.

Siddiq, in initial reports of the United Nations inquiry commission, was described as a key witness in the February 2005 killing of Rafik Hariri in a huge seafront bomb blast in Beirut.

Nicknamed the “king witness”, Siddiq claimed that Lebanon’s former pro-Syrian president Emile Lahoud, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had given the order to kill the wealthy businessman who had become opposed to the grip exercised by Damascus over its tiny neighbor.

But later, Siddiq recanted and Lebanese and Syrian judicial authorities accused him of lying.

In May, the prosecutor at the international tribunal charged with bringing Hariri’s killers to justice said that Siddiq was no longer a credible witness and was of no interest to the inquiry.

Siddiq had been detained in France in a Paris suburb in 2005. He was freed in 2006 and disappeared from his French home in 2008, to reappear in the United Arab Emirates.

According to New TV, Syria has filed a request to UAE to get back Mohammed Zuheir Siddiq through the interpol. The neighboring country considered that the Emirates has no other choice but to turn him over to the International Court or to send him back to Syria which is waiting for him with open arms. (AFP-Naharnet)