Jamil al Sayyed
| Jamil Al Sayyed | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Jamil Al Sayyed 1950 (age 66–67) al Nabi Eila, Lebanon |
| Nationality | Lebanese |
| Occupation | Military officer |
| Years active | 1970s–present |
Jamil Al Sayyed (born 1950) is the former head of Lebanon's Sureté Générale or Lebanese General Security Directorate. He was detained for four years, from 2005 to 2009, due to his alleged involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. He was released on 29 April 2009 due to "inconsistencies in the statements of key witnesses and of a lack of corroborative evidence to support these statements and to the fact that some witnesses had modified their statements and one key witness had expressly retracted his original statement incriminating the persons detained". He was never charged with a crime.
Sayyed was born into a Shia family in the Bekaa village of al Nabi Eila, near Ablah, in 1950. He graduated from al Hikmeh school in Beirut.
After graduation from the Lebanese Military Academy in 1971, he was sent to France for a one-year military training course with the French Army. After his return to Lebanon he was assigned for two years as military trainer for cadet officers, then he was sent to the Egyptian Army in Cairo for a military course as antitank missile trainer before serving in the armored corps as commander of Anti-tank Autonomous Unit of the Lebanese Army in Beirut until June 1976.
Due to the civil war which started in Lebanon early 1975 and led to the division of the Lebanese Army into religious units, Sayyed refused to join any of them.
Later on September 1976 he decided to join the First Brigade in Bekaa, the Bekaa valley which remained the only multi- communitarian unit in the Lebanese army during the civil war under brigadier general Ibrahim Shaheen, who at that time and in coordination with other Christian, Muslim and Druze officers established the Vanguards of the Lebanese Army with the Syrian help against the Arab Lebanese Army formed composed of defected army units and headed by the defected Lt Ahmad Al Khatib who was backed by Palestinian Fatah Organization (PLO) and its Lebanese allies.
In 1978, after the reunification of the Lebanese army, Sayyed was assigned as head of the military intelligence branch of the First Brigade after it was reincorporated into the Lebanese Army and became army intelligence. Next, in 1982, Major Jamil Sayyed was sent for a six months military intelligence course with the US Army in the USA, Arizona. He was back just after the beginning of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in June 1982,he was moved from his military intelligence post for few months. After the starting of the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon by mid 1983, Lt Colonel Sayyed was appointed as deputy then chief intelligence officer in the Bekaa Valley Region where he stayed in post until 1991.
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