Detlev Mehlis
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Detlev Mehlis (born 1949) is currently the Senior Public Prosecutor in the Office of the Attorney General in Berlin. He has 25 years of prosecutorial experience and has led numerous investigations into serious, complex transnational crimes. He has been a senior public prosecutor since 1992 and has, over the course of his career, been responsible for prosecuting terrorism and organized crime cases. Most notably, he investigated the bombing on the discotheque La Belle in then West-Berlin in 1986, which claimed the life of 2 US soldiers and a Turkish woman, and uncovered the involvement of the Libyan intelligence service. He also proved the involvement of the terrorist Carlos in the attack on the French culture centre Maison de France, also in West-Berlin, in 1983. Since 1998, Mehlis has been the Chief of the Contact Office of the European Judiciary Network and Coordinator for the fight against organized crime in the State of Berlin.
In 2005, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed Mehlis as the Commissioner of the UN International Independent Investigation Commission into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. In October 2005, Jund al-Sham threatened to slaughter Detlev Mehlis while he was heading the UN inquiry into the assassination of Rafik Hariri, claiming that Mehlis was connected with Israel.
The Mehlis report was presented to the Secretary General on October 20, 2005. It implicated Lebanese and Syrian Military Intelligence in the assassination, and it accused Syrian officials of misleading the investigation. A second report, submitted on December 10, 2005, upholds the conclusions from the first report. On January 11, 2006, Mehlis was replaced by Serge Brammertz.
