THE Lebanese President’s top aide and three former security chiefs were detained yesterday for questioning by a United Nations commission investigating the murder of Rafik Hariri, a former Prime Minister.

The surprise arrests came after nearly three months of inquiries into the bombing that killed Mr Hariri and 20 others in February. “The detentions are the beginning of justice,” Saad Hariri, the son and political heir of Rafik Hariri, told the al-Arabiya satellite television channel from Paris.

The UN intends to publish its findings within weeks.

Among those detained in the early-morning sweep were Major-General Jamil Sayyed, a former head of the powerful General Security Service; Brigadier-General Raymond Azar, who headed Military Intelligence; and Brigadier-General Ali Hajj, the former chief of the Internal Security Forces.

The three security chiefs were fired along with Adnan Addoum, the state prosecutor, and another security commander in May in response to pressure from the anti-Syrian opposition, who accused them of complicity in Mr Hariri’s death.

Brigadier-General Mustafa Hamdan, the head of Lebanon’s presidential guard and President Lahoud’s closest adviser, turned himself in to the UN commission for further questioning after being summoned by the police. General Hamdan was the only security chief to have retained his post but was cited last month as a suspect in the investigation.

An arrest warrant was also issued for Nasser Qandil, a former minister and staunch ally of Damascus.

Meanwhile, several prominent critics of Syria have fled the country. Walid Jumblatt, the Druze leader, who has repeatedly called for the resignation of Mr Lahoud, flew to Paris on Monday night with two aides, having spent the past three months in his heavily guarded castle south of Beirut.

Mr Jumblatt joined several other leading politicians who have sought refuge in Paris, including Saad Hariri, who left the country last month.

Commenting on yesterday’s arrests, Mr Jumblatt told Radio Orient in Paris: “I think the countdown has started and I expect the fall of important figures in Lebanon and abroad.”

Gibran Tueni, the general manager of An-Nahar, a Lebanese daily newspaper, and a leading critic of Syria, said in a television interview from Paris on Monday night: “I have officially received information from the Lebanese authorities, based on data from the UN investigation commission, that there is an assassination list and my name tops it.”

In June a prominent journalist and a politician were killed in separate car bomb explosions. Elias Murr, the Defence Minister, was wounded in a third bombing last month. Several late-night bomb blasts in mainly Christian areas of Beirut have also frayed nerves in recent months.

Many Lebanese blame Syria for the killing of Mr Hariri, a billionaire construction tycoon who was quietly becoming a powerful force against Syria’s domination of Lebanon. His death triggered mass street protests and led to an official Syrian disengagement from Lebanon in April and a parliamentary election in June that produced an Opposition-dominated Government.

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