Year 1960 - Part 15: The Espionage Case of Engineer Abdul Nafi Shaheen

Wednesday the 19th: Stormy Sessions Over Project Financing

A series of sessions was held on financing the budgets, the first of them chaired by the President himself.

The President insisted that the development and ordinary budgets, both of which he had approved and signed, "must be implemented." The Field Marshal, al-Sarraj, and some ministers joined in criticizing "weak financing."

It was clear, from some of what was said, that the finger of "blame" was pointing at me, for giving out funds "by the eyedropper," as it was put, rather than lavishing money on the ministries the way the late Hatim al-Ta'i once did.

The President had misunderstood one of the laws he himself had approved, the one raising the debt ceiling to a hundred million, taking it to mean that I now had this entire sum at my own disposal, when in truth raising the debt ceiling simply meant raising it from 80 million to a hundred million, meaning the new debt was only twenty million lira.

I explained to the council that we had been expecting Egyptian aid in the form of grain worth ten million lira, which had indeed arrived, but that the Grain Office, now under the Ministry of Supply, had paid us only three million of it. The Minister of Supply answered that he had held back the remaining seven million from the Egyptian aid, to cover the loss on subsidized bread. In truth, we buy American or Syrian wheat at 30 to 33 piastres a kilogram, and sell it to consumers at around 18 piastres, a loss of between 12 and 15 piastres per kilogram. We likewise sell seed grain to farmers at this same loss, amounting to about 55,000 tons.

On top of this, army command had requested an additional twelve million lira, to cover the costs of the mobilization required by the political circumstances, in response to Israeli movements, a request I had no power to refuse or even discuss.

Some ministers attacked their own ministry's accountants, for being too strict in signing off on disbursement orders, thereby delaying their own projects.

A sharp exchange took place between myself and two of them, arising from their own assumption that financial matters could simply be handled by military order, the way they were accustomed to.

I remarked to the President that the accountants were right to be strict, since His Excellency had abolished "prior clearance," which had once shielded them, so that accountants had since become personally responsible for their own signatures. I could not force them to gamble on hasty or reckless signatures, whose financial and administrative consequences would fall on them alone.

I understood afterward that the minister who had attacked these officials wanted to draw his own per diem in Cairo in Egyptian pounds, since it was worth a lira and a half more per pound, and that the accountant had refused to sign off on the disbursement order, since the law required him to deal only in our own Syrian lira.

In any case, this is a matter falling within the remit of the "Exchange Office," with which our own ministry has no connection at all.

What truly stunned me was the President's own threat against the "men" of the Central Bank, accusing them of obstructing the state's own functioning, and threatening to "send them to al-Mazzeh," that is, to have them arrested.

In all fairness, these officials, from the governor, Dr. Ezzat Tarabulsi, a financier of the highest competence in his own field, down to the rest of his own deputy directors, act, in their dealings with the Ministry of Finance, strictly within the bounds of the law, and it is their own right not to deviate from it.

Ezzat may well be a believer in the free-market system, and this is his own right, but he is sincere in his work and devoted to his own country, and no one has any right to fault him for his own convictions.

Saturday the 22nd

We continued today with the matter of financing the development and ordinary budgets. The session's own atmosphere was relaxed, free of tension. I kept to a simple presentation of my own ministry's position, and my own.

The happy result was that the ministers came to understand that I "give only what I am given," as Umm al-Darda once told her own husband, who had grown angry with her for "bearing him daughters when he wanted sons."

It became clear to them that I was in the right, and that the Field Marshal, whose own office had drawn up the development budget without our own knowledge, was the one who had erred. When figures speak with their own calm logic and irrefutable proof, they become like Juhayza, whose word cut short every orator's speech.

It became clear to them that the Field Marshal was confusing the development and ordinary budgets with one another.

The crowning absurdity of it all was one minister's own attack on the Central Bank, insisting it needed to "fall in line" with the new policy and simply print whatever "paper" we needed, without letting the law stand in the way of our own financing, and "without anyone noticing," meaning he wanted us to put paper currency into circulation with no backing and no legal basis whatsoever.

I expressed my own astonishment at his proposal, and told him plainly: this is "sabotage, a wrecking ball taken to the body of the state," something I could never bring myself to do.

I sensed that the council came to understand that we were bound to make wise use of the little liquid money in our own hands, until God granted us relief in better seasons.

As the legal maxim advises us: "whoever rushes to seize a thing before its time is punished by being denied it."

From this, jurists derive that a man who kills the very relative he stands to inherit from, in haste to claim his inheritance, is subject to retaliation, and denied the inheritance himself, should he survive, just as his own heirs are denied it too, should retaliation be carried out against him.

Monday the 24th

I attended a meeting of the ministerial Economic Committee. I rather enjoy telling this "official" story.

The Supreme Customs Council had referred to me a decision requiring the Economic Committee's own approval before it could take effect.

Its subject can be summarized as follows:

Should the region export live livestock, sheep, camels, cattle, or goats, exporters pay no fee or tax at all on them. But should these same exporters export these animals as meat instead, they become subject to an export tax. In the Supreme Customs Council's own view, we ought to equalize the treatment of the two cases, to remove this contradiction between the two legal rulings. Besides, the drought striking both livestock and crops had greatly reduced the supply of fats and clarified butter. If we encouraged meat exports free of tax, we could keep the sheep's own fat tails, and their hides, within the region.

In turn, this would allow those in need, unable to find their way to Arab clarified butter, the chance to buy animal fat instead, at reasonable prices.

Besides, the municipalities "benefit" two lira for every animal slaughtered in their own abattoirs. I do not know why one minister opposed the project with such inexplicable vehemence. A great deal of time was lost in the debate, which ended with the council's approval of the proposed measure.

Incidentally, His Excellency was among those accustomed, as he himself put it, to mounting his own tank at two in the morning, to take part in every coup he was ever invited to join.

He once repeated this very remark in the President's own presence, who teased him, saying:

"You are addicted to coups."

Tuesday the 25th: A Spy Story?

Council chairman Abdul Hamid al-Sarraj briefed us on "a serious espionage case," uncovered by his own ever-watchful intelligence service.

The story, such as it is, concerns an engineer named Abdul Nafi Shaheen, who traveled with a Syrian delegation to Moscow, headed by Minister Kahhaleh, to negotiate with Soviet specialists on financing the railway lines to be built in Syria.

We had held this engineer in the very highest regard, given how often the Minister of Communications, Nour al-Din Kahhaleh, praised him, considering him one of the pillars of his own ministry.

The negotiations were crowned with success, and a contract was concluded setting out the payment schedule.

A short time later, Syrian intelligence arrested a Belgian man suspected of certain activities in Damascus, and found on him a photograph of the very contract concluded with the Russians.

The Belgian confessed he had obtained it from Engineer Shaheen, who was then arrested himself, and the military public prosecution took over the file.

A written question was put to Minister Kahhaleh, asking whether this contract was to be considered a state secret, one whose disclosure would endanger the state's own safety. He answered that it could not be considered among the secrets whose disclosure would endanger the state's safety in any way.

He had, however, instructed his own staff not to let anyone else see it.

Al-Sarraj objected to this interpretation, considering the act a grave crime, one that had to be met with severe punishment for whoever committed it.

He asked me to clarify the legal view of the matter, given my own former position as professor of criminal law at the Faculty of Law. I sided with Minister Kahhaleh's own view, and said that Article 271 of the Penal Code explicitly requires that the documents or information in question be of a kind that must be kept secret for the sake of the state's own safety.

Article 273 further provides that anyone "in possession of such documents or information who communicates or discloses them without lawful cause, for the benefit of a foreign state," is punished with hard labor of not less than five years.

I went on to say: I see nothing in the disclosure of a mere financing contract of this kind that could endanger the state's own safety. Even so, I suggested the engineer in question be subjected to a disciplinary penalty, proposed by his own responsible minister.

It is well established that the Penal Code must be interpreted according to the legislator's own intent, that is, an interpretation neither expansive nor narrow, nor merely literal.

This is a firmly established principle in criminal legislation.

And, by another established principle, any doubt as to the material facts of a case, or its own subjective elements, must be resolved in the accused's own favor.

And in Islam: it is better for the ruler to err on the side of pardon than to err on the side of punishment. It was decided to leave the matter to the responsible minister, and to place the official under security surveillance.

Wednesday the 26th

The King of Afghanistan, Mohammed Zahir Shah, arrived in Damascus today. We received him as an honored guest at the airport, and enjoyed his company at a dinner the government held for him at the Sharq Club. "His Majesty," from what we read and heard of him, was calm in temperament, measured in speech, a man who loved progress for his own people and worked toward it.

He did a great deal for the "liberation" of women, in a country still living in complete isolation from the modern world.

It is regrettable that a coup was later carried out against his own rule, and he was forced out of the country.

Then a coup against that first coup took place, and the communists came to power. The mujahideen rolled up their own sleeves, and the hardline leftist rulers fought them, while America and some Muslim countries supplied them with money and weapons, to drive out the Soviet forces that had entered the country at the communist regime's own request.

The wars dragged on for many long years.

The Russians were finally driven out, after suffering countless casualties in their own army. But the new leaders to emerge from among the country's own people, all of them men of religion, took up arms against their own countrymen instead, and have been fighting one another ever since. Their own situation today (1995) is in the most wretched state imaginable.

Every day we hear news of massacres, bombardment, destruction, and fires, carried out by the militias of "Burhanuddin Rabbani," the president who has no intention of ever giving up power, against "his own prime minister, Hekmatyar," and the other rebel factions.

We watch, on our television screens, scenes of children, women, and elderly people in the most wretched conditions imaginable.

One wonders: what has the Afghan people actually gained from establishing a republic, one in which everyone now mourns the loss of the monarchy, especially given Amanullah Khan's own remarkably high level of culture and learning?