BEIRUT, May 25 (AFP) - Lawyers for a leading pro-Syrian politician here filed suit against his long-time bodyguard Tuesday for putting his name to a new biography circulating in both Lebanon and the diaspora which they said was the work of Israeli intelligence. Former minister Elie Hobeika also petitioned the publications court to order the confiscation and destruction of all copies of Robert Maroun Hatem's biography: "From Israel to Damascus," his lawyer Badawi Abu Dib said. "The book would not have seen the light of day without the intervention of the Israeli intelligence services, whose fingerprints are all over the book from the first page to the last," Abu Dib charged. "The aim of those who planned the publication of the book was to harm Elie Hobeika as an MP and through him his political camp" of pro-Syrian Maronite Christians, he said. Hobeika, an MP who has held several government ministries since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war, briefly headed the now banned Israeli-backed Christian Lebanese Forces (LF) militia before shifting towards the pro-Syrian side after 1985. He was accused by an Israeli investigation committee of taking part in the Sabra and Shatila massacres of Palestinians in Beirut during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. "The book seeks to damage (Hobeika's) image and reputation through the invention of a terrible story about the tragic death of his daughter Sabine," Abu Dib said. "Cobra (Hatem's civil war codename) deliberately courts the risk of hanging by confessing to the murder of Sabine with a view to tarnishing her father's reputation by accusing him of ordering it," he said. Abu Dib said copies of the biography were being distributed free of charge in the Lebanese diaspora in Australia, Europe and North America. It has already been banned here in Lebanon although it continues to circulate clandestinely in photostated form. On May 17 Information Minister Anwar Khalil made it an offence even to publish excerpts of the 186-page biography, forestalling plans to serialize it by the Nidaa al-Watan daily.  