Friday, October 3, 2008 Free Headline Alerts
LONDON — Senior Syrian officers sought by a United Nations tribunal investigating a major assassination in Lebanon were themselves assassinated.
Syrian opposition sources said two senior Syrian military officers wanted for questioning in connection with the assassination of former Lebanese President Rafik Hariri were killed in late September.
On Sept. 27, a Syrian brigadier general and his son were killed in a car bombing in front of Syrian intelligence headquarters. The opposition sources identified the dead officer as Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim Abbas, a member of military intelligence and sought by the UN panel that was investigating the Hariri assassination.
The sources said the killing of the Syrians appears to have been directed by either President Bashar Assad or his brother-in-law, Assaf Chawkat.
"Chawkat has been brought back to do Assad's dirty work — and that is to deny the possibility that a Syrian military officer could defect and testify about the Hariri assassination," a Syrian opposition source, with access to the Assad regime, said.
"A non-existent Abbas will help the Assad regime, because it eliminates a major witness and operative into the Hariri assassination and will handicap the UN tribunal," the Reform Party of Syria said.
This was the second assassination of a senior Syrian officer sought by the UN panel. In August, Assad's military adviser, Maj. Gen. Mohammed Suleiman, was killed by a sniper in the Syrian port city of Tartous.
RPS said Abbas was believed to have played a major role in the Hariri assassination in 2005. The Washington-based group said Abbas "delivered the rigged truck that killed Hariri."
The Syrian government had a different story.
The semi-official Al Watan daily quoted a Syrian security source as identifying the brigadier general as George Ibrahimi Al Gharbi. The newspaper said the attackers were non-Syrian Arab nationals, and that several of them were arrested. The source said the target of the car bombing was not the Palestine branch of Syrian intelligence headquarters.
"Investigations are underway to determine the terrorists' real target," the Syrian source was quoted as saying. "Investigations have shown that this cell was working towards disturbing the security and stability of Syria at the instruction of the parties that fund it."