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June 03, 2005
Is Syria Still Killing in Beirut?
Check out this Agence France-Presse story about the car bomb blast that killed a prominent pro-independence Lebanese leader, Samir Kassir. The son of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, who was murdered in February by Syrian intelligence, was quick to tie his father' murder to that of Kassir, saying "the blood-stained hands that assassinated Rafiq Hariri are the same ones that assassinated Samir Kassir."
Here are some excerpts:
- Calling the murder a "terrorist act," Saad Hariri said it &qout;proves that the military-police regime to which the martyred journalist was opposed cracks down and continues to defy the Lebanese and the international community."
- Kassir's brother, Sleiman, told AFP he "lived all his life in danger." When asked about a possible motive for the killing, he said: "He used to write all these articles against Syria."
- "He was a great defender of freedoms in the Arab world. This is an act of state terrorism and I expect more such crimes," prominent Syrian opposition figure and filmmaker Omar Amiralay, a close friend of Kassir, told AFP.
- A prominent member of the Democratic Left, an opposition group, Kassir was a professor of political science at the Jesuit Universite; Saint Joseph and published several books on the Lebanese civil war. He was married to Giselle Khoury, a star talk-show host on Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television.
Posted by Richard Miniter at June 3, 2005 03:01 AM