June 03, 2005
Why the death of journo may shake Syria
Here's more on Kassir. An editorial in today's New York Sun—which like the WSJ continues the tradition of reporting in editorials—adds some details and some context to Kassir's murder. After arguing that Syria is behind the murder, here's the money quote:
The Syrian dictatorship is tottering and weak. President Bush has decided that Bashar al-Assad will be gone and that the route to Iran is through Syria. Someday historians will see the murder of Samir Kassir, like the recent Syrian missile attack on Turkey that the New York Times was reporting last night, as a last desperate gasp of a failing regime that realized that the mere existence of a semi-free press in a neighboring state was enough to pose a mortal threat to its own existence. It is a fact that tells much about the nature of the Syrian regime and why its end can't come soon enough.
Posted by Richard Miniter at 11:31 AM
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 03:01 AM