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BEIRUT, Jan 24: A bomb on Thursday killed Elie Hobeika, a former Lebanese minister and leader of a pro-Israeli militia involved in the 1982 massacre of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, security sources said.
They said five of Hobeika’s bodyguards were also killed and another three wounded in the blast, which occurred in the Hazmiyeh district of Beirut as Hobeika was leaving his home. Two of those killed were his bodyguards, they said.
There were conflicting reports about the blast.
One security source said a car laden with explosives blew up as Hobeika’s car passed, knocking out windows in the building while another source said the explosives had been planted in Hobeika’s diving equipment in his car.
Live television footage showed blood-stained bodies sprawled at the scene, with pistols and twisted metal from the car scattered around while firefighters put out fires that the explosion had started in nearby buildings.
Hobeika commanded the Christian Lebanese Forces militia, which carried out the massacre of hundreds of Palestinian refugees at Beirut’s Sabra and Shatila refugee camps after Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Israeli troops were encircling the camps at the time of the massacres.
He always denied responsibility for the killings, over which a group of Palestinians is now trying to bring charges of war crimes against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who led Israel’s invasion of Lebanon as defence minister at the time.
Hobeika said in July he would be willing to take part in court proceedings against Sharon, which he said would help prove his innocence.
Hobeika, born in 1957, was a hated figure in many of Lebanon’s political circles, including among his one-time allies in the Christian Lebanese Forces who regarded him as a traitor for switching his alliance to their enemy Syria during the 1975-90 Lebanese civil war.
Palestinian groups had repeatedly vowed to take revenge for the death of their civilians.
KEY WITNESS: Elie Hobeika was a key witness in a Belgian war crimes lawsuit against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, a lawyer for Palestinian plaintiffs said.
The plaintiffs’ lawyers said in a separate statement that Hobeika’s killing was an evident attempt to undermine the case.
A Brussels appeals court is deliberating whether Sharon can be put on trial in Belgium under laws giving the country’s courts powers to try foreigners for alleged crimes against humanity wherever they were committed.
The plaintiffs accuse Sharon of crimes against humanity over the 1982 slaughter by Hobeika’s Israeli-allied Christian militia of hundreds of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila camps.
Hobeika, who had always denied responsibility for the killings, told Belgian senators just two days before his assassination that he was willing to testify in the lawsuit against Sharon.
“We’ve obviously lost a key character in the story of Sabra and Shatila,” leading Lebanese lawyer Chibli Mallat told Reuters. “He was a key witness.”
The plaintiffs filed the complaint against Sharon last June.
In 1983 an Israeli inquiry found Sharon, defence minister at the time of the massacre, indirectly responsible for the killings by the Phalangist militia during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon.
In a surprise move on Wednesday, Sharon’s Belgian lawyer called for the war crimes lawsuit against the 73-year-old Israeli leader to be switched from Brussels to a court in Lebanon.—Reuters
