Anti-Syrian politician assassinated in Beirut: Rice urges Damascus to ‘knock it off’
BEIRUT, June 21: An anti-Syrian politician was killed in Lebanon on Tuesday when a bomb ripped through his car, two days after parliamentary elections brought victory for an alliance opposed to Damascus’ role in the country.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused Syria of destabilizing its tiny neighbour.
“There is a context and an atmosphere of instability. Syria’s activities are part of that context and a part of that atmosphere and they need to knock it off,” she told reporters as she flew to Brussels on a tour of the Middle East and Europe.
George Hawi, a former leader of the Lebanese Communist Party, died instantly in the blast in the Wata Musaitbi neighbourhood of Beirut.
“After the explosion, the car kept going and then I saw the driver screaming and he jumped out of the window. We rushed to the car and saw Hawi in the passenger seat with his guts out,” Rami Abu Dargham, who owns a sandwich shop nearby, said.
The 400-gram charge was under the passenger seat of George Hawi’s Mercedes and was detonated by remote control, judicial sources said. His driver apparently escaped serious injury.
It was the second killing of an anti-Syrian figure in Beirut this month. Newspaper columnist Samir Kassir was killed on June 2 when a similar explosion destroyed his car outside his home.
The United States said after Mr Kassir’s killing it had information about a Syrian hit-list targeting Lebanese leaders. Damascus denied the claim and denounced Mr Hawi’s killing.
UN investigator Detlev Mehlis questioned the head of Lebanon’s presidential guard on Tuesday as part of an international probe into former premier Rafiq Hariri’s killing in February and his office and home were searched.
UN chief Kofi Annan was ‘appalled to learn of yet another assassination’, spokeswoman Marie Okabe said.
He urged the authorities ‘to bring promptly to justice the perpetrators and the instigators of today’s callous crime and to put an end to impunity and acts of intimidation’, she said.
Mr Hawi’s stepson, himself a critic of Damascus, blamed remnants of the pro-Syrian security agencies, though Lebanon’s top security chiefs have resigned in recent months.
“The security agencies continue to kill the democrats and are trying to assassinate democracy in Lebanon and the independence uprising,” Rafi Madoyan told reporters. “It is not just George Hawi, there are many others on the hit list.”
About 3,000 people held a candlelit vigil for Mr Hawi on Tuesday night, some holding flowers or his picture.
Syrian-backed President Emile Lahoud, himself under pressure from some politicians to resign over the string of killings and explosions, denounced the murder and promised to investigate.
Lebanon has asked for United States help in investigating the killing and an FBI team is on the way, a U.S. embassy official said.
“With regard to the persistent suggestion that the president is linked to the so-called security state, everyone knows that he does not directly supervise the security agencies,” the presidency said in a statement.
“Is it a coincidence that this crime happens today, a few hours after the end of parliamentary elections which the world saw take place democratically?”—Reuters
