BEIRUT: The Lebanese newspaper An Nahar, founded by the grandfather of its slain director Gibran Tueni, has long been one of the most vocal campaigners against Syrian interference in the country.

The murder of Tueni in a car bomb on Monday was not the first tragedy to have touched the newspaper this year — only in June one of its most celebrated writers Samir Kassir was killed in an attack blamed by many on Syrian agents.

Tueni is widely seen as having blazed an early trail against Syrian control over Lebanon in an An-Nahar editorial as early as March 2000 that made the unprecedented blunt request for Syria to end its domination.

In an open letter to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad he asked about the sense of “the Syrian military presence in Lebanon” and asked if “the domination of Syria in Lebanon is not the price that will be paid for peace in the region.”

Since the murder of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri in February and the departure of Syrian troops in April, Tueni never ceased to warn against the risk of assassination attempts on anti-Syrian political figures.

An-Nahar — Lebanon’s oldest press group — has been dominated by a journalistic dynasty of the Tueni family since it was founded by Gibran’s grandfather in the 1930s.

On December 9, French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin had awarded Ghassan Tueni, now the paper’s editor-in-chief, with France’s highest honour, the Legion d’Honneur in recognition of his journalistic achievements and patriotism.—AFP