Category: bashar al-assad

The Long Wait Is Over...

Great news! The preliminary results of the criminal probe that's been on everyone's lips these past months have been released. UN investigator Detlev Mehlis today published a 54-page document outlining his case in the murder of Lebanese politician Rafiq Hariri. Broadly speaking, Syria did it. The New York Times:

Though the report did not include names, the diplomat said the investigators were focusing on Syria's military intelligence chief, Asef Shawkat, the president's brother-in-law.

"Their main lead is that he is the ringleader," the diplomat said. "This is where it is heading."

"The diplomat," by the way, is someone with intimate knowledge of the ongoing investigation, though he's not Mehlis and, for security reasons, is cited anonymously. Super. Things always have a way of going swimmingly when nameless diplomats are given ink on the International page of the Grey Lady. Uhm, just out of curiosity: His wife is in what line of work, would you say, exactly?

More scoop from WaPo:

Mehlis's report included excerpts of interviews and statements about [a meeting designed to make Hariri endorse Damascus-backed candidate Emile Lahoud in the Lebanese election], including several by Hariri's associates and his son, alleging that the Syrian president [Bashar al-Assad] threatened Hariri if he opposed the plan. Saad Hariri said his father told him that Assad said: "This extension is to happen, or else I will break Lebanon over your head."

When asked in a recent CNN tete-a-tete with Christiane Amanpour whether he was nervous about the possible (and increasingly likely) implosion of his regime because of the Hariri assassination, Bashar said, " I feel very confident for one reason: I was made in Syria and wasn't made in the United States. So I am not worried." Yes, well, made men seldom are. --MICHAEL WEISS

Top Syrian Seen as Prime Suspect in Assassination [NYT]
U.N. Report Sees Syrian Involvement in Hariri's Death [WaPo]
CNN Interview [CNN]

READ MORE: UN investigation , bashar al-assad , detlev mehlis , lebanon , rafiq hariri murder , syria

All Over But the Shooting

David Ignatius is employing the noir western trope to describe the near-completed UN probe into the murder of Lebanese reformer Rafiq Hariri:

A warning of the bloody denouement of this drama came last week, when Syria's interior minister, Ghazi Kanaan, was found dead in Damascus of a reported suicide. Almost nobody takes that at face value. One version has it that Kanaan was killed (or handed the gun and told to do the honorable thing) as a fall guy in the Hariri killing. I tend to doubt that version, because Kanaan had been close to both Hariri and Washington. Instead, I wonder if his death was a counter-coup by pro-Assad operatives in Damascus who feared Kanaan as a potential rival. I'm told that [UN investigator Detlev] Mehlis asked to examine Kanaan's body before it was quickly buried, but was refused.

Of course he was refused. What, is it so implausible that Kanaan shot himself in the head four times -- Mehlis needs to see the bullet holes? --MICHAEL WEISS

High Noon for Syria [WaPo]

RELATED: Mind the Dead Pols on the Road to Damascus [Wonkette]

READ MORE: bashar al-assad , detlev mehlis , lebanon , rafiq hariri , syria , syrian interior minister suicide , u.s. foreign policy

Mind the Dead Pols on the Road to Damascus

Ah, the good old days in Syria. The lotus flowers were in bloom. The contiguous neighbors were a lot friendlier. You could leave your door unlocked because the police were so effective, they were usually already inside waiting for you when you got home.

Things are bad now. They'd have to be if Baathist interior ministers are too impatient to wait to be assassinated like everyone else that they're offing themselves:

"Interior Minister Brig. Gen. Ghazi Kenaan committed suicide in his office before noon," the Syrian Arab News Agency reported. "Authorities are carrying out the necessary investigation into the incident."

The news agency did not mention the U.N. investigation, which is due to issue its report by Oct. 25.

Whoever said that after 9/11 bombs not subpoenas were the way to govern the world obviously never met Detlev Mehlis. Tucked away in his little Nabokovian pleasure dome in the mountains of Beirut, the U.N.'s newest prosecutor is so take-no-prisoners, he's got his own fucking witnesses reaching for the revolver. --MICHAEL WEISS

Syria: Interior Minister Commits Suicide [WaPo]
Detlev Mehlis [UN Press Release]
Lebanon on tenterhooks as Hariri probe nears completion [FT]

READ MORE: bashar al-assad , detlev mehlis , lebanon , rafik hariri , syria

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