SALON

Tuesday, Oct 23, 2012 11:00 AM UTC

Calm returns to Lebanon as troops deploy

By

Topics: From the Wires,

Calm returns to Lebanon as troops deploy(AP Photo/Ahmad Omar) (Credit: Ahmad Omar)

BEIRUT (AP) — Calm returned to the streets of Lebanon’s capital on Tuesday, a day after troops launched a major security operation to quell fighting touched off by the assassination of a top anti-Syrian intelligence chief.

The country’s police chief late Monday released details of the investigation into the killing of Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hassan, describing a carefully planned car bombing that targeted the intelligence officer as he was moving about the capital in secret.

Many in Lebanon blame Syria for the killing. Damascus has intervened heavily in Lebanese affairs and is blamed for the deaths of many prominent critics. Al-Hassan was a Sunni who challenged Syria and its powerful Lebanese ally, the Shiite militant group Hezbollah.

Seven people have died in clashes between pro- and anti-Syria factions sparked by the Friday assassination. The blast, the deadliest in Beirut in four years, killed two people in addition to al-Hassan.

Maj. Gen. Ashraf Rifi told a group of journalists that al-Hassan was assassinated outside one of his secret offices where he used to meet with informants. He was driving an unarmored rented car for camouflage. Al-Hassan was one of Lebanon’s most secretive figures, and until his death many Lebanese did not know what he looked like.

“The martyr Wissam had an appointment in this office and it seems he was watched,” Rifi said, adding that the booby-trapped car went off as al-Hassan’s car was passing slowly by through the narrow street. The secret office in the predominantly Christian neighborhood of Achrafieh is few hundred meters (yards) away from the heavily-fortified police headquarters where al-Hassan spent most of his time while in Lebanon.

He also said investigators had identified the car used in the bombing as one stolen a year earlier.

Rifi confirmed reports from Washington that an FBI team will arrive to help in the investigation in the next two days. FBI teams helped investigate several bombings since 2005.

A senior security official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, said al-Hassan entered through Beirut’s airport using a fake name and after he reached his office, he sent his passport to the airport to be stamped. The official said this could be one of the ways how it became known al-Hassan is in Lebanon.

The official added that al-Hassan was supposed to stay in Paris with his family for more than week to celebrate the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha that starts Friday, but it is not clear why he returned to Lebanon.

The circumstances were similar to two other assassinations of Damascus critics: the 2005 killing of newspaper editor and lawmaker Gibran Tueni and the 2007 death of Christian lawmaker Antoine Ghanem from the right-wing Phalange Party. Both died in car bomb blasts shortly after returning to Lebanon from abroad, in secret.

The daily As-Safir reported that security authorities now have the data of al-Hassan’s mobile phone and are checking it specifically from the time he landed in Beirut until he was killed. His last call was to former Prime Minister Saad Hariri, telling him he was in Beirut.

Al-Hassan was very close to Hariri and in the past was in charge of the security of his father, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. He investigated Hariri’s killing by a truck bomb in 2005, also widely blamed on Syria. An international tribunal indicted four members of Hezbollah for Hariri’s killing, although the group denies involvement.

Al-Hassan’s work led to the arrest of former Information Minister Michel Samaha, one of Syria’s most loyal allies in Lebanon, who is accused of plotting a wave of attacks in Lebanon at Syria’s behest. Syrian Brig. Gen. Ali Mamlouk, one of Assad’s most senior aides, was indicted in absentia in the August sweep.

Officials say his department also had a role in breaking up several Israeli spy rings inside Lebanon in recent years. Israel has never commented on the allegations.

The assassination has dramatically escalated political tensions and sparked violence between supporters of Syrian President Bashar Assad and his opponents. Lebanon and Syria share similar sectarian divides that have fed tensions in both countries. Most of Lebanon’s Sunnis have backed Syria’s mainly Sunni rebels, while Lebanese Shiites tend to back Assad, who belongs to the minority Alawite sect — an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

Angry protesters tried to storm the government palace after al-Hassan’s funeral on Sunday, venting their rage at leaders they consider puppets of the Syrian regime. But they were pushed back by troops who fired their guns in the air and filled the street with tear gas.

On Tuesday Prime Minister Najib Mikati, whose Cabinet is dominated by Hezbollah and its allies, resumed work at the palace and received EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who later met President Michel Suleiman.

Life in Beirut was normal Tuesday a day after troops conducted major operations opening roads and forcing gunmen out of the streets. Schools and businesses opened as usual.

In the northern city of Tripoli, security officials reported that the army deployed to separate gunmen from rival factions following sporadic exchanges of gunfire lasting until Tuesday morning.

More Bassem Mroue.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
245 points246 points | 10 comments
vote
Loaded terminology like "entitlements" and "welfare" skews the debate and alters America. How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government.
230 points231 points | 47 comments
vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the persecuted late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
186 points187 points | 1 comment
vote
Obstruction will ruin the GOP: Playing politics and abusing the system can excite the extremes, but it's a recipe for long-term political disaster
56 points57 points | 8 comments
vote
How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government -- "...much of the U.S. economic security support system consists of subsidies for the affluent in the form of tax breaks, like those for private retirement savings plans such as 401(k)s and private employer-provided health insurance."
41 points42 points | 3 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations