DAMASCUS, 29 September 2005 — Syria denied yesterday accusations by Lebanese Defense Minister Elias Murr, once a staunch ally of Damascus, that Syria’s former intelligence chief in Lebanon had threatened his life. Murr told the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation on Monday that Rustom Ghazali, intelligence chief at the time, had made verbal death threats long before the minister survived a bomb blast that targeted his motorcade in Beirut in July.
Murr, speaking from Europe, said he had decided to stay abroad because he did not trust Lebanon’s security agencies to protect him. “Murr is rushing to join the dominant chorus which is throwing accusations at Syria left and right,” said Al-Thawra newspaper, a government mouthpiece. Al-Thawra and two other state-owned newspapers quoted an official source as dismissing Murr’s charges as “full of lies.”
The source suggested that Murr was trying to implicate Syria in the killing of Lebanese former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in Beirut in February. “The source voiced astonishment that Mr. Murr took on such a role which was synchronized with the return from Damascus of members of the international team investigating the (Hariri) assassination...” Al-Thawra said.
Meanwhile, a US anti-terrorist team at the request of the Beirut government began yesterday investigating a bomb attack which maimed a prominent Lebanese television journalist. The five officers from the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrived in Beirut late Tuesday, two days after some 400 grams of TNT exploded in the car of journalist May Chidiac causing her extensive injuries. The FBI agents examined the remains of Chidiac’s car north of the capital as Lebanese anti-terrorist squad members kept journalists at a distance, an AFP photographer said.
