DAMASCUS/WASHINGTON, 13 October 2005 — People all over the Arab world were shocked yesterday after hearing the news that Syrian Interior Minister Ghazi Kanaan, who headed his country’s military intelligence in Lebanon for two decades, had committed suicide.
Kanaan’s suicide comes three weeks after he was questioned by a UN team probing the killing of Lebanon’s former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and a week before chief UN investigator Detlev Mehlis presents the findings of the team’s inquiry.
The official Syrian news agency SANA reported the suicide of the 63-year-old minister and said investigations were under way. “There was blood on his face. The initial indications are that he put the gun in his mouth and shot himself,” a political source said, adding that he died around 11 a.m. (0900 GMT).
Syrian Information Minister Mahdi Dakhlallah warned the media against “jumping to conclusions and resorting to rumors and fancy analysis regarding the incident.” He said that “all facts pertaining to Kanaan’s death will be announced with full sense of responsibility and transparency once we get any information.”
About an hour before committing suicide, Kanaan had called a Lebanese radio station to comment on Syrian-Lebanese ties, ending with the words: “I think this is the last statement I might give.”
Shortly before news of Kanaan’s suicide broke, President Bashar Assad told CNN that Syria was not involved in Hariri’s death and that he could never have ordered it.
Asked if Syrian officials would have ordered the killing without his knowledge, Bashar said: “I don’t think so. If it happened then it’s treason. If (Syrians) are implicated they should be punished. International (court) or Syrian, whatever.”
Syrian authorities, already under pressure from the US over Iraq, have grown increasingly nervous over Lebanese and international charges that Syria was linked to Hariri’s death.
US President George W. Bush declined to comment on Kanaan’s death, but said Syria was still far too involved in Lebanon. He also repeated US warnings to Syria that it should do more to stop foreign fighters from crossing into Iraq.
“I don’t want to prejudge the report that’s coming out — the Mehlis report,” Bush told reporters when asked about Kanaan’s death and its implications for the Hariri probe. “It’s one thing to have been asked to remove troops and all intelligence services. Now the world wants for and expects Syria to honor the democracy in the country of Lebanon.”
In his phone interview to the Voice of Lebanon radio station before his suicide, Kanaan denied reports in Lebanese media that he showed the UN investigators photocopies of checks paid to him by the late Hariri.
The Syrian government issued a statement mourning Kanaan’s death but gave no other details. State radio and television continued normal programs. “Whatever happens, stability won’t be shattered in Syria. We are one of the most stable countries in the region,” Information Minister Dakhlallah said.
Asked if the suicide was linked to the UN investigation, Dakhlallah said: “Of course, the timing is sensitive. But I’m talking about facts and not suspicion and speculation.”
Hospital sources said Kanaan, who was Syria’s top official in Lebanon for two decades until 2002, was taken from his office at the Interior Ministry in Martyrs Square in the Marja district of Damascus to the nearby private Shami Hospital before midday.
Syrian MP Mohammed Habash cast doubts on Syria’s official version of Kanaan’s death. “There didn’t seem to be any signs of stress on Ghazi Kanaan. Yesterday we were with him in a ministerial meeting and everything appeared normal,” he said in a telephone interview with Al-Arabiya satellite channel. “It’s unbelievable... We don’t know how the death of Kanaan actually happened.”
But a Washington-based professor of political science of Syrian origin said he found the suicide scenario plausible.
“From the reports that I’ve heard regarding the scenario in which Kanaan died, it is plausible that he committed suicide, especially in light of the statement that he made earlier today to the Voice of Lebanon,” said Murhaf Jouejati, director of Middle East Studies Program at the Elliot School of International Affairs at George Washington University.
Jouejati also said the doctor who was in the emergency ward in the hospital said the bullet entered the mouth and came out of the back of the head.
“Kanaan may have perceived that the report is going to incriminate Syria and that the regime would hand him over to internal justice in order to escape potential international sanctions against Syria,” said Jouejati.
But Jouejati scoffed at a CNN commentator’s observations that he was murdered because he was planning to overthrow President Bashar. “I don’t buy this idea at all — conspiracy theories are usually the stuff of the Middle East, not Atlanta.”
Four pro-Syrian Lebanese generals have been arrested and charged in Hariri’s assassination. Many Lebanese say Syria ordered the killing but Damascus has repeatedly denied any role. “My testimony...was to shed the light on an era during which we have served Lebanon,” Kanaan said in his last comments.
“I want to make clear that our relation with our brothers in Lebanon was based on love and mutual respect...We have served Lebanon’s interest with honor and honesty,” he said.
President Bashar expressed his confidence that a UN probe would acquit Syria over the murder of Hariri. If Syria was found guilty, he said it would be the result of “political pressure on the report to give another result and accuse Syria without any evidence. That is what we are worried about.”
He also dismissed reports that he had threatened Hariri over an extension to the mandate of pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud. “It is not my nature to threaten anybody. I’m a very quiet person. I’m very frank but I wouldn’t threaten.”
Kanaan, a Baathist major general, was the head of Syrian military intelligence in Lebanon from 1982 until 2002. He was appointed interior minister in 2004 after becoming chief of the Syrian Political Security Directorate in 2002.
Commenting on Kanaan’s death, former Deputy Speaker of Lebanese Parliament Elie Farzli said that “the suicide was due to his pain for the loss of the great efforts he exerted in Lebanon for two decades, and it has nothing to do with the expected UN report on Hariri’s assassination.”
