BEIRUT, 13 December 2005 — A car bomb killed Lebanese anti-Syrian lawmaker and press baron Gebran Tueni yesterday, a day after he returned to Lebanon from France. Four others were killed in the massive explosion that wrecked Tueini’s armored vehicle when it passed by a car parked on the side of the road in Beirut’s Christian suburb of Mkalles. Security sources said the bomb containing 100 kg of explosives was detonated by remote control.
Tueni was the publisher of one of Lebanon’s renowned Arabic newspaper An-Nahar. Tueni, who won a parliamentary seat in the June election, was a prominent opposition figure who frequently attacked the Syrian presence in Lebanon. Fearing for his life, he had taken refuge in France, with other Lebanese politicians, including MP Saad Hariri, son of slain former Premier Rafik Hariri. Tueni arrived in Lebanon late Sunday, with only a few aware of his arrival.
A previously unknown group claimed responsibility for the assassination. In a statement bearing no insignia or letterhead, the group calling itself “Strugglers for the Unity and Freedom of the Levant,” said the same fate awaited other opponents of “Arabism” in Lebanon.
“We have succeeded today again in liquidating another of the mouthpieces that have... spread their poison and lies and not stopped despite the warnings we have sent him time and again,” the statement said.
“We have broken the pen of Gebran Tueni and shut his mouth forever and transformed An-Nahar into a very dark night,” it said.
Syrian Information Minister Mehdi Dakhlallah denied his country had any role, and blamed “foreign interference.” “Syria denounces all attacks whoever the victims,” he told LBC television. “Whatever the differences between this or that person, Syria does not subscribe to these methods, which are used by the numerous enemies of Lebanon.”
Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said he would ask the UN Security Council to look into the killing of Tueni and form a tribunal to try suspects in the killing of Hariri.
“I will ask the Security Council to look into this crime and the others that have been committed... in order to take the necessary measures,” Siniora told reporters hours after the assassination.
“I will also ask for the formation of a court with an international character in the assassination of martyr Rafik Hariri because it has gone beyond personal assassinations.” Siniora said Lebanon would not submit to intimidation and vowed to defeat the “criminals” behind the series of assassinations.
“We have no option but to confront the criminals until we defeat them,” he said.
Tueni’s uncle, Telecommunications Minister Marwan Hemadeh, had earlier demanded an international inquiry and threatened to resign with other supporting ministers if his demands were not met. Hemadeh, who survived an attempt on his life in October 2004, directly accused Syria of killing his nephew.
Druze Leader Walid Jumblatt also accused Syria without naming it of killing Tueni, saying that “the new message of terrorism has been received and it is the same as the one which attempted to assassinate Marwan Hemadeh.”
President Emile Lahoud denounced the crime and accused “the enemy of Lebanon’s stability,” of standing behind it.
Hezbollah condemned the “cowardly crime,” and denounced “this act which aims at hitting Lebanon’s unity.” The group said “the sole beneficiary of this crime is the enemy,” meaning Israel.
The assassination came a day after German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis submitted a report to the UN Security Council on Hariri’s murder. The report said Syria had been “slow” to cooperate with his investigation, contrary to Security Council resolutions, and that the inquiry team had identified 19 suspects whom it did not name.
Five Syrian officials questioned by UN investigators in Vienna this month were among the suspects, Mehlis said.
An interim report by Mehlis in October implicated senior Syrian and Lebanese officials in the murder of Hariri and 22 others in a truck bombing last Feb. 14 in Beirut.
“In the interval since the presentation of that report, the investigation has continued to develop multiple lines of inquiry which, if anything, reinforce those conclusions,” Mehlis said.
