BEIRUT, 6 September 2006 — A remote-controlled bomb yesterday wounded a senior police intelligence officer who played a key role in the investigation into the slaying of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Security officials said four of the officer’s aides and bodyguards were killed in the sophisticated attack in south Lebanon.
Lt. Col. Samir Shehade, deputy chief of the intelligence department in Lebanon’s national police force, was taken to the Hammoud Hospital in Sidon, and hospital officials said his condition was stable.
The four dead were Shehade’s aides and bodyguards, and another five were wounded in the attack, which occurred as Shehade’s two-vehicle police convoy drove by the village of Rmaile, near the port city of Sidon.
Interior Minister Ahmed Fatfat told the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation that the blast was caused by a roadside bomb loaded with nails. He said it targeted the car normally driven by Shehade, who was traveling in the other vehicle at the time.
Shehade also was involved in the arrest last August of four pro-Syrian Lebanese generals in Lebanon. The four were arrested on suspicion of involvement in the February 2005 assassination of Hariri.
Security officials said Shehade was involved in the interrogation of several witnesses in the Hariri probe, including Syrian intelligence operative Husam Taher Husam.
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, said Shehade had received threats because of his work in the Hariri probe.
Hariri’s son, Saad, a prominent lawmaker in Lebanon, called the attack a terrorist act. “This is a message which we reject,” he told reporters in Beirut.
The roadside bomb was detonated by remote control as the convoy traveled on a highway between two bridges, said other security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.
Two of Shehade’s bodyguards, Chief Sgt. Wissam Harb and Chief Sgt. Chehab Aoun, were killed. Two others later died of their wounds in a hospital.
