-Analysis-
DAMASCUS — Luna al-Shibl, a 48-year-old media adviser to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, died on July 5, three days after being injured in a car accident near Damascus, the president’s office said last week in a statement.
Rumors quickly circulated that the crash had been orchestrated to assassinate al-Shibl. Anti-government activists and politicians and others who do not believe the official account say that al-Shibl and her husband, businessman Ammar al-Saati were planning to leave the country. And that Al-Saati, who is a pillar of the Assad regime, had lost his seat in the ruling party’s leadership.
They note that Syrian security forces also arrested al-Shibl’s brother, Brigadier General Molham al-Shibl, as part of investigations into allegations of “communicating with a party hostile to Syria,” apparently Israel or the United States, following the Israeli attack on Iranian consulate in Damascus that killed senior Iranian officers.
The Syrian regime has a long history of getting rid of its opponents through assassination. While some tyrants use their pistols — as Saddam Hussein repeatedly did — and kill their targets at a political meeting, the Assad regime has another tradition.
Umran in Tripoli
In early March 1972, a woman, who appeared poor, knocked on the door of a Syrian family’s home in Tripoli, Lebanon. A man opened the door and gave the woman financial assistance.
A few days later, the woman returned and knocked on the door — this time, accompanied by two men. As soon as the man appeared again at the door, the two men shot five bullets into his chest and stomach, killing him. Then they fled with the woman to a car that was waiting for them.
They had assassinated Muhammad Umran, a Syrian general and a co-founder of the five-member Military Committee of the Ba’ath Party that led the March 8, 1963 coup in Syria. Other members included Hafez al-Assad, Salah Jadid, Ahmad al-Mir Abd al-Karim al-Jundi.
Hafez al-Assad and Jadid turned against Umran and jailed him in the notorious Mezzeh prison until the Middle East war in 1967, when Israel occupied territories in Syria, Egypt Jordan and Palestine. When Umran was released, he settled in Tripoli where he raised livestock.
When Assad seized power in November 1970, he was aware of Umran’s influence in the military and in the Alawite sect, especially in a group of the most active junior officers at the time. He had to assassinate the Umran to secure his seat of power.
No one can testify in court that Assad was behind Umran’s assassination.
Bitar in Paris
On a sweltering morning in July 1980, a 68-year-old man entered a building on Avenue Hoche in the 8th arrondissement of Paris. He took the elevator to the floor where the offices of the Arab Revival Movement were located. As soon as he got out of the elevator and went to the office door, a man shot him dead and fled.
This time, the target was Salah al-Din Bitar, a former Syrian prime minister and co-founder of the Ba’ath party along with Michel Aflaq. Bitar, who had criticized the party’s policies, left Syria after the Assad-Jadid coup in 1970, first to Lebanon then to Paris. In 1978, Assad pardoned him, so he visited Damascus and met with Assad. But he continued to criticize Assad and his policies through his “Harket al-Ihyaa al-Arabi” or the Arab Revival Movement, which he founded in Paris.
Assad considered Bitar as a threat to his rule, so has to silence him.
No one can testify before court that Assad was behind the assassination of Bitar.
Aachen and Damascus
In March 1981, Banan al-Tantawi, the wife of Issam al-Attar, former head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, was alone in the couple’s apartment in Aachen,German; al-Attar was away on business. Al-Tantawi’s father called to warn her that Hafez al-Assad’s regime had sent someone to assassinate her and her husband, but she assured her father that she does not open the door to anyone she does not know and trust.
An hour later, a neighbor knocked on her door. She opened it, only to find three men, who shot her dead, and even stepped on her to ensure she was dead.
There was also former Prime Minister Mahmoud al-Zoubi, who reportedly killed himself after it was alleged that he was involved in corruption. According to the official report, the Damascus police chief went to al-Zoubi’s house to inform him that he was requested to appear before a judge for corruption investigations. When the police chief asked to meet with al-Zoubi, he heard a gunshot: al-Zoubi had shot himself in his room in front of his wife and children. Yet the body was not examined by forensic experts.
Other such mysterious incidents blamed on the Syrian regime include those of journalists Salim al-Lawzi and Riad Taha, Lebanese politicians Kamal Jumblatt and President Rene Moawad, who served for 18 days before his assassination by unknown assailants.
Inherited brutality
Bashar al-Assad inherited the brutality of his father, Hafez, but he did not inherit his intelligence and political acumen. In more than two decades of rule, we have witnessed many mysterious killings, including that of Major-General Ghazi Kanaan Syria’s interior minister and military intelligence chief in Lebanon for 20 years, Kanaan was found dead in his office in Damascus in October 2005, having reportedly shot himself.
Before his death, he had been questioned by the United Nations about the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. And hours before he died, Kanaan told a Lebanese radio station that he had been questioned by UN investigators, but said he had given no information against the Syrian state. He ended his on-air comments by saying: “I believe this is the last statement that I can make.”
Kanaan’s death remains shrouded in mystery, with many unanswered questions about the exact circumstances and possible motives behind it.
There was also the case of Rustom Ghazaleh, the former Syrian political security chief who was one of Assad’s most notorious figures. He reportedly died in April 2015, more than two months after he was badly beaten by Syrian security forces.
Another mysterious incident was the killing of four senior military officers in a bombing during a meeting in 2012 at the National Security headquarters in Damascus: Defense Minister Daoud Rajha; his deputy Assef Shawkat; Hassan Turkmani, head of the Crisis Management Cell; Hisham Bakhtiar, head of the National Security Office of the Syrian Baath Party. Interior Minister Muhammad al-Shaar, who attended the meeting, was wounded.
Opponents of the Syrian government said the killings were ordered by Assad or his powerful brother, Maher al-Assad.
