Prominent anti-Syrian journalist Samir Kassir was assassinated on Thursday when his car blew up in a residential sector of mostly Christian east Beirut in an attack that drew widespread condemnation.
Lebanese opposition figures blamed the blast on the government and its political masters in Syria, which was forced to end its 29-year troop presence in the country after the February murder of former premier Rafiq Hariri.
”The blood-stained hands that assassinated Rafiq Hariri are the same ones that assassinated Samir Kassir,” said Hariri’s son and political heir Saad, whose father’s killing was blamed by many on Lebanese and Syrian intelligence services.
Kassir’s murder comes just days after the first round of general elections in Lebanon, held just a month after the last Syrian solider left Lebanese soil.
Calling the murder a ”terrorist act”, Saad said it ”proves that the military-police regime to which the martyred journalist was opposed cracks down and continues to defy the Lebanese and the international community”.
A series of explosions has rocked Christian areas of Beirut and its suburbs since Hariri’s assassination, killing three people and wounding dozens more.
Kassir (45) was a founding member of the Democratic Left movement, a main force behind the popular uprising against the government and its Syrian masters that was triggered by Hariri’s killing.
His body was found in the front seat of his white Alfa Romeo car parked in front of his house in the Ashrafiyeh neighbourhood, which was immediately sealed off by the army and internal security forces.
A passerby, Diab Shammas (60), was injured in the explosion.
Kassir’s brother Sleiman said he ”lived all his life in danger”.
Asked about a possible motive for the killing, he said: ”He used to write all these articles against Syria.”
Prime Minister Nagib Miqati toured the scene of the explosion, which he said ”targeted security and freedom. We will not allow anyone to harm the security of the country.”
Others blamed the pro-Syrian regime for the blast, with President Emile Lahoud — a Damascus ally — a focal point for much of the anger.
Druze opposition leader Walid Jumblatt said ”the situation will continue to be dangerous as long as Emile Lahoud remains in Baabda [the presidential palace]”.
Opposition MP Marwan Hamadeh called for the immediate resignation of Lahoud.
”We call on the government to confront such crimes,” said Hamadeh, who himself was the target of a failed attempt on his life last October, which he blamed on the Lebanese and Syrian security services.
Newly elected MP Solange Gemayel said ”the Lebanese-Syrian police regime is still in place and continues to work. Nobody can tell us that the regime has been eliminated.”
Opposition groups decided to convene later on Thursday to adopt measures following Kassir’s assassination.
The Shi’ite movement Hezbollah denounced the ”vile explosion … which targets freedom of expression and journalists in Lebanon, and which also targets internal security and stability”.
Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières said it was a ”cowardly assassination”.
”French authorities and the United Nations inquiry commission probing the assassination of Rafiq Hariri should give particular attention to this new act of terrorism.”
Kassir was a Christian of Palestinian origin who held Lebanese and French nationality. An editorial writer for the leading An-Nahar newspaper, he regularly wrote virulent articles against the Lebanese regime and maintained close links with the Syrian opposition.
In 2000, Lebanese authorities confiscated his passport following articles against the ”police regime”.
In his last editorial, which appeared on Friday, Kassir criticised the detention of political activists in Syria.
”The Ba’athist regime in Syria is behaving the way it behaved in Lebanon, making blunder after blunder … under the Syrian leadership with [President] Bashar al-Assad at their head,” he wrote.
”He was a great defender of freedoms in the Arab world. This is an act of state terrorism and I expect more such crimes,” prominent Syrian opposition figure and filmmaker Omar Amiralay, a close friend of Kassir, said.
Kassir was a professor of political science at the prestigious Jesuit Universite Saint Joseph and published several books on the Lebanese civil war and the history of Beirut.
He was married to Giselle Khoury, a star talk-show host on Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television. He also had two daughters from a previous marriage. — Sapa-AFP