Word: hariri
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...fitting analogy, because like the fictional New Jersey Mob family, the Assads could be facing the end of their run. A long-awaited United Nations report last week implicated the Syrian regime in the assassination last February of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri--and specifically fingered Maher Assad and Shawkat as playing leading roles in the violent conspiracy. The report, by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, reconstructs the events that it says led up to the car-bomb murder of Hariri, including the August 2004 meeting in Damascus during which Bashar Assad threatened the billionaire Lebanese politician...
...months to complete his inquiry because of the Assad government's halfhearted cooperation. That charge gave fresh ammunition to Syria's critics in Washington and Europe, who are threatening to pursue economic sanctions against the regime if it fails to make a full accounting of its role in the Hariri hit. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is consulting with allies and, according to State Department officials, as early as this week may push in the U.N. Security Council for resolutions condemning Syria. A top State Department official says the U.S. wants the resolutions to cite not just the Hariri...
...many Syrians who have grown impatient with the thuggish tactics of the Assad regime, the U.N. investigation into Hariri's death is likely to stoke more outrage. The report not only provides a rare glimpse into the workings of Syria's police state; if its findings are true, it also makes a devastating case that Assad family members were complicit in state-sponsored murder. The report, quoting an unidentified Syrian witness "who claims to have worked for the Syrian intelligence services in Lebanon," says that senior Syrian and Lebanese security chiefs first decided to kill Hariri last September. A month...
Assad is facing an excruciating dilemma. Calming the furor over the regime's suspected involvement in Hariri's death may ultimately require him to turn over his brother and brother-in-law for questioning, a move that could trigger a revolt by their loyalists. For that reason, many Syrians believe that Assad is unlikely to provide investigators with the level of cooperation they demand. But further evidence of Syrian obstruction could give the West the pretext it needs for sanctions that could cripple the regime. It's no surprise that Assad has kept a low profile since the release...
...been Syrian proconsul from 1982 to 2002 and "the real power in Lebanon," says former Lebanese President Amin Gemayel--was found shot in his Damascus office last week, less than two weeks before the expected release of a U.N. report on the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. Syrian authorities swiftly declared Kenaan's death a suicide. Still, speculation swept Damascus that Kenaan may have killed himself because he feared that his government was setting him up in the murder of Hariri, with whom he had been on good terms; that he was a scapegoat sacrificed to address...