Syria's Sopranos
Detlev Mehlis, the soft-spoken German prosecutor investigating the murder of the Lebanese leader Rafiq Hariri, is no Mario Puzo and had no intention of writing a gripping Mafia chronicle. But his report looking into Syria's reign of terror and extortion in Lebanon is in the best tradition of Mafia chronicles. Behold the principal player in this tale, Bashar Assad, Syria's president: An unlikely inheritor comes into a family dominion, but he lacks the deceased Godfather's touch. The result: Enforcers and "capos" who had been on a short leash now swagger on their own, and then the heir, in a crime at once brazen and pathetically obvious, puts his entire inheritance at risk.
Tyrannies are opaque. Their victims perish and leave little trace behind. But Rafiq Hariri, a tycoon with ties to the House of Saud and to French President Jacques Chirac, was no ordinary victim. Lebanon, a country eager to speak after decades in the shadow of a backward Syrian despotism, gave Hariri the testimony that he left behind. In the summer of 2004, Prime Minister Hariri had been summoned to Damascus for a meeting with the Syrian dictator, Bashar Assad. The encounter was brief--and unnerving. Assad had a writ to deliver: He wanted the extension of the mandate of his satrap in Lebanon, President Emile Lahoud. Hariri submitted under threat but began to drift toward the opposition and form an alliance with the hereditary chieftain of the Druze community, Walid Jumblat. Assad would brook no opposition. "President Lahoud is me," he told Hariri. "Whatever I tell him, he follows suit. This extension is going to happen or else I will break Lebanon over your head and Walid Jumblat's. So you either do as you are told, or we will get you and your family wherever you are."
Hariri hoped against hope that he would be spared. In the weeks before he was assassinated, he was quoted as saying: "They don't dare touch me." But there would be no protection from the murderous lot in Damascus. On February 14, at midday, in the very heart of Beirut's swank hotel district that Hariri had rebuilt from rubble, he was struck down by a huge car bomb. A Mitsubishi van, stolen in Japan and driven to Lebanon from Damascus by a Syrian colonel, was loaded with 1,000 kilograms of high explosives. When it exploded, it shattered Hariri's security convoy. Mehlis's report lays bare the workings of the conspiracy. The trigger for the crime had been the adoption of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559, in September of 2004, which called for the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Lebanon. For Syria's rulers, and the Lebanese intelligence "barons" who answered to them, this was a red line, and they saw Hariri's hand behind the U.N. move. Two weeks after the adoption of the U.N. resolution, the decision to assassinate Hariri was made. Witnesses implicate Assad's younger brother, Maher; his brother-in-law, Assef Shawkat, the head of Syrian intelligence; and the key functionaries of the Lebanese intelligence services. In one telephone intercept, the head of the Lebanese Presidential Guard, Mustapha Hamdan, brags, "We're going to send him on a trip. Bye, bye, Hariri." In an act of astounding transparency, a young Palestinian loner "confessed" to the crime. The only problem with the "confession" was that it was videotaped two weeks before the crime was committed.
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