November 22, 2008
Official's suicide raises suspicions
Leader of Syrian intelligence in Lebanon found dead; he'd been questioned in UN probe of Hariri assassination
BEIRUT, Lebanon - For years, Lebanese and Syrians alike mentioned his name only in whispers. As the head of Syrian intelligence in Lebanon for two decades, Ghazi Kenaan wielded such power that it was unwise to invoke him carelessly.
Yesterday, Kenaan was found dead in his office in Damascus. The Syrian government said he had committed suicide. Since last October, he had served as Syria's interior minister and the country's most powerful security official.
It was his long involvement in neighboring Lebanon that made him one of Syria's most feared men. Kenaan, 63, was among a handful of Syrian officials who were interviewed last month by a United Nations team investigating the February assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister Rafik Hariri.
The UN team is scheduled to issue its findings by Oct. 25, and there has been speculation that the report will blame top Syrian officials, including Kenaan, for Hariri's killing. Syria has repeatedly denied involvement in the assassination.
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Many Lebanese reject the notion that the former spymaster committed suicide.
"Did he really commit suicide, or was it done for him?" asked Gebran Tueni, a Lebanese member of parliament and longtime Syrian opponent. "In Syria, there are people who want to hide the facts."
The Syrian regime announced Kenaan's death in a terse statement without providing details.
"The relevant authorities are investigating," the official SANA news agency said.
Kenaan's top aide, Gen. Walid Abaza, told reporters in Damascus that his boss went home, "then he came back after three quarters of an hour, took a gun from the drawer and fired a bullet into his mouth."
About three hours before his death, Kenaan called a Lebanese radio program and presented a long denial of reports in the Lebanese media that alleged he had received tens of millions of dollars in bribes during his tenure in Lebanon. He ended the interview by saying, "This is going to be the final statement that I can make." He had again denied any involvement in Hariri's killing, and he also denied media reports that he had been paid millions of dollars by Hariri to help manipulate Lebanese elections.
"If we had benefited so much from Rafik Hariri, I don't understand how we could have killed him," he told the radio station.
Hariri's killing prompted international pressure and popular protests that led to the resignation of the Syrian-backed Lebanese prime minister and to the withdrawal of thousands of Syrian troops in April. Syria had kept troops in Lebanon since 1976, a year after the start of a civil war. But when the war ended in 1990, the troops remained, and Syria's influence extended to all of Lebanon's political and economic life.
Dubbed the Syrian viceroy by many Lebanese, Kenaan effectively ran Lebanon after the civil war. Politicians were frequently summoned to his headquarters in the Bekaa valley to receive instructions. Kenaan allegedly ordered the killing or imprisonment of dozens of Lebanese leaders who opposed him.
He was a trusted lieutenant of Syrian president Hafez Assad, and when Assad died in 2000, his son and heir, Bashar, left Lebanon in Kenaan's hands. The spy chief was recalled to Damascus in 2003, where he was put in charge of the most important Syrian security agency before being named interior minister last year.
In his place as head of Syrian intelligence in Lebanon, Kenaan appointed a loyal aide, Gen. Rustom Ghazaleh. In June, both men were placed on a list of Syrian officials whose assets were frozen by the U.S. Treasury Department for alleged support of terrorism.
In an interview aired by CNN yesterday and taped before Kenaan's death, Bashar Assad said if the UN investigation finds that Syrians were involved in Hariri's killing, they would face charges before a Syrian court or an international tribunal.
"If indeed there is a Syrian national implicated," Assad said, "he would be considered as a traitor and most severely punished."
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