Lebanese security forces arrested seven Syrian nationals on suspicion of involvement in the murder of a Lebanese politician, a judicial official said Tuesday, amid a backlash against Syrian refugees and Hezbollah.
Pascal Suleiman was the coordinator in the Byblos (Jbeil) area, north of Beirut, for the Lebanese Forces (LF), the largest Christian party which opposes the Syrian government and its Iranian – backed Lebanese ally Hezbollah.
The LF said it would consider Suleiman’s murder a “political assassination until proven otherwise”, although the army claimed the politician had been killed for his car.
Social media users pointed the finger at Hezbollah, drawing a denial from its leader Hassan Nasrallah.
“The number of people arrested for kidnapping and killing of Suleiman, rose to seven, all of them Syrian nationals ,” the judicial official told AFP.
“The kidnappers claimed that their goal was stealing the victim’s car,” the official added.
The official added that the suspects told investigators they hit Suleiman with pistol butts on the head and face until he stopped resisting. They then threw him in the trunk of his own car and drove him to Syria. He died on the way there.
Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi is to hold a press conference about the case later Tuesday.
‘Attempts to scapegoat’
A military official told AFP that Damascus had handed over three of the suspects and was expected to repatriate Suleiman’s body later Tuesday.
He said the body had been found in an area of Syria near the Lebanese border which is infamous for lawlessness.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a body corresponding to the description of the victim had been dumped in an area near the border where Hezbollah holds sway.
“The body was wrapped in a blanket and had been hit on the head and chest with a hard object,” the Britain-based war monitor said.
On Monday, hundreds of residents blocked roads in Byblos, with footage circulating on social media of violence against Syrians — many of them refugees from their country’s more than decade-old civil war.
Syrian refugee Abdullah, 21, who lives in Byblos, told AFP that the backlash had spread fear in the vulnerable community.
“I hope that those responsible will be held to account, but not the entire (Syrian) population” in Lebanon, Abdullah said, asking to be identified by his first name only for security reasons.
Ramzi Kaiss of Human Rights Watch said Beirut must ensure “that the investigation into the killing is thorough and transparent in light of decades of impunity in Lebanon for politically sensitive killings”.
But “the attempts to scapegoat the entire refugee population are deplorable and should be denounced because they threaten to fuel already ongoing violence against Syrians in Lebanon,” Kaiss told AFP.
On Monday evening, Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned the killing and called for “everyone to exercise self-control”.
LF links Hezbollah to the crime
The Lebanese Forces on Tuesday stressed that the investigation of the murder of Pascal Suleiman should be “clear, transparent, public, frank and accurate with its details and circumstances.”
“Until the results of this investigation get released, we will consider that Pascal Suleiman fell a victim of a political assassination operation,” the LF said in a second statement on the incident.
It added that three allegedly Hezbollah-related factors had contributed to the crime.
“The first factor is represented in Hezbollah’s presence in its current form under the excuse of resistance or other alibis. This illegitimate presence of Hezbollah has led to paralyzing the role of the state and the effectiveness of this role, which has allowed for the presence of armed gangs and armed chaos,” the LF said in its statement.
The party also blamed Hezbollah for the state’s weak control of its border with Syria and for “castrating the state’s judicial, security and military institutions through barring them from working in certain areas or on certain cases or in any matter related to any person belonging to the Axis of Defiance.”
Many Lebanese drew parallel between Suleiman’s murder and the assassination of Luqman Slim , a prominent researcher and an outspoken critic of Hezbollah who was was found dead in his car on February 4, 2021. Hezbollah was accused of being behind his assassination.
3 Hezbollah operatives were indicted in the assassination of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri and were sentenced to life in prison. Hariri was assassinated in downtown Beirut on Feb 14, 2005. Several political assassinations followed in 2005 and 2006 and all fingers were pointed at Hezbollah and its ally the Syrian regime for all the assassinations.
France24/ YL
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