Pro-Syrian Lebanese politician killed by car bomb in 2008
Assad sends hit squads after top Lebanese officials
Syrian President Bashar Assad has hired hit squads to kill top Lebanese government, intelligence and security officials whom he suspects of helping insurrectionists and Saudi and Qatari agents smuggle fighters and weapons into the country to fight his regime. One Lebanese hit squad is reported by DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources as having been captured in the third week of January by Lebanese security police. Its members confessed to receiving, cash, arms, explosives and a list of targets from Syrian Military intelligence, with precise instructions on the method of assassination for two targets, Director General of Lebanese Internal Security Maj. Gen. Ashraf Rifi and his deputy, Col. Wissam al-Hassan, head of its Information Branch.
The team was instructed to rig two bomb cars, each loaded with one ton of explosives to be detonated remotely. They were told which cars would be driving by different routes to a secret meeting of all Lebanese intelligence arms at Internal Security headquarters in the Christian Ashrafieh district of Beirut. Two narrow side streets would bring them close to their destination and it was there that the bomb cars would be planted.
This was exactly the same method used to assassinate the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Harirri in February 2005.
However, shortly before they set out for the staff meeting, a foreign clandestine agency warned the two Lebanese officers of the death trap awaiting them. The information, according to our sources, also covered the location of the bomb cars and the whereabouts of the hit team.
