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| The late Hashim Salman (left) and Hezbollah men on the attack |
A Lebanese Shiite in
his twenties was killed and five injured outside the Iranian embassy in Beirut
on Sunday after Hezbollah bullies laid
into a busload of mostly Shiite students protesting against the Iranian-backed
Shiite militia’s role in the Syria
war.
The man killed by
gunfire was identified as Hashim Salman, head of the student section of the Lebanese Intima’ Party (“حزب الانتماء اللبناني” or “Lebanese Affiliation Party”),
led by Ahmad el-Ass’ad whose family has been politically eclipsed within the
Shiite community since the mid-1980s.
When the bus carrying
the Intima’ group stopped outside the
Iranian embassy, Hezbollah bullies, all identifiable by their black T-shirts, yellow
armbands and blue jeans, wearing pistols on their belts, attacked the vehicle
with batons, smashing its windows.
The two groups scuffled
on the street and the Hezbollah men drew their weapons and opened fire, killing
Hashim Salman and wounding Muhammad Hassan, Hassan Hassan, Hassan Souli and Ziad
Ali.
The Intima’ Party leader told this morning’s
edition of the independent Beirut daily an-Nahar,
“About a hundred of our supporters, most of them university students, headed to
the Iranian embassy to tell Iranians ‘you involved our men in the Syria war,
which is something we don’t accept. If you are so keen on fighting this war,
send in your Iranian army to fight whoever it wants.’”
Ass’ad said Hezbollah
bullies attacked his supporters as soon as their bus approached the Iranian
embassy. He said Salman was specifically targeted and shot twice in the abdomen
at close range “because Hezbollah knows he is very close to me.”
Ass’ad also charged
that after falling to the ground, Salman was left to bleed for about 20 minutes
before his assailants allowed moving him to hospital.
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| Clockwise from L.: Ahmad, Kamel and Ahmad Bey el-Ass'ad |
Talking separately to al-Mustaqbal newspaper, the Intima’ leader said Salman’s
premeditated “execution” was meant to send him and his party a message.
“The incident,” he
said, “proved that Hassan Nasrallah’s problem is not with the Takfiris in
Syria, but with the opposite view inside the Shiite community. Hashim was Shiite,
so were his father and forefathers. Where is the Takfiri in this? Those were
university student protestors…”
The Intima’ party leader’s father and
grandfather dominated Shiite politics in Lebanon for nearly 40 years.
Both his father Kamel el-Ass’ad and
grandfather Ahmad
Bey el-Ass’ad served as Lebanese
parliament speaker frequently between 1951 and 1984.
Syria sidelined Kamel el-Ass’ad
from Lebanese politics in 1984, when it threw its weight behind the more
hardline Shiite groups – namely, the pro-Syrian Amal Movement headed by current
House Speaker Nabih Berri and Iran’s cat’s-paw Hezbollah.
