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| Syria's Gen. Ali Mamlouk (top) and Lebanon's Joseph Samaha |
It’s not that conflict in Syria could spill over
across the borders with neighbors.
In truth, it is the Syrian regime of President Bashar
al-Assad’s regime that is desperately trying to spread chaos in the region.
After providing a safe haven in northern Syria for
the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) to destabilize Turkey in cahoots with
Baghdad and Tehran, Damascus switched to Beirut. But its first go boomeranged
this week when it was caught red-handed trying to spread the fires of civil
strife to Lebanon.
The Lebanese judiciary yesterday took the
unprecedented step of indicting Assad’s topmost security chief -- Gen. Ali
Mamlouk -- and one of his military aides, named only as “Col. Adnan,” along
with a former Lebanese government minister and Assad’s Number One man in
Lebanon, Michel Samaha.
Military Tribunal Judge Riad Gheda yesterday issued
an arrest warrant for Samaha after Judge Sami Sader indicted all three for
planning to organize a group to commit crimes against public figures and
undermine Lebanese state authority. The group would trigger sectarian strife by
way of terrorist operations, making use of explosive devices primed by Mamlouk
and Adnan and delivered by Samaha.
The group’s targets
would have been religious and political figures attending a series of iftars, the evening meal that breaks the
daily fast during Ramadan, which would have brought together Sunni notables in
north Lebanon, an area of strong support for the Syrian opposition.
The attacks could have also
coincided with a five-day visit by Maronite Patriarch Beshara Ra’i to the north
Lebanon district of Akkar later this week.
The main objective might
have been to create Sunni-Alawite and Sunni-Christian sectarian strife.
Samaha confessed to the
plot when faced with compelling evidence on the day of his arrest.
Officers from the
information branch of Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces (ISF) raided Samara’s
home in the village of Khenshara
north of Beirut early Thursday, bundling him into a car and seizing documents,
CDs and computers.
The most damning piece
of evidence against Samaha is video footage shot in secret by M. Kfouri, a man who
became an informant for the ISF after Samaha allegedly attempted to recruit him
for the plot.
Kfouri told the ISF that
Samaha had asked him to secure a group of trusted young men to transport
explosive devices to the north and set them off there in exchange for a sum of
money.
The ISF reportedly
provided Kfouri with a spy pen camera to record his contacts with Samaha.
Video footage subsequently
shot in secret by Kfouri shows Samaha discussing the plot and meeting in a
garage under his Beirut office. There, he handed the explosives and $170,000 to
Kfouri.
Samaha was filmed
personally carrying from his car trunk the explosives, which were 24 in number,
including four weighing 15 kilograms apiece and the rest weighing about 1.5
kilograms each.
The agent later drove
to the ISF and handed them the explosives.
Quoting unnamed
security sources, Lebanese media quoted Samaha telling interrogators after his
arrest, “This is what Bashar wants,” a reference to the Syrian president.
He also reportedly
confessed to have driven to Damascus earlier this month, where he called on
Gen. Mamlouk, who asked him to take the explosives to Beirut. Mamlouk told
Samaha to hand over his car keys to “Col. Adnan” to secure the explosives in the
boot. Samaha did just that before driving back with the bomb load in his Audi
A8 to Beirut.
A Sunni from Damascus, Gen.
Mamlouk, 66, heads the Baath Party Regional Command’s National Security Bureau
(NSB), which in theory co-ordinates the work of Syria's intelligence agencies
and formulates recommendations for the president.
Between 2005 and 2012, he
was head of the General Security Directorate (State Security), where he was
involved in some of the most sensitive issues concerning Syria. Before that he
was deputy head of the feared Air Force Intelligence.
In April 2011, the U.S.
government imposed sanctions on Gen. Mamlouk, saying he had been responsible
for human rights abuses against civilians. The U.S. also said he had overseen a
communications program directed at opposition groups and had received both
technological and analytical support from Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and
Security (MOIS). Mamlouk had “worked with the MOIS to provide both technology
and training to Syria, to include internet monitoring technology” and “requested
MOIS training and assistance on social media monitoring and other cyber tools
for the GSD,” it added.
Assad
asked Gen. Mamlouk to lead the National Security Bureau after its director, Gen
Hisham Ikhtiar, died in last month’s bomb attack on its headquarters.
Samaha, for his part, was
born in 1948 and received his first Phalangist Party membership card in 1964.
Former president Amin
Gemayel appointed him as his media advisor, which led him to chair Tele-Liban,
Lebanon’s official television station.
Following frequent
visits to Damascus in the Eighties and Nineties, Beirut’s pro-Syrian daily al-Akhbar
reports, he started playing two roles – one as a Lebanese political operator
and the other as Syrian-French intelligence operative.
His influence in France
started to grow as his friends in the French administration became more
powerful. One of them, Claude Guéant,
became chief of staff to Nicolas Sarkozy and his point man on Syria.
In July 2008, when a
small Lebanese delegation headed by President Michel Suleiman paid a visit to
Assad at his hotel during a state visit to Paris, its members were surprised to
see Samaha, a Lebanese, included in the Syrian delegation. The incident
underlined Samaha’s influence with Damascus and, therefore, the significance of
his arrest and indictment.
By then, Syrian media had
even changed Samaha’s title from “assistant to Syrian presidential advisor
Bouthaina Shaaban” to “Syrian presidential advisor for French affairs.”
Samaha
would spend time in the Damascus Sheraton lobby receiving visitors – be they
Syrians, Lebanese or foreign journalists. Even after the outbreak of the Syria
crisis, Samaha was the only serious conduit of the regime’s tales to foreign media
about insurgents and the Islamist character of the uprising.
Editorially, Ahmad
Ayyash, writing today for Beirut’s independent daily an-Nahar, decries
Assad’s “insolence” for having the guile to personally contact Lebanese
officials and demand Samaha’s release.
“Self-respect,” says
Ayyash, “should see Lebanese officials issue an arrest warrant against Assad
himself.”
Ali
Hamadeh, in his daily column for an-Nahar, says the Lebanese judiciary
should not suffice with Gen. Mamlouk’s indictment – “he too should be served an
arrest warrant.
“Moreover, all Syrian
regime officials and their family members should be denied entry to Lebanon.
For example, the spouse of Maher
al-Assad recently spent almost a week in Beirut calling on boutiques,
beauty salons and plastic surgeries while her husband and the Assad clique were
planning to kill more Lebanese” than they have over the years.
