Death In Damascus: Who Pulled The Trigger?

Was it suicide or murder? And why? Syrian Interior Minister Ghazi Kenaan--who had been Syrian proconsul from 1982 to 2002 and "the real power in Lebanon," says former Lebanese President Amin Gemayel--was found shot in his Damascus office last week, less than two weeks before the expected release of a U.N. report on the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. Syrian authorities swiftly declared Kenaan's death a suicide. Still, speculation swept Damascus that Kenaan may have killed himself because he feared that his government was setting him up in the murder of Hariri, with whom he had been on good terms; that he was a scapegoat sacrificed to address possible accusations against Syria in the report; or that he was killed, under the convenient cloak of the U.N. probe, to eliminate a rival to President Bashar Assad. The last theory, says Syria watcher and history professor Joshua Landis, "is the conclusion everyone is jumping to."

Whatever the explanation for Kenaan's death, the investigation has taken on a new wrinkle. According to local media reports and Lebanese legal and financial sources, U.N. investigators asked Kenaan about his unexplained wealth and possible link to the looting of al-Madina Bank, which collapsed in 2003 after the discovery of a nearly $2 billion fraud scheme. In his last interview, given to a Beirut radio station, Kenaan angrily denied accusations of corruption, ending the interview by saying, "This is the last statement it is possible for me to give." A few hours later, he was dead.