Murdered Lebanese activist’s family: ‘We will not be silenced/Killing of Lebanese anti-Hezbollah activist Luqman Slim sparks fury/ناجيا حسري من أرب نيوز: عائلة الشهيد لقمان سليم تؤكد بأنها لن تستكين أو تسكت تحت أي ظرف/اغتيال الشهيد لقمان سليم يثير موجة من الغضب
Killing of Lebanese anti-Hezbollah activist Luqman Slim sparks fury Arab News/February 05/2021 اغتيال الشهيد لقمان سليم يثير موجة من الغضب
Murdered Lebanese activist’s family: ‘We will not be silenced’ Najia Houssari/Arab News/February 05/2021 ناجيا حسري/أرب نيوز: عائلة الشهيد لقمان سليم تؤكد بأنها لن تستكين أو تسكت تحت أي ظرف
*Luqman Salim, an outspoken critic of Hezbollah, was found shot dead in his rented car in the Zahrani area of southern Lebanon early on Thursday
*Rasha Al-Ameer: They have tried to force us from our home and out of this area because we do not speak their language, the language of death
BEIRUT: The family of a murdered Lebanese anti-Hezbollah activist is refusing to bury him until specialist tests determine how he was killed and whether he was tortured.
Luqman Salim’s family is awaiting the report of a doctor hired to examine his body.
Salim, an outspoken critic of Hezbollah, was found shot dead in his rented car in the Zahrani area of southern Lebanon early on Thursday. He had been reported missing the previous day while returning from visiting friends in the southern village of Niha.
Salim, a leading secular voice in Lebanon’s Shiite community, had been routinely threatened because of his stance against Hezbollah. The activist’s sister, author Rasha Al-Ameer, told Arab News on Friday that his body had been moved from a hospital in the south of Lebanon to a private hospital in Beirut. She claimed the initial coroner’s report lacked detail, and was “handwritten and unreliable officially.” “They killed Luqman, and the timing of his burial no longer matters,” she added. Al-Ameer said the family is refusing to be silenced.
“The killer is known, and it is known who controls the area where my brother was killed. They wanted to silence him. They have been trying for 15 years. But we will not be silenced,” she said.
The family plans to erect a shrine in the garden of Salim’s home in Ghobeiry, a southern suburb of Beirut. “Will they dare enter the garden to sabotage the shrine?” asked Al-Ameer. “They have tried to force us from our home and out of this area because we do not speak their language, the language of death. Luqman loved the language of life.
They will not force us out,” she said.
Al-Ameer said that Salim’s elderly mother had been left broken-hearted by news of her son’s killing. “They stomped on my mother’s heart. She lived in this area, helped people and did good deeds. Despite that, people from the sect she served killed her son.”
Security investigations into the assassination continued on Friday amid growing condemnation of the killing and calls for justice.
Former MP Fares Souaid said: “Lebanon is controlled by Hezbollah, and the party has to provide answers. If Hezbollah does not reveal who killed Salim, we will continue to accuse the party.”
Melhem Khalaf, head of the Beirut Bar Association, called for Lebanon’s judiciary to show courage, saying: “There is no tranquility for the people. Justice now for the spirit of Salim and for all the innocent victims.”
Ret. Brig. Gen. George Nader said that Salim’s killing was an attempt to intimidate anti-Hezbollah groups that refuse to fall silent.
“Let them kill whoever they want. It is not possible to back down or be afraid,” he said.
Civil activists also said that they will organize protests against the killing.
US Ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shea described Salim’s assassination as “barbaric.”
In a statement, she said that Salim acknowledged threats had been made against his life, and yet bravely continued to push for justice and the rule of law. “This ssassination was not just a brutal assault on an individual, but a cowardly attack on the principles of democracy, freedom of expression and civic participation. It is also an attack on Lebanon itself,” she said. Shea called for “an urgent investigation of this and other recent unresolved killings so that the perpetrators of these acts are brought to justice, in a country that so desperately needs to recover from the multiple crises it faces.” She said that “political assassinations send exactly the wrong signal to the world about what Lebanon stands for.”
In an article published on the Al-Arabiya website on Thursday, journalist Mona Al-Alami wrote that Salim had been killed because he uncovered Hezbollah’s “internal fabric and intricate web-like network.”
Killing of Lebanese anti-Hezbollah activist Luqman Slim sparks fury Arab News/February 05/2021 اغتيال الشهيد لقمان سليم يثير موجة من الغضب
Lebanese author and activist Luqman Slim, 59, was found dead on Thursday morning in the southern region of Zahrani. His killing was the first of a Lebanese Shiite anti-Hezbollah figure since 2004. News of Slim’s disappearance broke on Thursday morning after nothing was heard from him on Wednesday evening after he started travelling home from visiting family in the southern village of Niha.
Rasha Al-Ameer, Slim’s sister, announced his disappearance on social media, asking for information to help recover him. But in the early hours of Thursday morning, the news changed from a missing person to an assassination after Slim’s body was found in his car in one of the orchards of the Al-Adousiya area.
“We are demanding a thorough investigation which should determine the motive behind the killing and hold the perpetrators accountable,” Sherif Mansour, the MENA Program Coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, told Arab News. “The bottom line is that censorship including against critical journalists by fractions within Lebanon should not go unpunished and what we hope to see is that Hezbollah, especially because of their prior threats, will be questioned and pressured to provide answers.” “In terms of censorship, we hope that the various Lebanese authorities would respect any media institution that has worked to cover not just this issue but others that are currently facing censorship by Hezbollah affiliates in Lebanon so that they can continue to operate without harassment or retaliation.”
Forensic doctor Afif Khafaja said that “the body was hit with five bullets, four in the head and one in the back,” which is an uncommon method of assassination. No identification cards were found on the body.
Slim’s family used a mobile application to locate his cell phone, which was found tossed in one of the orchards near the house he was at in Niha.
His killing is the culmination of a series of threats Slim has received for many years — which intensified in recent months — for his strong anti-Hezbollah stance. He was accused by Hezbollah and its members of being an “Israeli agent” or “a Shiite of the American Embassy.”The activist chose not to hide in his home in the region of Ghobeiry despite the threats he had received, refusing to let intimidation prevent him from publishing his ideas. Threats were sent through flyers that were thrown into his garden and read “muffler” and “Hezbollah is the nation’s honor.”
In a statement he issued in 2019, he blamed “all that has happened and may happen in the future on the de facto forces represented by Hassan Nasrallah and Nabih Berri,” adding: “I place myself and my home under the protection of the Lebanese security forces, particularly the Lebanese Army.”
“This is a reminder of the risk journalists face in Lebanon, including those who have paid the ultimate price,” Mansour of the CPJ added, saying that, “I was reminded of the first documented murder an anti-Iran Shia journalist in 1992, Mustapha Jeha, and that also includes 3 other known cases in 2000 including prominent writers and intellectuals.” Jeha was killed by unidentified gunmen while driving his car in an east Beirut suburb on Jan. 15, 1992.
Slim had turned his family home and the surrounding garden into a sanctuary for hosting intellectual and cultural activities.
He hailed from a family known for its knowledge, culture, openness and involvement in public affairs. His father, Mohsen Slim, was an MP and a prominent lawyer, while his uncle, Karim Slim, was an important judge.
Security sources told Arab News that “the area in which Slim’s body was found is a mandatory crossing route from Tyre district’s Niha village towards Beirut, through the Zahrani highway. However, Al-Adousiya’s population, where his body was found, has a majority of Christians and its overt loyalty is to the Free Patriotic Movement, while the neighboring town of Tuftaha has a Shiite majority and the majority of the town’s political affiliation is mixed between the Amal movement and Hezbollah. Whoever committed his crime has carefully chosen this area to dispose of the body.”
The judiciary instructed the Information Division of the Lebanese Internal Security Forces to conduct a complete scan of security cameras in the area to find out the route that Slim’s car took before his killing, and to download and analyze the data on his cell phone.
In her first comment on the assassination of her brother, Al-Ameer said: “We know who the killer is. He has control over the area in which Luqman was killed. Whoever threatened Luqman is involved in his murder, it has their signature all over it. They want everyone to leave and for only the killers to stay.”
The murder of Slim, who represents the opposing opinion within the Shiite community in Lebanon, provoked angry reactions across Lebanon.
President Michel Aoun requested a “swift investigation to clear up the circumstances of the crime and the parties behind it.”
The caretaker Interior Minister Mohammed Fahmi described the incident as a “horrific crime.”
Police gather at the side where the body of anti-Hezbollah journalist and activist Luqman Slim was found in his car. (Reuters)
Slim, one of the most prominent Lebanese intellectuals to be gunned down since historian Samir Kassir in 2005, was born in Beirut in 1962 and studied in France late in the 1975-1990 civil war.
His murder comes as Lebanon marked six months since a devastating blast at the capital’s port killed more than 200 people and ravaged entire neighborhoods.
What was one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history was caused by a years-old stock of highly explosive ammonium nitrate in a port warehouse.
Yet Lebanon’s own investigation into the presence of the material and its ignition appears to be completely stalled.
Hezbollah’s enemies pointed a finger at the Shiite militia’s influence over Lebanese customs and port security following the explosion.
According to a judicial official, the prosecutor tasked with investigating the blast started looking into possible connections to Syrian businessmen this week.
The United Nations envoy to Lebanon Jan Kubis wrote he was saddened by Slim’s murder, describing him as “an honest independent voice of courage.”He also said that, unlike the port blast, Slim’s murder should be investigated in a “speedy and transparent way.”
Former premier Saad Al-Hariri, whose father’s assassination sparked regional turmoil in 2005, said Slim had been clearer than most in identifying the source of danger to the nation.
“Luqman Slim is a new victim on the path to freedom and democracy in Lebanon and his assassination is inseparable from the context of the assassinations of his predecessor, he said in a tweet.
France’s Foreign Ministry called the killing a “heinous crime” and demanded a transparent investigation. “France asks that the facts be clearly established and that all those who can contribute to establishing the truth contribute fully,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Agnes von der Muhll said in a statement. “It expects the Lebanese authorities and all Lebanese officials to allow the justice system to act efficiently, transparently and without interference.”
France’s ambassador, Anne Grillo, spoke on social media of her “immense sadness and preoccupation” over Slim’s killing.
(With AFP and Reuters)
