Assad's 'Right-Hand Man' Assassinated

I'm sure the Israelis will be blamed, whether they're behind it or not.

Arab media reported on Sunday that a brigadier general thought to be the Syrian regime's liaison with Hezbollah in Lebanon has been assassinated.

The reports came almost six months after the killing in a Damascus car bomb of top Hezbollah military commander Imad Mughnieh, which the Shiite militant group blamed on Israel.

The Saudi-owned pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat on Sunday quoted "informed sources" in London as saying that a senior Syrian officer had been found dead.

"The circumstances of the incident are not clear," the London-based paper said in its report, which said the sources suggested that the slain officer had been "in charge of sensitive files and closely linked to the Syrian top brass."

Al-Bawaba, an Arab news website, named the officer as Mohammed Sleiman and said he was "Syria's liaison officer with Lebanon's Hezbollah movement."

Hard to say at this point, but this may well make Nancy Pelosi's good friend Bashar Assad a tad nervous.

The Lebanese anti-Syrian daily al-Mustaqbal quoted a Syrian news site as saying Sleiman was the head of security at the presidential palace in Damascus and President Bashar al-Assad's "right-hand man."

The initial link has his name misspelled. It's actually Mohammed Suleiman.

A senior Syrian officer, in charge of Syrian President Bashar Assad's liaison with the Hezbollah guerilla group, was shot dead in mysterious circumstances in northern Syria last week, Arab media reports said on Sunday.

Pan-Arab al-Hayat newspaper, quoting "well-informed" sources in London, said the officer had been found dead on Friday night-Saturday morning. It said the officer had been in charge of "sensitive files" and was close to the Syrian leadership.

Lebanon's Future News television station identified the officer as Brigadier General Mohammad Suleiman whom it said was a military aide to Assad. It said his body was found at a hotel in the northern port city of Tartous.