World

Assassination In Lebanon

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

January 24, 2002 / 7:26 AM EST / CBS

A former Lebanese Christian warlord held responsible for a massacre of Palestinian refugees 20 years ago that for many symbolizes the outrages of Lebanon's civil war was killed Thursday in a car bombing at his house.

Elie Hobeika, 45, led the right-wing Lebanese Forces militia, which scythed through the Sabra and Chatilla Palestinian refugee camps in Muslim west Beirut in 1982, slaughtering hundreds of men, women and children. The militia was allied with Israel, and an Israeli commission of inquiry later found then-defense minister Ariel Sharon — now Israel's prime minister — indirectly responsible for the killings by the militia.

Lebanese security officials said Hobeika had just entered his luxury sport utility vehicle and his body guards already were inside when the explosion occurred at 9:40 a.m. local time. The explosives were in a car parked nearby, investigators said. Another source said the explosives had been planted in Hobeika's diving equipment in his car.

They said at least three other people were also killed and another three wounded in the blast, which occurred in the Hazmiyeh district of Beirut as Hobeika was leaving his home. Two of those killed were his bodyguards, they said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast just off the Beirut-Damascus highway five kilometers (3 miles) east of Beirut. Hobeika made many enemies in Lebanon over a long, violent career that began when he was a teen.

Hobeika, born in 1957, was a hated figure in many of Lebanon's political circles, including among his one-time allies in the Christian Lebanese Forces who regarded him as a traitor for switching his alliance to their enemy Syria during the 1975-90 Lebanese civil war.

Palestinian groups had repeatedly vowed to take revenge for the death of their civilians.

Jamal Khalil, a Palestine Liberation Organization representative at a refugee camp in south Lebanon, said a small number of Palestinian children there who rushed into the streets to distribute sweets in celebration of Hobeika's death "were prevented from doing so because Israel is behind the assassination."

Many in Lebanon were quick to blame northern neighbor Israel, long accused of working to undermine stability here.

A witness to Hobeika's killing, neighbor Assad Khairallah, said he watched the explosion from across the street, where he and his wife were having coffee on their second floor balcony.

"Fires broke out in buildings, cars flew in the air and caught fire, people screamed in the buildings," Khairallah said.

Chief Military Magistrate Nasri Lahoud said the total toll was four, including three of Hobeika's bodyguards, and six wounded.

Jean Fahd, one of the investigators, said 22 pounds of TNT placed in a sedan were detonated by remote control.

Military investigators added four diver's oxygen tanks in Hobeika's dark blue vehicle ignited, increasing the force of the explosion. Hobeika was a diver.

Hobeika gained infay after the Sabra and Chatilla massacre in September 1982, which his Christian militia carried out after their leader, President-elect Bashir Gemayel, was assassinated in a bombing initially blamed on the Palestinians. Syria was also blamed for the assassination of Gemayel, who was allied with Israel, but responsibility for his death has never been established.

A group of Palestinian survivors of the massacre have filed suit against Sharon.

The complaint filed in June with a Belgian judge demanded that Sharon be indicted for crimes against humanity in accordance with Belgian law that allows for such trials of foreigners. The complaint did not mention Hobeika's role.

A Belgian appeals court is expected to rule March 6 on whether Sharon should stand trial.

Hobeika said in July that he is willing to testify, and he would have been a major witness.

Hobeika once said of Sabra and Chatilla: "I was carrying out orders."

In a 1993 interview with The Associated Press, Hobeika remained unrepentant, but reflective.

"I think that somehow I have burned my future, because of what I have done in the days of war," he said. "I still have to wear the burdens of my actions during the war, and I have done a lot of bad acts."

He said his past did not preclude him from a career in politics. "In this country, everything is possible. I know this will not be easy. People will not accept that the fighter has changed to a non-fighter. It will be hard for people to believe that I have new visions, new from what I had in the past."

As a teen, Hobeika joined the Phalange Party's militia to fight Palestinians who were gaining strength in refugee camps in Beirut's Christian districts. By the age of 24, he was leading the Lebanese Forces' military intelligence agency — and earning his reputation as a daring and ruthless commander.

After the 1975-1990 civil war ended, Hobeika was appointed to the government with the task of resettling the 1 million Lebanese displaced by the fighting and looking after 13,500 maimed in the conflict.

It wasn't the first time that Hobeika went from one extreme to the other.

He initially, like most Maronites, was allied with Israel, which the Christians saw as a powerful ally against the Syrians.

By 1985, he was Syria's ally. He remained close to the Syrians, the main power brokers in Lebanon, until his death.

In 1991 he benefitted from an amnesty for crimes committed during the civil war which Parliament passed. Hobeika was elected to Parliament in 1992, 1996, but lost a bid in 2000.

Hobeika's death echoed the turmoil of Lebanon's war years. During the conflict, numerous car bombs by rival militias targeted politicians, militia leaders and civilians as a way to settle scores. Two presidents and a prime minister were assassinated by explosions.

Thursday's bombing was the first major car bombing in Beirut since a 1994 explosion at a church that killed 11 worshippers and the first political assassinaion of a leader since 1995, when a Muslim cleric was shot on a Beirut street.

A former Hobeika bodyguard, Robert Maroun Hatem, alleged recently that Hobeika ordered numerous assassination attempts during the 1980s.

Mustafa Saad, a member of parliament from Sidon, has blamed Hobeika and the Lebanese Force of masterminding a 1985 explosion in Sidon in which he was blinded and his infant daughter killed.

"Every tyrant shall meet one that is more tyrannical," Saad said upon hearing Thursday of Hobeika's death.