Hezbollah blames Israel, but assassinated leader had many enemies
- December 2011 – A massive explosion at the Alghadir missile base, near Tehran, killed Maj. Gen. Hassan Moghadam, an Iranian missile expert, trained in China and North Korea and believed to have been a pivotal figure in Iran’s nuclear development program
- February 2010 – Mahmoud al-Mabhoukh, a top Hamas official in Gaza responsible for acquiring weapons for the terror organization, is suffocated in a Dubai hotel room. His death, allegedly at the hands of the Mossad, caused a scandal at the time (the Mossad operatives who killed him used stolen Australian, Canadian, and British passports to enter Dubai).
- August 2008 –Syria’s General Muhammad Suleiman, a close advisor to Assad and the man responsible for procuring weapons for the regime, was reportedly shot dead while relaxing on a beach. A year later Wikileaks reported a U.S. State Department cable that suggested more than $80 million in cash had been found in the basement of Suleiman’s home.
- February 2008 – Top Hezbollah military commander Imad Mughnieh died when his car blew up in a suburb of Damascus, Syria.
- May 2006 – Mahmoud al Majhoub (aka Abu Hamsa), the leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, died along with his brother in a car bomb in Sidon in Lebanon.
- March 2004 – Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the wheelchair-bound firebrand cleric and leader of terror group Hamas was struck by a missile fired from an Israeli Apache helicopter gunship as he was being wheeled along a street in Gaza. He was succeeded by Abdel al-Rantisi, who himself was killed less than month later when his car was also hit by a missile believed to have been fired from a helicopter gunship.
Israel, in line with its past practice, refused to comment on the al-Lakkis assassination. “These automatic accusations are an innate reflex with Hezbollah,” Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said. “They don’t need evidence, they don’t need facts. They just blame anything on Israel.”
Two fringe Muslim groups have claimed credit for al-Lakkis’ assassination. Lebanon’s Daily Star reports that two previously unknown Sunni militias, Free Sunni Brigades in Baalbeck and Soldiers of Damascus, claimed responsibility for the assassination.
Hezbollah’s support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has gained it a long list of enemies, and many experts insist that the assassination of al-Lakkis does not resemble an Israeli-styled operation. “There are a few things that suggest that in this instance it might not be Israel — or at least not them directly,” Anna Boyd, manager at London-based IHS Country Risk MENA, told Fox News. “If we look back at past assassinations that probably were conducted by Israel – for example the Mabhouk assassination in Dubai - they have been careful to have some kind of exit strategy for the assassins.”
“In the al-Lakkis case he was shot at very close range and there was a much higher risk that those that did it were going to be detected and captured, suggesting it was more likely to be someone local who did it,” Boyd added.
Bergman told the BBC that Lakkis “became known in Hezbollah as the guy in charge of manufacturing sophisticated weaponry, explosives, booby traps, he was a technical guy.” He added: “Hassan [al-Lakkis] was the leading figure who received Iranian guidance, he studied in Iran the issues of microwarfare, terrorism, counter-terrorism, and he brought this knowledge with him to Hezbollah, so he was one of these channels through which the Iranians gave Hezbollah their assistance.”
