Samir Kassir

Samir Kassir (سمير قصير, 5 May 1960 – 2 June 2005) was a Lebanese-Palestinian journalist of An-Nahar and professor of history at Saint-Joseph University, who was an advocate of democracy and prominent opponent of the Syrian occupation of Lebanon.

Samir Kassir was born on 5 May 1960.

His father was a Lebanese-Palestinian and his mother was a Syrian.

He hailed from an Antiochian Greek Orthodox family.

From 1981 to 2000, he contributed to the French international political review Le Monde Diplomatique.

In 1982 and 1983 he edited the newsletter Le Liban en Lutte (Struggling Lebanon), which was dedicated to the Lebanese resistance against the Israeli occupation.

Kassir received his degree in political philosophy in 1984.

He gained a DEA (roughly equivalent to a Master's degree in the British university system) in philosophy and political philosophy from Pantheon-Sorbonne University in the same year.

From 1984 to 1985 he edited the weekly Al-Yawm as-Sābi', and from 1986 to 2004 he was a member of the editorial board of the Revue des Etudes Palestiniennes, the French-language journal of the Institute for Palestine Studies.

From 1988 to 1989 he contributed to the London-based pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat.

He obtained his PhD in modern and contemporary history from Paris-Sorbonne University in 1990, with a thesis on the Lebanese Civil War.

Kassir's journalistic career began when he was a seventeen-year-old secondary school student at the Lycée Français de Beyrouth with unsigned contributions to the Lebanese Communist Party newspaper Al Nidā.

The same year, he began contributing to the French-language daily L'Orient-Le Jour.

In 1995 he founded a new monthly political and cultural review, L'Orient L'Express, which he edited until it ceased publication in 1998, from lack of interest and pressure from the advertising industry.

From that year on he was a professor at the "Institut des sciences politiques de l'Université Saint-Joseph" in Beirut.

It was also in 1998 that Kassir became an editorial writer for the daily Al-Nahar newspaper.

He became widely known for his popular weekly column in which he wrote strong articles against the pro-Syrian government.

He also made frequent appearances on several television stations as a political analyst on news programs.

Kassir was among the first victims in the growing list of political assassinations that occurred in Lebanon from 2004 to 2008.

He was assassinated in 2005 as part of a series of assassinations of anti-Syria Lebanese political figures such as Rafic Hariri and George Hawi.

Kassir was assassinated using a car bomb in Beirut on 2 June 2005, just a few days after the general elections.

The investigation into his assassination is still underway, but to date no one has been indicted.

Since he had been constantly receiving threats from Lebanese and Syrian Intelligence Officers, there is widespread speculation in Lebanon that the perpetrators were the Lebanese-Syrian security apparatus or remnants of this force (as Syria has claimed that all its intelligence officers were out of Lebanon; in addition, the head of the Lebanese security forces had resigned).

The Syrian government has denied these charges.

On 4 June, a funeral ceremony was performed for him in Beirut with the attendance of hundreds.

There was widespread condemnation for the killing and many prominent opposition figures blaming the blast on the Lebanese and Syrian governments.

Among them were Hariri's son, Saad Hariri, who said "the blood-stained hands that assassinated Rafiq Hariri are the same ones that assassinated Samir Kassir."

Moreover, Elias Atallah, Secretary General of the Democratic Left Movement, urged his allies to the presidential palace and remove president Lahoud.

However, the calls remained unanswered.

Years later, 14 March allies admitted that had Lahoud been removed, Lebanon would have been spared the later political assassinations.

These began with the attempted assassination of Marwan Hamadeh and followed with the killing of Rafik Hariri in 2005.

After Kassir, George Hawi, the former head of the Lebanese Communist Party was targeted by another car-bomb; this was followed by failed assassination attempts at former Interior Minister and former Syrian ally Elias Murr and popular LBCI TV anchorwoman and journalist May Chidiac who survived, but lost an arm and leg.

On 12 December 2005, Samir Kassir's colleague, An Nahar's chief editor, and top anti-Syria legislator Gebran Tueni, was killed by a car bomb.

Pierre Amine Gemayel, the former Minister of Industry, was another victim in the series of assassinations.

MP Walid Eido from the Hariri-led Future movement was killed near the Military Bath of Beirut on 13 June 2007.

Shortly afterwards, MP Antoine Ghanem of the Lebanese Phalanges Party (aka Kataeb Party), was killed in another car bomb on 19 September 2007 in the Sin al-Fil suburb of Beirut.

Then, second-in-command of the Lebanese Armed Forces, General François al-Hajj was killed in the military-secured suburb of Baabda on 12 December 2007.

One month later, security chief and top Lebanese investigator into the International Tribunal for the Hariri assassination was killed in January 2008.

Many have blamed Syria for all the recent assassinations of its opponents.

A prominent left-wing activist, Kassir was a strong advocate of freedom for the Palestinians, democracy in Lebanon and Syria and a vocal critic of the Syrian presence in Lebanon.