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Excerpt from unattributed report entitled "Unknown group claims responsibility for liquidating Qasir. Statement faxed to Elaph threatens to liquidate others", published on Elaph website on 3 June Beirut: The Elaph office in London received a fax a short time ago from a group calling itself the "Strugglers for the Unity and Freedom of Greater Syria" [al-munadilun min ajl wihdat wa hurriyat bilad al-sham] in which it claimed responsibility for the assassination of journalist Samir Qasir in Beirut. The group said in its statement: "We succeeded today in liquidating one of the trumpets which kept on croaking and spreading its poisons and lies and who did not stop doing this despite the warnings we had repeatedly sent to him." The statement added: "We broke the pen of the hireling agent Samir Qasir and turned the day into pitch-black night. This will be the fate of everyone who is tempted to harm those who gave and continue to give what is the most precious for the sake of Arabism, Lebanon and the Palestinian cause." It concluded with the words: "Long live the Syrian-Lebanese-Palestinian alliance." Elaph learned from sources close to the known media figure Giselle Khuri, Samir Qasir's wife who appears on the Al-Arabiya channel weekly [programme], that she and her husband had received death threats from an intelligence party before her husband's assassination this morning. [Passage omitted]
Source: Elaph website, London, in Arabic 3 Jun 05 BBC Mon MD1 Media FMU smm |