Outright Assassination

by Adel Beshara

  On the morning of 6 July, al-Husseini turned up at Sa’adeh’s command centre to convey a message from Zaim. It was a request for an evening meeting at the presidential palace. Projecting a relaxed attitude, Sa’adeh responded in a conciliatory spirit but did not give his guest a definite yes or no answer. Sensing a problem, al-Husseini quickly responded with a trumped-up story about how Zaim had finally agreed to bolster the insurgency with an additional three hundred soldiers from the Syrian Army. That sent Sa’adeh’s mind into a spin.

  Earlier that day, and possibly even before, confidential reports had reached the SNP of a plot to surrender Sa’adeh to the Lebanese authorities. They came from three principal directions: (1) Sabri Qubbani; (2) the Syrian diplomat and poet Omar Abu Riche;111 and

  (3) Major Tufic Bashur, Commander of the Fourth Battalion in the Syrian Army. Bashur twice met Sa’adeh to dissuade him from meeting with Zaim, but was unsuccessful. After the first attempt the Major pleaded with the SNP to “persuade Sa’adeh to leave the country at once because treason is about to unleash its venom”112 but Sa’adeh ignored the plea. The second meeting was more melodramatic:

  When we (Sa’adeh, Sobhi Farhat, Bashir Moussali and I) got there Sa’adeh and the Major went into the main lounge room alone while the rest of us stayed outside. They emerged from the meeting Sa’adeh first followed by the Major with tears in his eyes. Then, in a trembling voice, the Major cried out: “Please, persuade him to flee. You mustn’t leave him to die like this. Muhsin al-Barrazi, Riad Solh and King Farouk are conspiring against him.”113

  Sa’adeh annoyingly ignored the warning. At once he let it be known to everyone that the meeting would go ahead as long as he could see a “one in a million”114 chance of regaining the Syrian leader.

  At twilight, Sa’adeh asked his chauffeur to refuel the car for a relaxing drive. Contradictory assertions have been made about his intentions, one account alleging that he was planning to abscond to Jordan after realizing the hopelessness of the situation. But the opposite assertion has been made, from a very different point of view, that he was merely using up the time to reflect before the meeting with Zaim.115 We believe that the latter suggestion carries more weight than the former116 but even if it is accepted it is not easy to prove. According to his chauffeur, Sa’adeh did not utter a single word during the one-hour drive. When they reached the outskirts of Damascus Sa’adeh stopped the car and asked the driver to turn back.

  At ten sharp, an army jeep with al-Husseini at the wheels rolled up to collect Sa’adeh. As he made his way to the waiting vehicle, Sa’adeh removed his pistol, the very same one given him by Zaim during their second meeting, and handed it over to one of his aides, saying: “It is not proper to meet the President armed and whilst I am under his protection.”117 His private secretary, Mustafa Suleiman, offered to come along with him, but al-Husseini shoved him aside. “You, my son, stay here,” and then he took off.118 Stunned and confused, Sa’adeh’s chauffeur quickly jumped into his car and followed them with a party officer at his side.

  The Presidential Palace was only a short distance away. It was a warm summer evening and everyone was going about their business as on any other day. Apart from the troops bivouacked in and around the Presidential palace, no unusual activities were reported. During the day Lebanese security vehicles had whizzed in and out of the Syrian capital, but by nightfall they had all but disappeared from public view.119 Al-Husseini entered the Presidential Palace in the normal way and walked Sa’adeh to the main chamber. The moment Sa’adeh stepped inside he was surrounded by the presidential guards from all sides. Minutes later, Muhsin al-Barrazi walked in from the other end of the chamber to utter his infamous words: “You have a score to settle with Lebanon, go take care of it.”120 Outside the Palace, Sa’adeh’s chauffeur and his companion were overpowered and arrested on Al-Husseini’s orders.

  Sa’adeh was handed over to two Lebanese emissaries, the Chief of General Security Farid Chehab and a senior officer in the Lebanese army whose identity is still unknown.121 The pair asked the Syrian authorities for a two-hour intermission to organize the extradition from the other end. Then they left to Lebanon to deploy extra security forces along the Beirut-Damascus highway in anticipation of the handover. Sa’adeh spent those hours at a gendarmerie post on the Syrian side of the borders with Lebanon. At two in the morning, he was whisked across the border by Syrian intelligence officers, some fifteen of them, and handed over to Farid Chehab who in turn handed him over to the Lebanese army.

  The Plot to Kill Sa’adeh

  The small convoy made its way through the still of the night without visible security or military measures. The operation was carried out in complete secrecy from the point of view of the Lebanese government. At a certain point in the Bekaa valley, near Anjar, the convoy confronted “a pile of rocks in the middle of the road which was not there on our way to collect Sa’adeh.”122 It was a false alarm. Farid Chehab’s recollections of the incident are telling: “I thought the party may have caught wind of the mission and had set up a deadly trap for us. There were only two cars on the road, mine and the jeep. I checked my pistol and then got out to investigate. There was no movement. So we steered the cars toward one side of the road and drove on.”123

  When the convoy got closer to Anjar, the driver of the army jeep signaled to Chehab to stop. He got out and walked toward Chehab and said “I have orders to liquidate him. What do you think?” Chehab curtly answered him: “I strongly disapprove. We are not killers. This is not proper behaviour towards the State.” He instantly replied: “I agree.” It later transpired that the Lebanese army officers in the convoy had been instructed to kill Sa’adeh on the route on the familiar pretext of attempting to escape.

  President Khoury tacitly conceded to the existence of the plot, but placed the onus of responsibility squarely with the Syrians. He claimed that President Zaim had agreed to hand over Sa’adeh on the condition that he (i.e., Sa’adeh) would be liquidated on the way to Lebanon.124 Yet Khoury conceded that the Syrian President did not raise a single objection when he broke to him the news that Sa’adeh was still alive: “Finally, at six Husni Zaim picked up the phone. I said ‘I am grateful for your assistance to Lebanon on this night. The man [i.e., Sa’adeh] is under arrest and will be tried in a military court in accordance with the law.’ He replied: ‘Fine. Fine. There is really no need for you to thank me for anything.’ ”125

  What do the Syrians say? The Syrian historian and diplomat Walid al-Mouallim has stated that when Riad Solh came to Damascus to seek Sa’adeh’s repatriation he brought with him a letter from the Lebanese president asking Zaim to “hand over Sa’adeh to the Lebanese authorities or organize his murder in Damascus.”126 This view is strongly confirmed in Nadhir Fansah’s revealing recollections of that era:

  Without delay I went to see Zaim to enquire about Sa’adeh’s status. He said ‘I am under considerable pressure from the Lebanese President, Sheikh Beshara Khoury, and from Riad Solh.’ I replied ‘Is it not shameful to surrender a person you know for certain that he will be executed after you have granted him protection?’ He replied ‘They are demanding of me even to organize the details of his murder right here in Damascus, but of course I will not do anything of the sort. Therefore, I will hand him over to them.’127

  Since then, more evidence implicating the Khoury regime has emerged. In 1991, the Lebanese ex-president, Charles Helou, told al-Dayar newspaper that “Lebanese fingers” were definitely involved in a plot to kill Sa’adeh before his trial but refrained from openly naming the perpetrators. He literally said:

  Husni Zaim answered the request of the Lebanese government and turned Antun Sa’adeh in. At this point, I am not sure how important this issue is, since one of the people in charge, whom I am not going to name, suggested to the government that Sa’adah should not make it to trial. He proposed that Sa’adah be killed by one of the guards in a police station who would thus supposedly be taking vengeance for the death of one of his family me
mbers killed by [Sa’adeh’s supporters]. Sheikh Beshara, however, rejected the idea.128

  Conclusion

  The confrontation between Sa’adeh and the Lebanese State remains to this day one of Lebanon’s longest and most dramatic events. Its passion and intensity surprised almost everyone but not as much as the intrigue, revolution, and betrayals that marked its history. Out of it, two different and conflicting perspectives have emerged: To the defenders of the established order, Sa’adeh seemed a degenerate outcast. They recognized his potential but continued to treat him with primitive tolerance. To erudite Lebanese and the politically observant he was the first dissident of Lebanon who spoke with the soft anger and naked courage of a non-conformist. Neither could prove conclusively if Sa’adeh was antiestablishment or anti-Lebanon, even though his words and deeds clearly implied no treachery.

  For a while the confrontation for both sides seemed like an eternal process destined to end either in slow death or in a showdown. It ended with a showdown. From the standpoint of the Lebanese state, it was purely self-defense against a citizen who had deviated from the norm and was bent on destroying its entity and absorbing it into a larger unit. For Sa’adeh, it seemed more like a phase in a long and drawn-out battle between a reactionary regime lacking true national legitimacy and the principles of modern life. His method might have been unconventional but the aim was familiar. Like a “father of the nation”, he sought to reshape the very character of the Lebanese state by challenging its ideological underpinnings and foundations of power.

  On 7 July, 1949, the long arm of the law finally caught up with the rebel Sa’adeh and now all that was left for the “winner”, the State, to do was to put him on trial for the public to judge for itself. This was the “moment of truth” that most Lebanese had been anxiously waiting for – public scrutiny of the simple facts from the independent perspective of the law. What they got did not remotely come close to that. It is revealed in the next chapter.

  Notes

  1 Walter L. Brown (ed.), Lebanon’s Struggle for Independence, Part II, 1944–1947. North Carolina: Documentary Publications, 1980: 142.

  2 A. Sa’adeh, al-Athar al-Kamilah (Complete Works). Vol. 14. Beirut: SSNP Cultural Bureau, n.d.: 15.

  3 See Nadim Makdisi, “The Syrian National Party: A Case Study of the First Inroads of National Socialism in the Arab World.” PhD, American University of Beirut, 1960.

  4 Abdullah Qubarsi, Nahnu wa Lubnan (Lebanon and US). Beirut: Dar al-Turath al-Arabi, 1988.

  5 Antun Sa’adeh, al-Athar al-Kamilah (Complete Works). Vol. 14. Beirut: SSNP Cultural Bureau, n.d.: 63.

  6 Sabah el-Kheir, Beirut, 12 July, 1988.

  7 Ibid.

  8 Antun Sa’adeh, al-Athar al-Kamilah (Complete Works). Vol. 14. Beirut: SSNP Cultural Bureau, n.d.: 110.

  9 George Akl, Abdo Ouadat, and Idwar H.unayn, The Black Book of the Lebanese Elections of May 25, 1947. New York, N.Y.: Phoenicia Press, 1947.

  10 Ibid., 112.

  11 Ibid., 96.

  12 Ibid., 115.

  13 The campaign against Sa’adeh was not free of humor. A reporter for the widely-read al-Hayat alleged that a Lebanese security force assigned to the task of capturing Sa’adeh directed him to Sa’adeh’s hideout after he wandered off on his way to interview the SNP leader. Ibid.

  14 On the course of negotiations between Sa’adeh and the government, with Emir Farouq Abi Lama’ as the intermediary, see Nawwaf Hardan, Ala Durub an-Nahda (On the Pathways of the Renaissance). Beirut: Dar Bissan Publishing, 1997: 193–196.

  15 Antun Sa’adeh, al-Athar al-Kamilah (Complete Works). Vol. 14. Beirut: SSNP Cultural Bureau, n.d.: 156–157.

  16 Antun Sa’adeh, al-Athar al-Kamilah (Complete Works). Vol. 15. Beirut: SSNP Cultural Bureau, n.d.: 214.

  17 Ibid.

  18 An example was the time when it tried to disperse a modest gathering organized by the Beirut Executive branch of the Party on February 28, 1949, on the eve of Sa’adeh’s birthday anniversary, although the meeting was being held in a private garden. That attempt nearly ended in a clash with a throng of young men attending the celebrations. Having failed in its bid, the government then proceeded to ban the official ceremony which the Party was planning to hold in the Normandy Hotel on the day of Sa’adeh’s birthday. Consequently, the Party was forced to celebrate in a private house in an atmosphere of intimidation by the secret police which spoiled the social nature of the occasion.

  19 Alford Carelton, “The Syrian Coups d’Etat of 1949,” Middle East Journal, Vol. 4 (1950): 4.

  20 Zaim stated that the number of deputies in the new parliament would be decreased, that suffrage would be extended to educated women, and that the civil service would be purged, while the lower echelons would be given better working conditions. He proposed a widespread distribution of abandoned state lands to the peasants and the imposition of a limitation upon the size of landholdings. Zaim also promised to re-arm the army with the most modern weapons. See Gordon H. Torrey, Syrian Politics and the Military: 1945–1958. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1964: 125.

  21 For further confirmation that Qawuqji was planning a coup see Hani al-Hindi, Jaysh al Inqadh (The Salvation Army). Beirut: Dar al-Quds, 1974: 112.

  22 Taha al-Hashimi, Mudhakkirat (Memoirs). Beirut: Dar al-Tali’a, 1967: 234. Taha al-Hashimi, a former prime minister then in exile in Syria for opposing the Iraqi royal family during the 1941 Rashid Ali coup, was appointed by Mardam as the Inspector General to supervise the new army. It was named the Jaysh al-Inqadh or Rescue Army.

  23 Al-Jil al-Jadid, 25 May, 1949.

  24 Ibid.

  25 Eyal Zisser, Lebanon: The Challenge of Independence. London: I. B. Tauris, 2000: 169.

  26 See Qabbani’s recollections in the Syrian al-Dunia newsmagazine in the second half of 1949. The entire series can be found in Abdul Ghani al-Atari, Sa’adeh wa al-Hizb al-Qawmi (Sa’adeh and the National Party). Damascus: Al-Dunia Printers, 1950: 158–205. Hereafter cited as “Qubbani’s recollections.”

  27 Ibid.

  28 Ibid.

  29 Ibid.

  30 Ibid. On Zaim’s military ego see Alford Carelton, “The Syrian Coups d’Etat of 1949,” Middle East Journal, Vol. 4 (1950): 9.

  31 Ibid.

  32 Ibid.

  33 Ibid.

  34 Ibid.

  35 Ibid.

  36 Ibid.

  37 Ibid.

  38 Al-Hayat, Beirut, 11 June, 1949.

  39 Yusuf Salamah, Haddathanii Y. S. Qala (Memoirs). Beirut: Dar Nelson, 1988.

  40 Hisham Sharabi, al-Jamr wa al-Rimad (Embers and Ashes). Beirut: Dar al-Tali’a, 1978: 208.

  41 Michel Faddoul memoirs of the Jummaizzeh incident (unpublished).

  42 Yusuf Salamah, op. cit., 78.

  43 Al-Hayat, Beirut, 11 June, 1949.

  44 Eyal Zisser, Lebanon: The Challenge of Independence: 184. Zisser’s interpretation is factually inaccurate: (1) at the time of the clash, the Phalanges and Premier Solh were not ‘opponents’ but allies united with an-Najjadah by a common enmity towards Sa’adeh; (2) the Phalanges was not the only victim of the 1947 rigged elections. Even if it was, the issue is not directly relevant here; (3) the government did not arrest ‘some fifty Phalanges’ after the clash, but twenty-one of them none of whom was charged or jailed; (4) the July 18 incident between the government and the Phalanges falls outside the scope of Jummaizeh and thus is immaterial.

  45 In Istijwab Jumblatt al tarikhi lil hukuma hawla istishhad Sa’adeh ome 1949 (Jumblatt’s Historical Interpolation to the [Lebanese] Government in Regard to Sa’adeh’s Martyrdom in 1949). Beirut: SSNP Information Bureau, 1987.

  46 Ahmad Asfahani (ed.), Antun Sa’adeh wa al-Hizb al-Suri al-Qawmi al-Ijtimae’ fi Awarq al-Amir Farid Chehab, al-Mudir al-Ome lil al-Amn al-Ome al-Lubnani (Antun Sa’adeh and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party in the Private Papers of Emir Farid Chehab, the General Director of the Lebanese General Security). Beirut: Dar Kutub, 2006: 40–41.

  47 Hanna Toufiq Bashur, Mi
n Dhakirat Abi, Major Toufiq Bashur (From My Father’s Recollections). Damascus: Maktabat al-Sharq al-Jadid, 1998: 101.

  48 Ibid.

  49 Antoine Butrus, Qissat muhakamat Antun Sa’adeh was i’damehe (An Account of Antun Sa’adeh’s Trial and Execution): 51–53.

  50 “Qubbani’s recollections.”

  51 Ibid.

  52 Ibid.

  53 Ibid.

  54 Ibid. Sa’adeh also asked for freedom of movement for the party, especially at the border-points with Lebanon.

  55 “Qubbani’s recollections.”

  56 An-Nahar, Beirut 16 June, 1949.

  57 Ibid.

  58 Ibid.

  59 “Qubbani’s recollections.”

  60 Sa’adeh, al-Athar al-Kamilah (Complete Works). Vol. 16. Beirut: SSNP Cultural Bureau, n.d.: 159–163.

  61 Ibid., 159.

  62 The countryside between Lebanon and Syria is fairly open. Both countries lacked, and still lack, the right measures to monitor and control their borders. Back then and even today people from both countries are able to traverse the borders on foot and with considerable ease.

  63 “Qubbani’s recollections.”

  64 Al-Sayyad, Beirut, 16 June, 1949.

  65 An-Nahar, Beirut, 16 June, 1949.