BEIRUT: Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri said Saturday that the time would come when the killers of Wissam al-Hasan, the security chief who was killed in a car bomb in 2012, would pay for their crime, remembering the family friend as a “true statesman.”
“They assassinated him just like they did [former Prime Minister] Rafik Hariri. ... The criminal is one regardless of their various names and descriptions. The hour of reckoning is coming no matter how long it takes,” Hariri said on the second anniversary of Hasan’s assassination.
Hasan was 47 when he was killed in a car bomb on Oct. 19, 2012, as his vehicle passed through a bustling Beirut neighborhood. His driver and a passer-by were also killed in the explosion.
“Hasan was part of our lives, an element of trust and became a brother and a son in the house of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri,” Hariri said. “But Lebanon's loss is bigger than mine and cannot be briefly described.”
Hariri said Hasan introduced a modern and developed approach to security that was now a basis for security agencies in Lebanon, “which are bearing unprecedented responsibility in protecting national security and civil peace.”
He said the head of the Internal Security Forces’ Information Branch was able to overcome his "political commitments" and offer a true model for a statesman without differentiating between the Lebanese.
The March 14 coalition has accused Syrian President Bashar Assad of being behind the assassination while others went so far as blaming Hezbollah for the killing of Hasan, who uncovered Israeli spy networks and an assassination attempt in Lebanon that was allegedly backed by the Syrian regime.
At the ISF headquarters in Beirut, ISF chief Maj. Gen. Ibrahim Basbous and Brig. Gen. Imad Othman, the head of the Information Branch, laid wreaths at the bottom of a statue of Hasan at the courtyard, which was built following his assassination.
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