Syria and Lebanon: keeping it in the family  About the author  A
tumultuous year in Lebanon is ending as it has begun, with an
assassination to shock and frighten the nation. The killing of
the prominent journalist and politician Gebran Tueni in Beirut
on 12 December MP was in itself a terrible act – Tueni ,
publisher of the newspaper an-Nahar and a strong critic of
Syrian interference in Lebanese affairs, was blown up by a bomb
placed in a parked car, one day after he had returned from Paris
after a four-month self-exile. It has also reconfirmed how long,
difficult and costly the achievement of Lebanon’s “second
independence” will be.  It seems obvious that the timing of
Tueni’s murder was carefully chosen: to divert attention from
the second report by United Nations investigator Detlev Mehlis
into the assassination of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri on
14 February 2005. Both reports have condemned Syria while
complaining of Syrian obstruction in discovering the full facts
of the murder. Indeed, Damascus