Israeli ‘commandos assassinated’ top Syrian general

Newly uncovered NSA files leaked by Edward Snowden reveal that Israeli commandos were behind the 2008 assassination of Syrian President al-Assad’s closest confidante.

Citing recently leaked NSA documents, the report said that Israel’s elite naval commandos of Shayetet 13 stormed into Suleiman’s seaside vacation from the beach and shot the general before quickly escaping back to the sea.

An entry in the NSA’s internal version of Wikipedia described the killing by “Israeli naval commandos” in Tartus as “the first known instance of Israel targeting a legitimate government official”, according to the Intercept.

While both the NSA and the Prime Minister’s Office have kept mum about the incident, sources consulted by The Intercept, a website created by American journalist Glenn Greenwald to report on Snowden’s leaks, claimed that the USA has long had ears inside Israeli espionage circles.

It cited three former U.S. intelligence officers as saying that the document’s classification markings indicated that the NSA learned of the assassination through surveillance. The information in the document was labelled “SI”, which means the intelligence was collected by monitoring communications signals.

“For them it’s not only payback, but mitigates future operations”, a retired U.S. intelligence officer who worked with Israeli officials, said. A Syrian investigation into the general’s death found $80 million in cash at his home.

He was also believed to be responsible for the security and construction of a Syrian nuclear facility that was destroyed in an Israeli air strike in September 2007.

Mr. Suleiman was described in the Middle East press as being more important than anyone else in Assad’s inner circle.

So who was Suleiman and why did Israel want him dead?

“The Israelis may have had many good reasons to kill [Suleiman]”, Mary Ellen O’Connell, a professor of global law, told the website.

“Under worldwide law it’s absolutely clear that in Syria in 2008, they had no rights under the laws of war because at the time there was no armed conflict”. The money cast doubt on Suleiman’s loyalty to Assad and sparked the rumors that he had been killed over an internal dispute.

Assad’s government withheld news of Suleiman’s death for four days. Mugniyeh was targeted by the secret services because of his involvement in a number of terror attacks against U.S. targets, such as the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, killing 241 American nationals.

Another cable, sent after Suleiman’s assassination, said the officer enjoyed a reputation as having “special status and proximity to Bashar”.

The Israeli assassination of Suleiman came less than six months after a joint Mossad-CIA team assassinated a top Hezbollah operative in the heart of Damascus, according to several current and former USA military and intelligence officials.