Gebran Tueni
Former Beirut MP, Former President
and General Manager of An-Nahar daily newspaper

Place and Date of Birth: Born in Beirut on September 15, 1957. Son of Ghassan Gebran Tueni and Nadia Hamadeh. Assassinated on Monday, December 13, 2005.
Sect: Greek Orthodox
Marital Status: Formerly married to Myrna Murr, daughter of Metn MP Michel Murr, with two daughters. Remaried recently to Siham Assaily with two twin daughters.
Educational Background: 1992: Management (Fontainebleau-France), 1977-1980: Journalism (Ecole Superieure De Journalisme), International Relations (Ecole Des Haute Etudes International (Paris)
Profession: Publisher, Chairman of the Board, General Ganager of Daily An-Nahar newspaper(since January 2000), General Manager, and Editorialist of An-Nahar (1993-1997), General Manager of Monthly magazine NOUN (since 1997), General Manager, Editor in Chief and Editorialist of weekly magazine An-Nahar Arab & International (1979-1990). Regular guest to radio and TV programs on political subjects.
Memberships: Member of the Lebanese Press Association (since January 2000). Special Adviser to the President of the "World Association of Newspapers" for the Arab World (1997). Member of: "Le Mondial de la Publicité Francophone" (since 1996), "Fund For Press Freedom" (since 1994), "International Advertising Association" (since 1996), "Press Weeklies Syndicate". Member of the Board of "World Association of Newspapers (since 1991).
Political Background: Elected Beirut MP in 2005 on Saad Hariri's Future Movement List. General Secretary of the "Lebanese Front" (1990). Founding Member of the "Mouvement de Soutien à la Liberation", which was established to support Former Prime Minister General Michel Aoun (1989), Member of the "Lebanese Front" (1986-1989). Member of the moderate center-right, Christian, "Qornet Shehwan" political grouping, which is close to Patriarch Sfeir, and advocates dialogue as a prelude to an accurate implementation of Taif agreement, especially the provisions related to redeployment of Syrian troops as a prelude to their final withdrawal from Lebanon. Outspoken critic of the Syrian presence in Lebanon.
Contact Information: An-Nahar Bldg., Banque Du Liban Street, Hamra. Tel: 01-353136, 01-742541. Fax: 01-348448. Email: gebran@annahar.com.lb. Paris: 35 Rue d'Artois, 75008, Tel: 33-1-42-258355. Fax: 33-1-45 638502

Assassination:

Gibran Tueni, 48, was killed Moday, December 13, 2005, along with three other people in a Beirut suburb, just hours after the Christian MP returned to Lebanon from France, where he had taken refuge fearing his life was in danger. The Lebanese government met in emergency session after the killing of Tueni and voted to call for international probes into the murders of Hariri, Tueni and more than a dozen other bombings targeting anti-Syrian figures over the past year.

"The murder... is yet another act of violence aimed at subjugating Lebanon to Syrian domination and silencing the Lebanese press," US President George W. Bush said in a statement released by the White House.

French President Jacques Chirac wrote to Tueni's widow to express his outrage saying Paris "condemns in the strongest terms this crime, which arouses horror and indignation".

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan described the killing as "cold-blooded" while British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, whose country holds the European Union's rotating presidency, called it a "cowardly" act aimed at destablising Lebanon.

The UN Security Council condemned "in the strongest terms" the "terrorist bombing".

Pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud said he was outraged by the killing, describing Tueni as a "symbol of freedom."

"His death only serves the enemies of Lebanon who have been exerting all efforts to weaken the country."

His funeral, held on Wednesday, December 15, 2006, was attended by over 300,000 people amid a total closure of Beiut's private institutions.

Tueni, director of the top-selling An-Nahar newspaper, was killed along with his driver Nicolas Flouti and two other people. About 30 others were wounded in the morning attack in the Christian suburb of Mkalles.

Police said the car bomb exploded near Tueni's armoured four-wheel drive vehicle, blasting it off the road into a ravine 100 metres (yards) away and engulfing it in flames. A dozen cars were turned into charred shells by the blast, some flung into neighbouring woodland, and windows were shattered as far as 500 metres away.

Druze leader and fellow MP Walid Jumblatt pointed the finger at Syria over the bombing, the 13th such attack since the blast that killed Hariri in February and plunged Lebanon into chaos not seen since the 1975-1990 civil war.

The attacks have created a climate of fear in Lebanon, with several anti-Syrian figures such as Hariri's MP son Saad spending much of their time out of the country.

Syrian Information Minister Mehdi Dakhlallah denied any role, and blamed "foreign interference."

Damascus claimed that the car bomb attack was part of a "larger vicious plan to implicate Syria and cause the maximum possible damage to its reputation.

The Hariri killing threw the spotlight on to Syria's dominant role in its smaller neighbour and in April Damascus pulled out the last of its troops from Lebanese soil after a 29-year military presence.

Related Links:
Anti-Syrian MP slain in Beirut car bombing
Beirut Blast Kills Foe of Syria
Tueni: Lebanon's new 'martyr' of independence

Dossier: Gibran Tueni
By Gary C. Gambill,
Middle East Inelligence Bulletin, June 1, 2000

Gibran Tueni, the editor of Beirut's mass circulation An-Nahar daily newspaper, fired a shot heard around the world in March, in the form of an editorial calling for the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon. Tueni's editorial, the first by a major journalist to explicitly make such a call since 1990, inspired the hearts and minds of journalists, students, lawyers, human rights activists and other sectors of country's beleaguered civil society. In the stroke of a pen, their days of remaining silent passed into the history books.

Tueni, 42, belongs to a family with a long tradition of journalism and public service. Al-Nahar was established by his grandfather in 1933. His father, Ghassan Tueni, ran the newspaper for decades, served in parliament, the cabinet, and represented Lebanon at the United Nations. Tueni was instilled with the principle of sectarian tolerance at an early age due to the intermarriage of his parents (his father was a Christian, his mother a Druze), which was virtually unheard of at that time. At age 18, he came to experience the horror of sectarian intolerance with the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war in 1976--he was shot in the legs by Palestinian guerrillas later that year and kidnapped for 36 hours by Christian militiamen the following year.

Tueni was an outspoken participant in the multi-sectarian, populist movement backing Prime Minister Michel Aoun's 1989-1990 attempt to expel Syrian military forces from Lebanon. After the Syrians occupied Beirut and ousted Aoun in October 1990, Tueni spent three years in exile in France. After his return to Lebanon, Tueni joined his father at Al-Nahar, which managed to flourish despite the new Syrian-installed regime's efforts to silence the press. In December 1999, Tueni succeeded his father as managing editor of the paper.

On the eve of this year's Geneva summit between Bill Clinton and Syrian President Hafez Assad, Tueni published an "open letter" in Al-Nahar to Bashar Assad, the son and heir apparent of the ailing Syrian President. "Many Lebanese are not happy about the Syrian military presence in Lebanon and believe that Syrian behavior in Lebanon contradicts the principles of sovereignty and independence," wrote Tueni. "People are wondering about Lebanon's fate, the utility of the Syrian army's presence in Lebanon and if the price of peace in the region resides in Syria's seizure of Lebanon. People do not accept that Lebanese can be detained in Syrian prisons." Tueni called on Syrian troops to withdraw from Lebanon in advance of this summer's parliamentary elections in order to assure the Lebanese people that Damascus will not intervene in the polls. "The people are asking for a timetable for Syrian redeployment and are [still] waiting for answers. Those asking for this redeployment are neither traitors nor enemies but persecuted citizens who want answers that will dispel their justifiable fears."¹

Tueni's editorial sparked public expressions of like-minded sentiments from other Lebanese journalists. A subsequent editorial by Samir Frangie in the French-language Lebanese daily L'Orient-Le Jour, entitled "A Necessary Polemic," praised Tueni for "opening a debate on issues that are preoccupying the Lebanese people : Would Lebanon pay the price of peace? Would Syria maintain its military presence in Lebanon after the Israeli pullout? Would The upcoming August parliamentary elections be a remake of those undertaken in 1992 and 1996?" Tueni, he said, "spoke out loud what people are afraid to say. His terms were moderate and aiming at a compromise with Syria."² Beirut's Daily Star stopped short of endorsing Tueni's editorial, but said that Damascus should specify "a realistic set of conditions for the troops' departure."³

Lebanese government officials and other pro-Syrian politicians sharply condemned Tueni's criticism of Syria and accused him of Zionist sympathies. "This broken record is played with pro-Israeli motivations every time there are developments that may favor Lebanese and Syrian interests," said President Emile Lahoud in a statement last month, adding that he is confident of "Syria's support for Lebanon's sovereignty and independence." Druze MP Walid Jumblatt's Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) released a statement condemning those who "revive claims that Syria is a foe and an enemy" and said that "advocates of this claim, which proved to be destructive to Lebanon, have not learned from the past." Akkar MP Fawzi Hobeiche hailed the Assad regime as the "first in Syria to recognize Lebanon's independence" and insisted that "if Syria wanted to annex Lebanon it would have done so during the war."⁴

"It is a pity that someone who calls for the minimum standards of sovereignty and independence for his country is accused of treason," said Tueni in response to the avalanche of criticism by pro-Syrian politicians. "My editorial was an address to Colonel Bashar Assad and a criticism of the Lebanese politicians who exploit Lebanese-Syrian ties to serve their interests. Those who responded negatively are those who felt targeted by the editorial and felt the need to defend themselves. They do not seem to have read my editorial."⁵ Bashar Assad did not publicly comment on Tueni's article. Within days of its publication, however, he summoned Lebanese Prime Minister Selim al-Hoss to a meeting in Damascus and no doubt expressed his thoughts on the matter.

As a result of the April intifada by supporters of Aoun⁶ and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon in May, the willingness of Lebanese civil society to challenge Syrian authority has continued to grow. As perhaps the most eloquent advocate of his country's sovereignty and freedom still residing in Lebanon, Tueni will play instrumental role in Lebanese political developments in the coming years.

  ¹ Open Letter to Bashar Assad, Al-Nahar (Beirut), 23 March 2000. Republished in The Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, April 2000.
  ² L'Orient-Le Jour (Beirut), 27 March 2000.
  ³ The Daily Star (Beirut), 29 March 2000.
  ⁴ Al-Nahar (Beirut), 27 March 2000.
  ⁵ The Daily Star (Beirut), 27 March 2000.
  ⁶ Lebanon's Intifada, The Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, April 2000.