Who killed Elie Hobeika?

In Beirut, they're blaming Ariel Sharon for the death of the Lebanese warlord and war criminal -- but in this bloody parlor game, there's a culprit for every political taste.

By Paul Wachter

Jan 26, 2002 | Of all the conspiracy theories floating around Lebanon following the assassination of former Christian warlord Elie Hobeika on Thursday, here's the one -- related to me by a cab driver -- that I find most unlikely: Moammar Gadhafi wanted to stir up trouble to get the March Arab League summit moved from Lebanon, whose Shiite community holds the Libyan president responsible for murdering their spiritual leader nearly 25 years ago.

Realistically, though, my cab driver's theory is a bit of a stretch. Gadhafi didn't have anything against Hobeika. But the Israelis, Syrians, Palestinians and Lebanese -- that's another story.

Here in Beirut, the cafes are abuzz with intriguing theories about who killed Hobeika. There are plenty of plausible suspects to work with. Like Sir William McCordle, the randy millionaire who ends up dead in Robert Altman's new "Gosford Park," Hobeika had given almost everyone who sees fit to bump elbows at Lebanon's dinner table a reason to want him six feet under. Was it Mrs. Israel in the conservatory with the knife? Col. Syria in the bedroom with the candelabra? Mr. Palestinian in the dining room with the revolver?

The puzzle seems unlikely ever to be solved. This much is undisputed: Hobeika died early Thursday morning when he drove past a bomb-rigged Mercedes parked only 100 yards from his home in the Beirut Christian suburb of Hazmieh. No arrests have been made, and it doesn't seem like any are imminent. Investigators say the bomb -- 20 pounds of TNT -- was activated by remote control. Hobeika and his three bodyguards died instantly, their bodies, in pieces, blown from the car. According to explosives experts at the scene, the bomb triggered the subsequent explosion of five oxygen tanks in Hobeika's Range Rover. Apparently the man whose name, along with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's, will forever be associated with the 1982 massacre at Sabra and Shatila, was going scuba diving.

It was a nasty end to a nasty life, one highlighted by one of the most brutal chapters in the blood-drenched history of the Israeli-Arab confrontation. For three days in September 1982, the youthful Hobeika, who was head of the security arm of the pro-Israel Lebanese Forces militia, presided over the protracted massacre of between 800 and 1,700 unarmed and helpless Palestinians -- men, women and children -- at the two refugee camps. But while the most prominent atrocity on Hobeika's bloodstained résumé, it was not the only one. Long before the 1982 Israeli invasion that triggered the Sabra and Shatila massacre, Hobeika had a long career of dispatching his Christian rivals. In 1978, at the tender age of 23, he helped Christian leader Bashir Gemayel get rid of his fellow Christian rivals, leading the forces that slaughtered Tony Franjieh, his wife and child and 25 of his followers.

After the war's end in 1991, with Syrians pulling the strings in Lebanon, he joined many other warlords in high office, serving in three successive Cabinet positions, before finally being voted out of Parliament in the 2000 elections. (Some Lebanese believe that Hobeika switched over to the Syrian side earlier and helped orchestrate president Bashir Gemayel's 1982 assassination.)

The survivors of Sabra and Shatila must be included among the list of potential suspects in the Hobeika killing. So too, must old Christian enemies who never forgave Hobeika for his infighting and later desertion to the Syrian camp. There were some muted celebrations at Lebanon's various Palestinian refugee camps on Thursday. Muted perhaps in order not to arouse any reprisals from the Lebanese government and also, certainly, because of the memory that, admittedly during different times and circumstances, it was the assassination of a Christian notable, Gemayel, that sparked the Sabra and Shatila massacres.

But despite these obvious motives, few in Lebanon believe Palestinians or old Christian enemies were behind Hobeika's assassination. "Why would they do it now, after all these years?" was the common response when I mentioned these possibilities to various Lebanese.

"Yes, of course we're glad he's dead," one old Palestinian man told me Friday morning as we sat outside his shop, sipping tea in a comparatively less squalid section of Sabra. "We all know people who died during the massacre." But most Palestinians I spoke with, like most Lebanese, believe that Hobeika was murdered by a person who they believe more culpable for Sabra and Shatila: Ariel Sharon. And they pointed to Hobeika's recent statements indicating that he would testify against Sharon in a Brussels court for lawyers representing survivors of the camp massacres, who accuse Sharon of having committed war crimes.

Next Page: Sharon's painful past -- and Syria's possible motives

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