Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has appealed to the United Nations to help bring Gebran Tueni’s murderers to justice. A parliamentarian and publisher of one of the Middle East’s leading Arabic-language dailies, Tueni was killed in a targeted car-bombing in the Beirut suburb of Mkalles three years ago, December 12, 2005.
“We join the Tueni family and all of An-Nahar’s staff in voicing our deep grief and in paying tribute to this leading journalist’s memory,” RSF said. “Like his colleague Samir Kassir, who was murdered in May 2005, Tueni confronted the serious threats to which he was exposed in Lebanon and paid for his commitment with his life.” It added, “Three years later, his killers are still at large and RSF appeals to the United Nations to take drastic measures to expose the identity of those who murdered him.”
"We are outraged that those who savagely murdered our colleagues Gebran Tueni and Samir Kassir and attempted to kill May Chidiac continue to walk free," said Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) Deputy Director Robert Mahoney. "This grim anniversary is a reminder that those responsible for murdering and attacking journalists must be brought to justice without further delay; the failure to do so will only encourage self-censorship and more attacks on independent journalists, not only in Lebanon but throughout the region."
Lebanon was shaken by a series of high-profile political killings in 2005 beginning with former prime minister Rafik Hariri’s assassination on February 14 that year. An-Nahar editorial writer and intellectual Samir Kassir was killed outside his home in the Beirut district of Ashrafieh on June 2 by plastic explosives placed underneath his car.
Tueni, An-Nahar’s CEO and parliamentary representative for Beirut, was killed on December 12 while being driven in convoy to the newspaper’s offices in the city centre. A car-bomb left at the side of the Mkalles road was set off as Tueni’s convoy drove by. Three other people were killed and 10 seriously wounded.
An outspoken advocate of press freedom in the Arab world and well-known to the international media, Tueni was one of the leading architects of Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution and it was clear that his life was in danger, especially in the wake of Hariri’s assassination.
The international tribunal that was tasked with investigating the Hariri assassination decided to extend its mandate to cover all of the high-profile political murders from the start of October 2004 if they appeared to be linked to Hariri’s death.
An An-Nahar representative told RSF that the international investigation is continuing. She added that it is being conducted with complete secrecy and those in charge have not said whether they have learned anything about Tueni’s death.
In Tueni’s memory, the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) awards a Gebran Tueni Prize each year to an Arab newspaper editor or publisher.
