When Lebanese anti-Hezbollah publisher and documentary producer Lokman Slim did not return home Wednesday night after visiting a friend in a rural village, his sister Rasha had a very bad feeling. Her brother was increasingly worried about his fate, predicting even last year that if anything happened to him, Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group whose political party Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc is extremely influential in the Lebanese parliament , had “full responsibility for what happened what might happen.”
Rasha al-Ameer posted urgent messages on Facebook and Twitter at dawn, including one in which she said she lost contact with her brother. “My brother Lokman Slim left Niha in the south 6 hours ago on his way to Beirut and he has not returned yet,” she wrote. “His phone has no answer. Anyone who knows about him can contact me, please. “A few hours later, the police found his body in the car, with two fatal bullet holes in his skull.
Friends of the open critic Hezbollah initially assumed he had been abducted, worried about growing threats following a recent television appearance criticizing the drastic political situation in Lebanon and calling for action to form a new government. Slim, 59, recently stepped up his criticism, telling Arab News that “Lebanon’s claim to neutrality today, despite its importance, remains unenforceable in light of Hezbollah’s domination of the country and government.”
Lebanon’s interim prime minister, Saad Hariri, has condemned Slim’s assassination, and the country’s interior minister Mohammed Fahmi has called it “horrible.”
Bassem Sabeh, a former parliamentarian, told Arab News that the killing was a “direct message to all activists, writers and politicians in the Shiite community who mobilize and express their ideas outside Hezbollah’s political orbit.”
Slim, who studied in France, was described in Lebanese news as “Hezbollah’s most prominent and fierce” opponent “which made him vulnerable to accusations and threats from the party and its supporters at other times.”
His sister Rasha told reporters she found out what happened to Slim through a news alert while she was at the police station to report him missing. “It simply came to our notice then. And they lost a noble enemy … It is rare for someone to quarrel with them and live among them with respect, ”she said. “Killing is the only language I speak fluently.”
Police have not yet charged anyone with killing the journalist.