General Mohammed Suleiman, an officer of the Syrian Arab Army was found dead in Tartus. He was assassinated in Syria only six months after the assassination of Imad Moghniya. Pro-Syrians called it an accident while some others considered it an assassination. What is sure is that he was shot? Shot to shut up or shot to be shot? That is a question that has been mingling in the headlines of the major newspapers for the last couple of days.

“Mohammed Suleiman, an officer of the Syrian Arab Army, has been assassinated,” Butheina Shaaban, an adviser to the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, told the press.

Al-Hayat the daily reported that “The circumstances of the incident are not clear”.

Joyce Akiki a political journalist in the News weekly Al-Afkar explained: “This is not by any means an ordinary assassination, especially not when it concerns a person in such a delicate position”.

“There are regional changes that are taking places and these changes are commanding a change in the Syrian regime, and maybe some settling of accounts” she added.

Marwan Dbaisseh, political analyst in the daily Al-liwaa said:” The assassination doesn’t really have to be because of a certain political background. It can be a criminal act or an act of vengeance of some sort. Like the assassination of the late singer Suzan tamim last week, everyone tried to create a link somehow yet a crime is a crime. Furthermore, it doesn’t really concern Lebanon because it is a crime that happened in Syria”.

Alternatively, Al-Bawaba an Arab news website, reported that the officer Mohammed Suleiman was “Syria's liaison officer with Lebanon's Hezbollah movement.”
A party backed up and adopted by Syria and Iran morally, politically and through continuous supplies of arms, while the same party is blacklisted in the United States who described it as a terrorist movement.

Moreover Akiki asserted: “in regimes like the Syrian regime, the assassination of a person can only mean that he knows too much. On the other hand, some media outlets have reported that the officer was in charge of delicate portfolios and that his assassination can be like that of Ghazi kanaan’s : an attempt to avoid the international tribunal”. The General like many other personalities, such as Ghazi Kanaan who was the Syrian delegate in Lebanon during the Syrian occupation, knew according to some experts too much information regarding the latest incidents in Lebanon.

In contrast Dbaisseh said: “Whether it’s an internal political assassination or not, the Syrians are really free to handle their state as they wish as long as it’s within their country”.