Assassination of Luna al-Shibl: Mysterious Purges Target Syrian Officials Post Revolution

After the Syrian revolution erupted in March 2011 and threatened al-Assad regime's rule, assassinations and physical eliminations of high-ranking officials and military leaders within the regime escalated rapidly.

Notably, most of these officials had either participated in suppressing the revolution or justified al-Assad regime's crimes in their respective positions.

One of them was Luna al-Shibl, the special advisor to President Bashar al-Assad, who was reported dead in a car accident on July 5, 2024.

Luna al-Shibl

According to the Syrian presidency, Luna al-Shibl (49 years old), who served as the Director of the Political and Media Office in the Presidency, then Special Advisor in the Presidency in recent years, died as a result of a tragic car accident on a road leading to Damascus on July 2, 2024.

Luna al-Shibl was born in 1975 in the southern Syrian city of As-Suwayda, to a Druze family, and studied journalism and media at Damascus University.

She worked with Al-Jazeera from 2003 until she announced her resignation from the channel on May 25, 2010, and returned to Syria to work on state television.

On November 14, 2020, al-Shibl was transferred from the General Authority for Radio and Television to the Presidency, subsequently appointed as a special advisor to Assad.

Syrian opposition media preempted the regime's announcement about al-Shibl's car accident in the Yafour area of rural Damascus and her transfer to the Sham Hospital in the capital by suggesting she was assassinated.

While the Syrian regime did not detail the incident, which appeared mysterious and "orchestrated" according to Syrian opposition figures, sources from the opposition's Syria TV revealed that an armored car rammed al-Shibl's vehicle on the Damascus-Yafour highway, pushing it into the middle of the road.

The Istanbul-based television added that the car that hit her vehicle was equipped with a front iron bumper, causing al-Shibl to suffer severe brain hemorrhage.

Social media users circulated images of an older model BMW that had collided with a concrete barrier on the side of a public road in rural Damascus, with its windows intact.

Notably, the accident occurred after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad removed Luna al-Shibl's name from the list of the central committee of the Ba'ath Party in May 2024, as well as her husband, Ammar Saati, the former head of the Syrian Students Union and a three-time member of the People's Assembly since 2000.

Al-Shibl married Saati in 2016 after divorcing Lebanese journalist Sami Kleib.

Before the car accident was announced, opposition media reported the arrest of Luna’s brother, Brigadier General in Assad’s forces, Molham al-Shibl, and his wife on charges of espionage, according to Syria TV.

On June 23, 2024, the Syrian Ministry of Higher Education ended Ammar Saati's position as an assistant professor at Damascus University, as reported by local media.

Saati, known for inciting the suppression of Syrian university students during the revolution, later helped form the militia Ba'ath Battalions, which took up arms and entered cities alongside Assad’s forces, committing acts of violence, according to opposition sites.

Following al-Shibl's death announcement, Syrian activists questioned the nature of the accident, noting that the damage to the car, as seen in published photos, seemed minor and unlikely to have resulted in her being admitted to the intensive care unit at Sham Hospital.

The Syrian authorities did not provide any information about the health status of Luna al-Shibl's driver or companion.

In this context, recent years have revealed Assad's regime resorting to mysterious eliminations within its ranks.

The elimination of Luna al-Shibl recalls the senior officials and officers from Assad’s inner circle who were announced dead or killed under unclear circumstances following the outbreak of the revolution.

While the regime provided numerous explanations for these eliminations, Syrians and experts perceive them as "direct assassinations" driven by political motives related to internal power struggles and their impact on the regime's survival.

Nevertheless, individuals have attempted to provide explanations for these eliminations, which remain speculative and based on analysts' opinions or anonymous sources within the regime.

The First Eliminations 

The most mysterious incident to date in the Syrian scene, marking the beginning of eliminations within al-Assad's inner circle, was the assassination of the "Crisis Cell" members. This cell was formed by al-Assad to suppress the revolution.

These members were killed in a mysterious explosion that targeted a meeting at the National Security Bureau building in the upscale Rawda district of Damascus on July 18, 2012.

The explosion killed four pillars of the Syrian regime: then-Deputy Defense Minister Assef Shawkat, who was the husband of Bashar's only sister, Bushra al-Assad, who had to leave Syria in 2012 to live in Dubai with two of her children after her husband's death.

Also killed were Deputy Vice President General Hasan Turkmani, then-Defense Minister General Dawoud Abdallah Raijha, and the head of the National Security Bureau, General Hisham Ikhtiyar.

The explosion remains a mystery to this day, especially since it occurred at the highly fortified General Staff Headquarters, where entry is strictly controlled.

Years later, former Syrian Prime Minister Riyad Hijab, who defected from Assad's regime in August 2012, spoke about the party behind the explosion. At the time of the explosion, Riyad Hijab was still in office and attended the funeral of the officers, which Bashar al-Assad did not.

In an interview with Al-Jazeera on September 29, 2023, Riyad Hijab stated, "The Syrian regime played a major role in the Crisis Cell explosion, aiming to eliminate Assef Shawkat because Bashar and his brother Maher feared him."

Hijab's assertions were supported by defected officers from Assad's forces, who claimed that Shawkat opposed the security solution and demanded concessions from Bashar to quell the protests.

Hijab also mentioned in the interview that "Bashar al-Assad refused to attend the funeral ceremonies."

Following the Crisis Cell explosion and the ensuing rumors about Assad's elimination of top security officials who sought non-military solutions to suppress the revolution, the assassinations continued.

Syrian state television announced the death of Major-General Jameh Jameh on October 17, 2013. Jameh, the head of military intelligence in Deir Ezzor province, was responsible for leading the security committee to suppress the province.

At the time, state television merely stated that Jameh was killed "while performing his duties," while local media reported that he was killed by a roadside bomb targeting his convoy in the Jura neighborhood of Deir Ezzor.

However, the official narrative of Jameh's death raised suspicions, particularly since he held extensive and confidential files on al-Assad regime's era in Lebanon.

Jameh was the last head of Syrian military intelligence in Beirut before the Syrian army left Lebanon in April 2005, following the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February of the same year.

Jameh's name appeared among the suspects in Hariri's assassination during Detlev Mehlis's tenure on the international investigation commission.

Another incident that shook Latakia, the birthplace of President al-Assad and a stronghold of his regime's military and security forces from the Alawite sect, was the announcement of the death of Hilal, Bashar Assad's cousin, in rural Latakia during clashes on March 23, 2014.

Immediately, suspicions arose about Hilal's assassination, as he led the National Defense Militia in Latakia, which was formed by loyalists to suppress the revolution and fight alongside Assad's forces.

Following Hilal Assad's establishment of the National Defense militia on the Syrian coast and his increasing popularity as governor of Latakia, loyalists accused his cousin Bashar al-Assad and his regime of assassinating him, especially since he wielded significant influence there.

Intelligence Puzzles 

The announcement of the sudden death of former Syrian Political Security Directorate General, Brigadier General Rustum Ghazaleh, on April 24, 2015, came a month after leaks revealed he was critically ill in a Damascus hospital.

Appointed by Bashar al-Assad as Political Security Director in Syria in 2012, Ghazaleh's name alone invoked fear in Syria and Lebanon.

Syrian television briefly reported Ghazaleh's passing due to a "health condition," leaving his final days in a Damascus hospital in mystery.

Reports suggested he was fatally beaten in mid-March 2015 by General Rafeeq Shahada's guard.

At the time, Ghazaleh had visited Shahada's office, who then served as head of Military Intelligence, to reprimand him over administrative disagreements in Daraa, Ghazaleh's hometown.

According to local media sources, Bashar al-Assad dismissed Ghazaleh and Military Intelligence chief Brigadier General Rafeeq Shahada on March 20, 2015.

Brigadier General Rustum Ghazaleh headed Syria's intelligence and reconnaissance agency within Lebanon's Syrian Forces in 2002 before returning after the Syrian Army's withdrawal in 2005.

Some Lebanese politicians attributed Ghazaleh's elimination to information he had previously provided about his work in Lebanon, particularly as one of five Syrian officers interrogated in the Rafik Hariri assassination case.

The series of mysterious assassinations of prominent figures within al-Assad regime continued, with the announcement of the death of Brigadier General Issam Zahreddine, commander of the Deir el-Zor garrison since 2015, due to a mine explosion on October 18, 2017, as reported by Syrian state media.

Zahreddine was one of Bashar al-Assad's key figures relied upon for eliminating his adversaries after the Syrian uprising, and he enjoyed support from Russia.

He led operations in various regions and was accused of committing massacres against civilians in the Baba Amr district in Homs, Eastern Ghouta, and Deir el-Zor.

In November 2018, the French Intelligence Research Center published a report by director of research Alain Rodier, stating that "Moscow believed that General Zahreddine was assassinated on orders from Tehran, because he had become hugely popular not only among the people, but also with Bashar al-Assad."

Issam Zahreddine had threatened Syrian refugees in September 2017, whom the military apparatus of al-Assad regime had driven out, should they return to their country.

In a video excerpt from an interview broadcast by the Syrian regime-affiliated Alekhbariya channel, Zahreddine directed his message to all those who had fled Syria to other countries, saying, "Please do not come back. If the state forgives you, we will not forget and we will not forgive."

He continued in colloquial Syrian dialect, “A piece of advice from this beard: none of you should come back,” followed by mocking laughter from the officers and soldiers around him saying, "That's good," indicating that this warning was taken humorously.