19 Facts About Ghazi Kanaan

Ghazi Kanaan was a Syrian military officer and intelligence chief who served as Syria's interior minister from 2004 to 2005.

Ghazi Kanaan was the long-time head of Syria's security apparatus in Lebanon from 1982 to 2002.

Ghazi Kanaan was questioned during the investigation into Rafic Hariri's assassination in 2005.

Ghazi Kanaan was born in 1942 in Bhamra, near Qardaha, the home town of former Syrian president Hafez al-Assad.

Ghazi Kanaan was a member of the Kalbiyya tribe and a distant relative of Bashar's mother, Anisa Makhlouf.

Ghazi Kanaan participated in the 1973 Yom Kippur War where he fought the Israelis in the Golan Heights.

Ghazi Kanaan rose in rank to colonel and served as the director of intelligence in Central Syria from 1981 to 1982.

However, Ghazi Kanaan did not leave Lebanon until a ceremony was held by then Lebanese prime minister Rafic Hariri at the prime ministry on 9 October 2003, and when Hariri symbolically gave him the key of the city of Beirut.

Ghazi Kanaan was succeeded in Lebanon by Rustum Ghazali, his deputy.

In 2004, after a string of bombings targeting leading Hamas members given sanctuary in Syria, claimed by Syria to have been the work of Israeli intelligence, Ghazi Kanaan was assigned by president al-Assad to the cabinet post of interior minister in October 2004 in a cabinet rehuffle.

Ghazi Kanaan was not regarded as a member of Bashar al-Assad's inner circle.

Ghazi Kanaan was known to have close links with the former vice president, Abdul Halim Khaddam who had resigned in the summer of 2005.

Ghazi Kanaan was one of the shareholders of LibanCell, a cellular phone company.

Ghazi Kanaan was married and had six children, four sons and two daughters.

Ghazi Kanaan provided financial support to build the Jaafar Tayar mosque, established a library with seven computers and built a community center named for his father, Mohammed Ali in Bhamra.

Ghazi Kanaan was interviewed as a witness in September 2005 by a United Nations team led by Detlev Mehlis probing the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Syrian interior ministry and other officials reported that Ghazi Kanaan died in a Damascus hospital of a gunshot wound to the head on 12 October 2005.

Lebanese journalist Charles Ayoub stated in an interview with Tony Khalife on 26 October 2021 that Ghazi Kanaan told him three months before his death that he was going to commit suicide and that he had already prepared his grave in his village.

For instance, Ghazi Kanaan's death is seen as a move to cut a key connection to the alleged Syrian participation in the assassination of Rafik Hariri.