Police Hunt for '4 Missing Sisters' of Murr's Assassination Car-Bomb

Naharnet

Police are reportedly engaged in a nationwide hunt for 4 'missing sisters' of Defense Minister Elias Murr's assassination car-bomb that are still at large, raising fears more bombing murders may still be in store. Police have traced the Mitsubishi-Pajero 4-wheeler used in Murr's assassination attempt on July 12 to Lebanon's northern port city of Tripoli, Al Mustaqbal newspaper reported on Thursday. It was bought on the spot with a blank power of attorney from a Tripoli car dealer upon its arrival at the harbor, wrote veteran criminologist Fares Khashan in a page-one Al Mustaqbal story that was highlighted, too, by the newspaper's television sister network Future-TV. The detained car dealer had told detectives that he sold four other similar 4-wheelers to the same person on the strength of the same blank power of attorney document, wrote Khashan, who has been relentlessly following up the domestic and international investigation into ex-Premier Rafik Hariri's assassination. "It could not be determined as yet whether the four missing sisters of Minister Murr's murder car-bomb were also rigged with explosives for similar terrorist operations. Police have been raiding various spots to find the still-at-large cars in scattered spots across the country in vain, which suggests the terrorists have heavily guarded hideouts," Khashan wrote. He quoted 'reliable sources' as contending that the engineers of Murr's abortive assassination belonged to a highly sophisticated organization with enormous financial resources, taking into consideration the fat costs of the modern cars, whose prices are multiplied when sold to anonymous power of attorney holders. Khashan noted that the sources assume the same sale method could have been employed for the white Mitsubishi truck-bomb used in the Beirut Feb. 14 attack at the St. George location against Rafik Hariri's motorcade. "Examination of Murr's car-bomb wreckage has established that highly professional experts are using sophisticated booby-trapping workshops that cannot be possibly available to Salafi fundamentalist factions," Khashan reported. "The sources believe Murr's would-be assassins are operating in more than one place in Lebanon along the lines of state-run intelligence apparatuses, making certain the group that obtains the cars is not in touch with the booby-trapping experts or the group assigned to surveillance and execution," Khashan noted.