- “Who killed Lokman Slim?”

- It was Hezbollah!” That is how the widow of the opposition figure who was killed two years ago responded, as she fights for justice against the powerful militia.

Lokman probably did not notice the cars that had been following him for nearly two hours across half the country. Perhaps it did not matter to him, even after years of death threats. He had survived all those threats... until that happened.

On the afternoon of February 03, 2021, when Lokman Slim arrived at a friend’s house in the village of Niha, he had barely eight hours left to live. He enjoyed a peaceful meal in pleasant company and was so relaxed that was ready to take a nap on the sofa at six o’clock, with only three and a half hours remaining.

His murder two years ago sparked international outrage, with the American and French governments and the Arab League condemning this “barbaric act” and calling for those responsible to be held accountable. But so far, no one has been arrested or even identified, although Slim’s killers did everything except remain hidden. Five cars chased Slim, their occupants surveilled the house he was in, parked nearby for hours, and waited for him to come out again.

The despicable thing about this case is that there are so many details, videos, and known facts, yet the investigation is going around in circles; this is where the interests and areas of control of Hezbollah are involved.

The name means “Party of God”: it derives his power from its claim of absolute authority, acting as an executor of God’s will by assuming responsibility over the Shiites of Lebanon, and tolerating the State as long as it does not interfere in its affairs.

Despite Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied territories in southern Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah claimed it was still fighting against it. It was as if it needed a state of war to give it public legitimacy, allowing it to tighten its grip on society, even to the point of repression, even if the reality of war led to a destructive attack like the one that happened in 2006, causing damage and destruction: this is what Slim was accusing Hezbollah of causing.

What is certain here is that this case was not closed silently, as is the case with all assassination files in Lebanon, due to the perseverance of Lokman Slim’s German widow, film producer Monika Borgmann, and his sister Rasha al Ameer, who now runs the family’s publishing house alone.

• “Perhaps they thought they could intimidate us and that we would leave the country,” says Borgmann at her home in Haret Hreik, where she and Slim lived.

“But we did not do that,” she continues.

• But who are they?
• “It is perfectly clear... they are members of Hezbollah.” “But that is not enough, I want action, I want justice.”

Perhaps what Monica wanted in terms of justice and its procedures was something hopeless, given Lebanon’s history and its record of murders of journalists, writers, religious figures, and senior politicians, including a president and a prime minister. Although there have been nearly two hundred such crimes since the 1960s, none of them have been resolved by a verdict or otherwise.

But this did not prevent Lokman Slim from being a voice of peaceful defiance against Hezbollah, through words, theatrical productions, and media. This voice resonated in their stronghold, where the descendant of an old Shiite family lived in his inherited walled garden in southern Beirut.

At the gate, there were two men from Hezbollah, and their surveillance camera was positioned at a height of three meters.

“We are under good protection.” That is how Slim would react whenever someone asked him about these measures.

But in December 2019, when threatening posters were plastered on the outer walls of his house, bearing messages such as “Lokman the traitor” or “Glory to the silencer,” he responded with a prophetic statement declaring that any harm that befell him or his family is the responsibility of  Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, and also Nabih Berri, the leader of the allied Amal Movement, who also serves [in his spare time] as Speaker of Parliament. For a prominent figure from within the same religious community [i.e., the Shia community] to dare to criticize the Shia leaders was considered treason in their eyes.

The American embassy in Beirut warned Slim that he was in real danger and that he should leave the country, but he did not want to go and live in exile.

A review of the investigations, compiled from several scattered pieces of information and from different sources regarding Slim’s last journey, reveals a clear picture of a highly professional and organized military killing squad.

On October 03, Slim traveled south in a Toyota Corolla. Surveillance cameras at gas stations, shops, and private homes, along with analysis of phone data and the “My Health” application on Slim’s phone, provided a detailed and clear picture of what happened next:

At 12:06 PM: Lokman Slim’s Toyota appears on camera for the first time in the Khaldeh area, followed by Toyota Camry, Mercedes, and Audi Q5 cars. These cars were spotted several times in the following half hour.

At 12:42 PM: An Infiniti SUV appears in Khaldeh, followed by a Nissan Pathfinder. They will be spotted again in the evening near Slim.

At 12:44 PM: The drivers coordinate with each other using two phone numbers that had not been used before and were not used afterwards. A text message from the first number reads: “Call me, partner.”

At 1:00 PM: From the second phone number: “Where are you?”. Again, the conversations are consistent.

At 1:34 PM: Slim arrives in the village of Niha. The Mercedes car that was chasing Slim is parked nearby, and the other cars are likely do the same as well.

At 3:11 PM: The Toyota Camry was spotted in Khaldeh on the road returning from South.

At 5:04 PM: The Mercedes car was spotted in Khaldeh on the way back, and its trace was lost there.

At 6:11 PM: The Audi Q5 appears in a village adjacent to the village of Niha.

At 8:36 PM: Slim leaves, and less than a minute later, the Infiniti SUV follows him. The investigator believes that the Nissan Pathfinder blocked the narrow road about 400 meters from the house. Slim’s glasses would later be found there several hours later, and his mobile phone a little further away.

At 8:38 PM, the “My Health” application on Lokman’s phone recorded 82 steps and approximately 60 meters. Was this his last attempt to escape? A bullet, precisely in the middle of his back, caused internal bleeding. What proves that Slim was still alive is the scratches on his knee and a hematoma on his left foot, indicating that he fell and was restrained by force.

At 8:40 PM: A Nissan Pathfinder was spotted in the vicinity, on the highway. Investigators believe that the kidnapped Slim was inside it.

At 8:41 PM: The Infiniti SUV departs in the same direction as the Pathfinder, followed by Slim’s Toyota.

At 8:56 PM: The Audi Q5 leaves, and minutes later, these cars, which had been repeatedly following Slim, were spotted heading towards Beirut.

At 9:14 PM: The Nissan Pathfinder leaves the highway above Al-Baysariyeh and reaches a small tunnel, where Slim’s car is also found. In the following minutes, the perpetrators would fire five bullets into Lokman Slim’s head from close range: Execution.

At 9:19 PM, Slim’s Toyota and the Nissan Pathfinder exit the tunnel onto a small street parallel to the highway, heading towards the spot where Slim’s car and body were found the following morning.

The cars that chased, kidnapped, and later killed Slim were spotted heading southeast, within the area controlled by Hezbollah, and then disappeared without a trace.

The distance between the kidnapping site and the street adjacent to the highway, where Slim’s car was found the next day, is 36 kilometers. Half of this road consists of densely populated villages, and the license plates of all the cars that chased and kidnaped Slim are known, registered, and authentic.

Most of these details were gathered by the Internal Security Forces Intelligence [i.e., the Information Department], which enjoys a good reputation for being more independent in operating under political pressure compared to Army Intelligence or State Security.

But the [Information Department] investigative efforts would stop when they got close to identifying the perpetrators: Where did the car chase begin and end? Weren’t there any cameras in the area? If video recordings that show that all the cars exist, why do not they show the faces of the passengers? Why were Slim’s wife and close friends questioned, but not the residents of the area [where the crime happened]? Why was the road to the crime scene, where Slim’s car was found, not closed off? And why weren’t intruders prevented from touching the car and obliterating all the evidence?

“When someone insists on repeating the question, a sorrowful silence will eventually follow,” says Moussa Khoury, Monica Borgmann’s lawyer, summarizing the past few months. He continues, “Then there is the following question: Do you want to risk a new civil war?”

On the morning of February 4, the day Slim’s body was found, the son of Hezbollah’s Secretary-General did not remain completely silent. When television stations announced the news of the murder, Jawad Nasrallah tweeted: “The loss of some is in reality an unexpected gain and blessing,” followed by the hashtag #no_regret. Jawad later deleted the tweet, stating that he did not mean Slim. His father, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, never denied responsibility for Slim’s murder; instead, he complained indignantly in a televised speech that, “Any incident that happens in your area, you are guilty until proven innocent.” When Internal Security investigators asked Hezbollah to provide them with surveillance camera recordings, they refused.

During the investigations, Monica Borgmann was asked questions such as, “Was her husband having an affair with someone? Or did he commit suicide?” “But they did not ask the most obvious question,” Borgmann tells us in a study inside the family home. She continues, saying that one question still haunts her: “What would have happened if I had gone with him? I was afraid of COVID-19 back then, and I did not want to sit with all the friends in Niha in a closed room. Would we both have died? Or would that have saved him?”

Their mission was to confront repression and the perpetual concealment of crimes by reviving memory and highlighting answers to these crucial questions: “Who committed the atrocities in the civil war?” “Who are the assassins?”

In 2005, Slim and Borgmann gained international recognition with their documentary film “Massaker,” which they screened at the Berlinale festival and other festivals. They succeeded in getting six of those involved in the massacres of Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila in 1982 to speak out.

In small rooms, men whose faces were not visible spoke about the extent of the suffering they endured by participating in this massacre, and that only the “professional slayer” enjoyed the killing.

Looking back at the history of this massacre, it took place two days after the withdrawal of the fighters of the Palestine Liberation Organization from West Beirut. At that time, members of the Lebanese Forces militia entered the Palestinian refugee camp and killed unarmed civilians. The number of victims exceeded 3,000, including women, children, and elderly. However, the crime happened under cover and with willful disregard of the Israeli forces led by Ariel Sharon.

Slim and Borgman established the “UMAM Documentation and Research (UMAM D&R)” organization in a property owned by the family, serving as an accessible archive of Lebanon’s greatest history. It is a “lifeline” for pamphlets and books from the civil war, film reels from major production companies at Studio Baalbek, and records from the legendary Carlton Hotel. Therefore, it can be said that they saved the records of Lebanese history from landfill.

In another documentary project, the two brought together Lebanese prisoners who had been detained in the notorious ‘Tadmor’ (Palmyra) prison in Syria. First in a play, and then in the 2016 documentary film “Tadmor,” in which the prisoners recounted their years of suffering, playing the roles of both victims and perpetrators.

Now, despite the loneliness Monica feels after Lokman’s death, she says: “At the heart of everything we did was the issue of fighting against impunity. And now I continue to do so without Lokman, but for his sake. This is my life; I have nothing else.”

It took about nine months for Borgman and her lawyer to transfer the case from a local court in the southern city of Sidon to Beirut. A small victory. Since then, the case has been in the hands of Beirut’s First Investigating Judge, Charbel Abou Samra, who is considered one of the most courageous and upright judges in Lebanon.

On a Thursday in January 2022, a hearing was held concerning Slim’s case. The entire building was closed due to a spontaneous demonstration. People were smoking in the courtroom, and there were detainees, handcuffed, standing facing the wall, and soldiers waiting among the lawyers and visitors. The hearing was postponed for hours, until Judge Abou Samra finally appeared, the only judge present in the court, while the other judges were on strike because of their salaries, which had been severely eroded by inflation and barely allowed them to even get to work.

Abou Samra, a heavy smoker, sat at a substitute desk waiting for witnesses from Niha, but they never arrived. The lawyer was trying to get the witnesses’ addresses, as it was clear that the police station in the area did not want to cooperate with Judge Abou Samra. But why? The weary judge explained, “That is a procedural secret.” When asked: Isn’t it unusual for the investigation to always stop when it reaches sensitive points, he answers, “No.”

The diplomats also advise against going to the place where the killers left Slim’s body, and they quickly add: “Don’t leave the highway!”

On January 14, 2022, approximately one kilometer from where Slim’s car was found, Irish soldier Sean Rooney, serving with UNIFIL, was shot dead. UNIFIL is the United Nations Interim Force responsible for maintaining the fragile truce between Israel and Hezbollah in South Lebanon.

Sean Rooney was on his way to Beirut airport, but his vehicle turned onto the old coastal road. Gunmen targeted the driver’s window of the armored car, and after managing to open the rear window, they shot Rooney from behind. Was there anything that the soldiers should not have seen in that area? “An accidental incident,” was Hezbollah’s comment.

Lokman Slim believed in an unconventional utopia about ending barbarism in Lebanon, not through revolution, “because even if there was a real one, there would be no gain from it.” He believed in the natural state of things, saying, “Above all, it is a good thing to sit in my car in the evening and drive towards Haifa or Damascus to have a glass of beer and then return.”

But suddenly and unpredictably, he did not return home in his homeland! Did Lokman ever anticipate what would happen one day? He once said in a conversation, “I have always asked myself: what is the last image in the mind of someone who is about to be killed?” There was no answer, and there is no answer among the living.