In this Dec. 31, 2014, file photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, Syrian President Bashar Assad, center, speaks with Syrian troops during his visit to the front line in the eastern Damascus district of Jobar, Syria.Uncredited/The Associated Press
Israeli naval commandos were behind the killing of a senior aide to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad while he spent the weekend at his seaside chalet in the summer of 2008, according to a leaked U.S. intelligence file.
The file originates from the National Security Agency trove of documents obtained by former contractor Edward Snowden and was leaked to The Intercept, the site edited by investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald.
Within the NSA, an internal site similar to Wikipedia, called Intellipedia, mentions the involvement of "Israeli naval commandos" in the assassination of Brigadier General Mohammed Suleiman on Aug. 1, 2008 near the coastal city of Tartus, Syria on the Mediterranean – an area where Syria's elite have summer homes and yachts.
It was "the first known instance of Israel targeting a legitimate government official," the document states.
Syrian journalists were ordered not to report the mysterious killing when it happened and news only emerged four days later. Israel has never publicly claimed responsibility.
The Intercept site said the document represented the first official confirmation that the assassination of Mr. Suleiman was an Israeli military operation – and that the NSA information about the killing came from surveillance of Israeli military communications.
Mr. Suleiman was described in the Middle East press as being more important than anyone else in Assad's inner circle. "He knew everything," reported the London-based Arabic language newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat at the time of his death.
The close friend of Syrian dictator Assad was reportedly involved in several clandestine projects – facilitating the shipment of military equipment, including anti-aircraft missiles, to Syria's ally in Lebanon, the militant group Hezbollah. That flow of military equipment was of growing concern to Israel at the time.
He was also believed to be responsible for the security and construction of a Syrian nuclear facility that was destroyed in an Israeli air strike in September 2007.
The assassination of Mr. Suleiman followed another military operation – one carried out jointly by Israel and the U.S. – targeting senior Hezbollah military commander Imad Mughniyah in February 2008. The militant, who helped plan the 1983 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut, was walking along a Damascus street after dinner when a bomb planted in the tire of an SUV exploded and killed him instantly.
Mr. Suleiman had close ties to Bashar al-Assad going back the 1990s, long before the young Assad rose to power following the death of his father in 2000. Both men hailed from the country's minority Alawite religious sect.
The assassination took place when Israeli commandos entered the waters near Mr. Suleiman's chalet and shot him in the head and neck before escaping by boat, according to The Intercept site.
Exactly where Mr. Suleiman was when the shots were fired has been the subject of conflicting reports. Some have suggested that the Assad aide was sitting at a table with friends at a dinner party when he was struck.
But a report by the German site, Spiegel Online, in 2009 describes a "sleek yacht" about 50 meters from the beach where Mr. Suleiman was with his personal bodyguards. At some point Mr. Suleiman decided to go for a swim when snipers using silencers shot him in the head, neck and chest – killing him instantly as the yacht escaped in to international waters.
Mr. Suleiman's name popped up in a U.S. diplomatic cable from 2009 that was leaked to WikiLeaks. The cable originated from the U.S. embassy in Damascus and mentions that a subsequent investigation in to Mr. Suleiman's chalet uncovered $80-million that was stashed in his basement.
"Asad was said to be devastated by the discovery, and, fearing Sulayman had betrayed him, redirected the investigation from solving his murder to finding out how the general had acquired so much money," reads the cable.