Evidence has emerged from leaked US signals intelligence intercepts that Israeli special forces were responsible for assassinating a senior Syrian military official who was a close adviser to President Bashar al-Assad.

Brig Gen Mahmoud Suleiman was shot dead on a beach near the northern Syrian port of Tartus in August 2008. The Guardian reported at the time that the seaside murder was perpetrated by a sniper firing from a yacht moored offshore.



Israel has never commented publicly on suspicions that it was involved. But newly revealed secret US intelligence documents state as a fact that Israeli special forces killed the general.

The revelation comes from an internal National Security Agency document provided by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, and cited by the Intercept, edited by Glenn Greenwald. It said that a top-secret entry in the NSA’s internal version of Wikipedia, called Intellipedia, described the assassination by “Israeli naval commandos” near Tartus as the “first known instance of Israel targeting a legitimate (Syrian) government official”.

The details of the assassination were included in a “manhunting timeline” within the NSA’s intelligence repository, the Intercept said on Wednesday.

The US embassy in Damascus reported at the time that Israel was the most likely suspect, according to a secret cable released by WikiLeaks in 2010. Iranian media went public with that accusation from the start.

Suleiman was described by Syrian officials as dealing with defence and security issues in Assad’s private office in Damascus. Israeli and Syrian opposition sources claimed he worked as “liaison” with the Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah, Israel’s sworn enemy.

Brig Gen Mahmoud Suleiman was shot dead on a beach near the northern Syrian port of Tartus in August 2008. Photograph: /Alamy

But a secret US government document several months earlier gave his precise job description: “Syrian special presidential adviser for arms procurement and strategic weapons.” It was also suggested that he was responsible for security at a Syrian nuclear facility bombed by Israel 11 months earlier.

The Intercept said that, according to three former US intelligence officers with extensive experience in the Middle East, the document’s classification markings indicate that the NSA learned of the assassination through surveillance. The information in the document was labelled “SI,” which means the intelligence was collected by monitoring communications signals.

It added that knowledge within the NSA about surveillance of Israeli military units is especially sensitive because the NSA has Israeli intelligence officers working jointly with its officers at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland.

Syria’s tightly controlled official media did not report on the killing at the time. But Syrian sources confirmed that Suleiman was shot by a silenced weapon in the head and neck on a beach at al-Rimal al-Zahabiyeh resort near Tartus, where, like other privileged Syrians, he owned a chalet.

In September 2007, Israeli planes attacked and destroyed a suspected nuclear site at al-Kibar on the Euphrates river, apparently one of the special projects Suleiman managed “which may have have been unknown to the broader Syrian military leadership”, as the US embassy put it.



The Israeli assassination of Suleiman came less than six months after a joint Mossad-CIA team assassinated a senior Hezbollah operative in the heart of Damascus. US and Israeli involvement in that attack, which targeted the Hezbollah military commander Imad Mughniyeh, was first reported in detail by the Washington Post. The CIA had long sought Mughniyeh for his role in terrorist attacks against Americans, including the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, which killed 241 American servicemen.

Neither the NSA nor a spokesperson for the Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu responded to requests for comment, the Intercept said.

