The case of the “suicided” Syrian Interior Minister

Hours before the news broke, Kanaan spoke to a Lebanese radio station, denying reports in Lebanese media that he showed the U.N. investigators checks paid to him by the late Hariri.

has given Captain Marlow cause for theorizing.

How soon before Assad’s officially linked?

Update

The death — just days before the final U.N. investigation report is due — was a new and startling sign of turmoil in Syria, whose authoritarian regime is girding for the chance that the U.N. report might implicate high-ranking officials in the assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri. He was killed by a bomb in February as his convoy drove through Beirut.
. . .
The interior minister in Syria controls the police, but before he was promoted to this position in 2003, Kenaan was Syria’s intelligence chief in Lebanon, presiding over Syria’s control of its western neighbor.

Lebanese newspapers have reported that he was among seven senior Syrian officials questioned last month by the U.N. team investigating Hariri’s murder. The other officials included Syria’s last intelligence chief in Lebanon, Brig. Gen. Rustum Ghazale and his two aides.

Captain Marlow’s on the right track.