The father of slain anti-Syrian Lebanese MP and editor Gibran Tueni has stated he will sue the Syrian envoy to the United Nations for insulting comments about his son. Prominent Lebanese diplomat Ghassan Tueni claimed that Fayssal Mekdad compared his son to a "dog" in remarks reported Wednesday by the US daily, The New York Sun.
"I will sue him (Mekdad) before the American courts," Tueni, 79, told reporters on Friday, according to AFP.
In its report from UN headquarters in New York, the Sun quoted "a diplomat" who overheard a conversation between Mekdad and an Arab colleague in which the comments were allegedly made. "So now every time that a dog dies in Beirut there will be an international investigation?" the US paper reported Mekdad as saying to a diplomat during a closed-door session.
The Tueni-owned An-Nahar newspaper said that Mekdad had forwarded a letter to Tueni in which he "categorically denied" the comments attributed to him by the US publication.
Gibran Tueni was assassinated Monday in a huge car bomb attack in a Beirut suburb, in the latest spate of attacks targeting critics of Damascus.
