Lebanon: Former Christian warlord freed after 11 years

Notorious anti-Syrian Christian warlord Samir Geagea was released today after 11 years in prison, his spokeswoman said, in what marked the latest reconciliatory step in civil war-scarred Lebanon in the wake of the recent collapse of Syrian military dominance.

Antoinette Geagea, spokeswoman for the banned Christian Lebanese Forces militia which Geagea headed during the 1975-1990 civil war, said her relative “is a free man” as of this morning.

Geagea, 53, left his Defence Ministry cell in Beirut and soldiers escorted him straight to Lebanon’s international airport where he met with Lebanese Forces supporters, a senior Lebanese security officer said.

Reporters at Lebanon’s international airport said they briefly saw Geagea and his wife, Setrida, in footage provided by the Lebanese Forces on a television screen.

A grinning Geagea, wearing a blue shirt and appearing thin with slightly greying hair, was seen shaking hands and embracing applauding supporters while asking about Lebanese Forces members before the transmission was cut.

Geagea was also scheduled to meet at the airport with around 300 politicians and deliver a televised speech at 11am local time (9am Irish time) before leaving Lebanon for an unspecified destination in Europe for a medical check-up.

On July 18, Lebanon’s newly elected parliament approved a motion to pardon Geagea, who has been serving a life term since April 1994 for killing a former Lebanese prime minister and has spent most of the past 11 years in solitary confinement in an underground Defence Ministry cell with no access to news.

The motion was endorsed by pro-Syrian Lebanese President Emile Lahoud the next day, ensuring Geagea’s freedom, but he remained in prison for security reasons until preparations for his travel were completed.

Some 100 members of the 128-strong parliament voted to pardon Geagea apparently in the spirit of national reconciliation following Syria’s April military withdrawal, ending Syria’s 29-year military presence and domination of Lebanon.

Druse, Muslim and Palestinian forces were all targeted by Geagea, who allied his men with the Israelis in the central mountain region during the Jewish state’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

Geagea has been linked with some of Lebanon’s most notorious civil war-era killings, including the 1987 bombing of a military helicopter that killed the pro-Syrian Prime Minister Rashid Karami and the killing of Danny Chamoun, a prominent Christian politician.

He was arrested in 1994 and his group was outlawed after a church bombing killed 10 people. He was later acquitted of the bombing but sentenced to three life terms on several other murder counts, including the killings of Karami and Chamoun.

Syrian influence over Lebanese politics had stymied past attempts to secure his pardon and the return of former Lebanese army commander General Michel Aoun from 14 years’ exile in France.

But Aoun returned on May 7, less than two weeks after Syria withdrew its troops under US-led pressure sparked by the February 14 assassination of former Premier Rafik Hariri.