BEIRUT, 19 July 2005 — Lebanon’s Parliament yesterday voted to grant amnesty to Samir Geagea, the leader of a wartime Christian militia who has been serving a life sentence in jail since 1994.
The move paves the way for the release of the former Lebanese Forces leader as soon as the decision has been signed into law by President Emile Lahoud and published in the official gazette.
Lebanese Forces MP George Adwan rushed straight to the Defense Ministry prison where Geagea is held in isolation to inform the governor of Parliament’s decision.
Geagea, 53, is the only former warlord from the 1975-1990 civil war ever jailed for his alleged crimes. He was cleared of a 1994 bomb attack on a church that left 11 dead but handed a death sentence, later commuted to life imprisonment, for offences during the war.
The campaign for his release was stepped up in the political turmoil that followed the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February and the subsequent pullout of Syrian troops.
The main opposition alliance put together by Hariri’s son Saad saw Geagea’s wife Sethrida join forces with wartime foes like Druze leader Walid Jumblatt on a platform that included a demand for her husband’s release.
She won election to Parliament in June from the family’s northern hill town bastion of Bsharreh as part of the victorious alliance that won an eight-seat majority in the 128-member Parliament.
A majority of MPs voted in favor of the amnesty by a show of hands yesterday, but the 14 representatives of Hezbollah were absent from the house.
Sethrida said she regarded Parliament’s decision as an expression of “wishes of the Lebanese people.”
Amnesty International for one has accused the authorities of mistreating her husband, a wartime Israeli ally, in his isolated Beirut prison cell.
Other pro-Syrian warlords have taken part in post-war governments in Lebanon. MPs also voted by a show of hands to amnesty dozens of Islamists jailed after deadly 2000 clashes with troops in the far-northern Deniyeh area and an alleged 2004 terror plot uncovered in the eastern district of Majdel Anjar.
