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Karami Proposes
National Referendum on
Geagea's Freedom
August 7, 2003
Ex-Premier Omar Karami
has proposed a national
referendum to determine
whether Lebanese Forces
commander Samir Geagea
should be freed or kept
in a defense ministry
underground cell to serve
out jail terms adding
up to 120 years. Karami,
who met with Syrian President
Bashar Assad in Damascus
over the weekend, made
the proposal in remarks
carried by the London-based
Al Hayat on Thursday.
This is the first time
that a referendum is proposed
on Geagea's freedom.
Geagea, who has already
spent nine years in solitary
confinement in Yarze,
had been convicted of
engineering the 1987 midair
assassination of then
Prime Minister Rashid
Karami as he was returning
to Beirut by an army helicopter
from Tripoli during the
height of the civil war.
Geagea was originally
sentenced to death but
the capital punishment
was commuted to life imprisonment.
So were three other verdicts
handed down by court on
the former Christian warlord
since his arrest in 1994.
"I am not ready to
drop my legal status as
a plaintiff in the case.
But I have no objection
to Samir Geagea's release
as a result of a national
referendum," said
Omar Karami, who also
served as prime minister
of Lebanon in 1991.
The Lebanese Forces has
lately been clamoring
for Geagea's release either
through a new general
amnesty bill or a special
presidential parole. Communist
Party Leader George Hawi
is engaged in an initiative
with Syria and President
Lahoud's regime to improve
Geagea's appalling prison
conditions as a step toward
his freedom.
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