Lebanon: judicial escalation against Geagea on charges of “murder”

In a surprising development, more than five months after the “Tayouneh events”, which witnessed confrontations between supporters of the Amal movement and “Hezbollah” and supporters of the “Lebanese Forces” party, the government commissioner to the military court, Judge Fadi Akiki, issued a complaint against the head of the “Forces” Samir. Geagea was “involved” in these events, and was accused of committing “crimes of direct intervention by deliberate killing and attempted murder, inciting sectarian strife and inciting sedition and internal fighting.” The prosecution referred the first military investigative judge, Fadi Sawan, and asked him to interrogate Geagea and take the appropriate decision against him.

The decision aroused the discontent of the “forces” party, which held “Hezbollah” fully responsible for the events in Tayouneh, accusing it of “straining the atmosphere on the eve of the parliamentary elections with the aim of disrupting it.” A judicial source confirmed that Judge Fadi Sawan “has received the prosecution’s paper and is now studying it in preparation for setting a session for Geagea’s interrogation.”

The “Forces” party doubts the impartiality of Judge Fadi Akiki (son-in-law of Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri), and a leader of the “Forces” considered that the prosecution against Geagea is illegal, because the defense attorneys for those arrested in the Tayouneh events filed a complaint against the judge on March 16. Akiki in response to the violations he committed in the file.

Yesterday, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian arrived in Beirut, and said that his visit “comes in the context of the strong and constructive relations between the two brotherly countries.”
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