Nadim Gemayel, son of the late President-elect Bashir Gemayel, is gaining an increasingly visible profile on the political scene, demanding in the run-up to the 21st anniversary of his father's assassination that the judiciary act to arrest the culprits.
The younger Gemayel visited the Justice Palace in Beirut on Monday for separate meetings with State Prosecutor Adnan Addoum and Tanios Khoury, president of the Higher Judicial Council, An Nahar reported on Tuesday.
It quoted him a saying that he discussed with Addoum the pending case of his father's assassination on Sept. 14, 1982, in a powerful explosion that demolished the Phalange Party headquarters in Ashrafieh, only days after he was elected president at the peak of Israel's invasion that summer.
Gemayel recalled that a suspect, Habib Shartouni, was arrested and formally charged with placing the deadly explosives in the building. But he was freed when "known armed elements" stormed into the Roumieh prison in the final phase of civil war turmoil in 1990. He demanded that re-arrest and trial of his father's suspected killer.
Addoum, Gemayel said, told him that the file was ready for trial and referred him to Khoury, who advised him to avoid a trial in absentia and to first seek Shartouni's arrest. However, for this to happen "the security forces will have to act to find his whereabouts and arrest him," he quoted the top judge as saying.
Shartouni was said at the time to be a member of the pro-Damascus Syrian Social Nationalist Party, but officials suspect he was only a front for an intricate plot in which there were other unknown accomplices.
The young Gemayel dropped another bombshell while at the Justice Palace Monday. According to An Nahar he requested from Addoum permission to visit with Samir Geagea, the imprisoned former commander of the outlawed Lebanese Forces militia.
Geagea is held in a maximum-security jail at the Defense Ministry, serving three concurrent life sentences for killing political adversaries during the civil war. Bashir Gemayel had formed the Phalange-dominated Lebanese Forces in 1980 as the Christians' main fighting arm during the war.
"Any convict, irrespective of his crime, is entitled to visitors – that is in countries that respect human rights and freedoms and advocate democracy," said the young Gemayel, who was a toddler when his father was killed.
Addoum, he said, promised to consider his request.
Beirut, Updated 09 Jul 03, 11:58
Thanks to Naharnet
posted by Rampurple @ 7/21/2003 10:59:00 PM
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