1. Samir Geagea led the Northern Front in the Lebanese Forces from 1979 to 1984.
51 Facts About Samir Geagea
1. 2.
On 15 January 1986, Samir Geagea led a movement against the tripartite agreement sponsored by Syria to become the commander of the Lebanese Forces after the overthrow of Elie Hobeika, head of the executive body at the time and one of the signatories of the tripartite agreement.
3.
Samir Geagea initially supported the "War of Liberation" declared by disputed Prime Minister General Michel Aoun against the Syrian Army.
4.
On 24 January 1990, Samir Geagea was appointed a Minister of State in the first post-war cabinet, led by Prime Minister Omar Karami.
5.
Samir Geagea rejected the position due to the flagrant control of the cabinet by the Syrian regime.
6.
On 16 May 1992, Samir Geagea was again appointed as a minister in the Rashid El Solh cabinet, only to refuse it again for the same reasons.
7.
In 1994, Samir Geagea was arrested and put on trial for bombing a church and political killings in the war.
8.
Samir Geagea denied the accusations and claimed he was the target of a political prosecution fabricated by the Syrian-Lebanese security apparatus.
9.
Samir Geagea spent 11 years in solitary confinement, the only war leader to go to jail in Lebanon, while others benefited from an amnesty and took cabinet posts.
10.
Samir Geagea was born in the Ain el-Remmeneh district in Beirut on 25 October 1952 to a modest Maronite family from the town of Bsharri in northern Lebanon.
11.
Samir Geagea's father, Farid Geagea was an adjutant in the Lebanese Army.
12.
Samir Geagea's brother, Joseph, is a mathematician in Maryland He attended "Ecole Benilde" elementary and secondary school in Furn el-Chebek, which was a free private school.
13.
Samir Geagea was an active member of the right-wing Phalangist Party, which became the main Christian fighting force upon the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975.
14.
Samir Geagea was transported to Beirut and admitted to Hotel-Dieu hospital in Achrafieh, Beirut where ironically he was doing his internship.
15.
Samir Geagea was appointed head of the Lebanese Forces' militia northern Front in the early 1980s, where he commanded around 1,500 battle-hardened soldiers, drawn mainly from his native town of Bsharri and other towns and villages in Northern Lebanon.
16.
Samir Geagea led his men in fierce battles against the Syrian Army in El-Koura, Qnat.
17.
From 1982 to 1983, Samir Geagea commanded the Lebanese Forces against Walid Jumblat's Progressive Socialist Party militia, the Palestinians, and the Syrians in a battle for control of the Chouf mountains in central Lebanon.
18.
On 15 January 1986, Samir Geagea became head of the Lebanese Forces after overthrowing Hobeika, who was widely accused of treachery in the Lebanese Christian sector for agreeing to a Syrian-sponsored accord.
19.
Samir Geagea established social security and public services to fill the void that was created by the war-crippled state administration.
20.
Samir Geagea extracted taxes from the Christian region, offered free open-heart operations and twinned Christians cities with foreign cities in Europe and America and tried to open an airport in the Halat region because the Beirut International Airport was under the control of the Syrian forces which made the access for Lebanese Christians almost impossible.
21.
Samir Geagea was offered ministerial portfolios in the new Lebanese government.
22.
On 26 January 1994, Samir Geagea went to Qardaha, Syria to offer his condolences to President Hafez al-Assad, following the death of his son Bassel in a car accident.
23.
Samir Geagea himself was arrested on 21 April 1994 in his village Ghadras, on charges of ordering the church bombing, of attempting to undermine government authority by "maintaining a militia in the guise of a political party", of instigating acts of violence, and of committing assassinations during the Lebanese Civil War.
24.
Samir Geagea was accused of the assassinations of former prime minister Rashid Karami, National Liberal Party leader Dany Chamoun and his family, and former LF member Elias Al Zayek.
25.
Samir Geagea was accused of attempting to kill Minister Michel Murr.
26.
Samir Geagea was acquitted in the church case but given four life sentences in the other cases.
27.
Samir Geagea would become the only wartime leader who went to jail because of crimes committed during the war and after the Taif Accord.
28.
Samir Geagea was incarcerated for 11 years in a small windowless solitary cell in the third basement level of the Lebanese Ministry of Defense in Yarze.
29.
Samir Geagea was deprived of access to media and the outside world and was only allowed to see his wife and close relatives.
30.
All of Samir Geagea's conversations were monitored and he was barred from talking politics with anyone.
31.
Samir Geagea busied himself with reading literature, Hindu philosophy, the Qur'an, Christian theology and mysticism namely the works of Jesuit priest Teilhard de Chardin.
32.
Samir Geagea was released from prison on 26 July 2005 and left Lebanon for medical care.
33.
Samir Geagea returned to Lebanon on 25 October, and lived in the Cedars region, his ancestral homeland, in northern Lebanon until 11 December 2006, after which he moved to a hotel in Bzoummar in Keserwan.
34.
In September 2008, Samir Geagea pronounced in front of thousands of rallying supporters in Jounieh a historical apology.
35.
Internationally, Samir Geagea tried to renew his relations with influential countries such as the United States and France.
36.
Account of the story, as described in the press conference immediately following the attempt, claim Samir Geagea to have been walking outside in the garden surrounding his mansion.
37.
In 2014, Samir Geagea declared his candidacy for the Lebanese presidential elections to succeed President Michel Suleiman, whose 6-year term was to end on 25 May 2014.
38.
However, the country entered into a 2 years presidential deadlock, which ended in 2016, with Samir Geagea backing up his longtime rival Michel Aoun for the presidency after fellow March 14 member Saad al Hariri had decided to back March 8 candidate Suleiman Frangieh Jr through the Maarab Accord.
39.
On 6 August 2020, Samir Geagea was the first politician to visit Beirut after the explosion and launched from there a relief committee, Ground-0, under the leadership of the former minister Dr May Chidiac to support in rebuilding Beirut.
40.
Samir Geagea denied these allegations, asserting that his supporters acted in self-defense against an attack by Hezbollah loyalists who had vandalized property in the area.
41.
The demonstrators were shot at by snipers from nearby buildings, though the latter's identity was unclear but Samir Geagea's rivals alleged it was the Lebanese Forces.
42.
Similarly, Samir Geagea's MPs refused to vote for Amal Movement leader Nabih Berri who at the time had been Speaker of Parliament for then thirty years.
43.
Samir Geagea, being the de-facto leader of the opposition, had been calling for the disarmament of Hezbollah for years now as well as calling for Lebanon's neutrality.
44.
On 23 November 2022, Samir Geagea received an official invitation to visit China.
45.
On 14 December 2023, Samir Geagea declared that he no longer expected anything from France during an interview with French weekly magazine Valeurs actuelles.
46.
Samir Geagea has consistently positioned the LF as a staunch opponent of Hezbollah, criticizing its military power and political influence in Lebanon.
47.
Samir Geagea emphasized his refusal to negotiate with Hezbollah unless they let go of their primary candidate Suleiman Frangieh.
48.
Samir Geagea remarked that Hezbollah's military operations in southern Lebanon have resulted in significant loss of life and destruction of villages, asserting that these actions have not aided Gaza but rather harmed Lebanon.
49.
Samir Geagea has repeatedly called for the reinforcement and implementation of Resolution 1701.
50.
On 18 January 2012, Samir Geagea visited Iraqi Kurdistan where he received a hero's welcome in Erbil's predominately Christian district of Ankawa and he met Kurdistan president Masoud Barzani.
51.
Samir Geagea has always been a staunch critic of the Assad regimes's involvement in Lebanese politics.