LEBANON : Beirut Transfixed by Trial of Popular Christian Militiaman

The most important trial in Lebanon’s modern history is unfolding in a packed courtroom with machine gun-toting security men and a slim, pale, balding defendant whose entrance brings spectators to their feet, cheering and waving.

The case involves popular Christian militiaman Samir Geagea, who went on trial for the bombing earlier this year of a Maronite Christian church--which killed 11 people--and the coldblooded slaying of a rival, former militia leader Dany Chamoun, his wife and two young sons in 1990.

Geagea’s lawyers and eager partisans--numbering 120--take up most of the seats.

The 42-year-old defendant’s arrival at the trial’s opening session last month caused such a clamor that the presiding judge angrily reminded the assembled multitudes they weren’t at a sporting event.

Geagea responded by waving and blowing kisses.

If convicted of the charges, which constitute a mortal blow to Christian politics in faction-torn Lebanon, Geagea will hang.

His lawyers and supporters claim the state has insufficient evidence and has trumped up the charges to get rid of Geagea and his powerful Lebanese Forces militia, one of the strongest forces in Lebanon’s fractious political scene since the end of the 16-year-long civil war.

“What will they accuse me of next, crucifying Christ?” a frustrated Geagea cried when he was arrested in March.

Asked about physical evidence linking Geagea to the crimes, his lawyer Elie Rahme was curt. “None. Zero,” he said. Of the former Lebanese Forces witnesses who will testify against the leader, he said they rank at the bottom of the organization. “They are number 20,000th,” he said.

Even Lebanon’s Muslim communities, whose own militias fought bloody battles with the Lebanese Forces during the war and who object to Geagea’s political ideology calling for sectarian cantons, often tend to believe the argument that Geagea was singled out for prosecution because of his refusal to join the postwar government--to toe the line of the “new Lebanese order,” which marches to a Syrian beat.

As charges were read, Geagea stood head bowed with hands folded. But he often gestured in animated disbelief at the intricate description of how his alleged crimes were planned and executed.

Court cases in Lebanon are heard and judged by a panel of five justices, rather than a jury. But the third session was held up for a week after one of the five judges was ordered by his doctors to stay away from the trial because he could not stand the stress.

Geagea himself says he has been distressed by the conditions of his imprisonment since his arrest.

Only after intercession by a high-ranking Maronite clergyman was he given a mattress to sleep on, his supporters said, and Geagea complained of torture of other inmates. “In my cell I sometimes hear screams,” he said. Geagea said he feels like “half a man” because he must be blindfolded whenever he leaves his cell.

Last week, Geagea’s lawyers threw the court into further disarray by withdrawing en masse to protest the court’s refusal to move the militiaman from a Defense Ministry cell to a civilian prison, where his living conditions can be monitored.

The court ordered the head of the lawyers syndicate to find replacement defense lawyers if Geagea does not find his own counsel by next Friday.