Upon his return to Lebanon, Geagea, who was placed at that time in charge of the Lebanese Forces and the Kataeb Party along the northern front, moved to a convent in the upper mountains of Jbeil where he reorganized the youth, opened training centers, and began the development of fortifications facing Syrian positions. He established a headquarters at Qattara, an extremely isolated village high in the mountains and cut off from population centers. He remained in charge of this sector until early 1983. In January 1983, the Lebanese Forces command council appointed Samir Geagea, who retained his responsibilities on the northern front, concurrent of its forces in the Shouf-Aley sector of Mount Lebanon, an area from which the Lebanese Forces were forced to retreat in September 1983 as a result of an onslaught by various leftist militias supported by the Syrian Army.

After the "mountain war," Geagea returned to his headquarters in Qattara, where he developed, organized, managed, and carried out a political and cultural education and training program for regional leader in the Lebanese Forces. It was during this period that his opposition to the Christian and Lebanese situation began to be known -- most notably his critiques of the traditional Christian establishment and its dedication to personal profits at the expense of the public interest. This call for social change led the Kataeb party to "expel" him. The resulting upheaval in the Lebanese Forces brought Geagea, Karim Pakradouni, and Elie Hobeika (then the security chief of the Lebanese Forces) to force the resignation of the then-commander of the Lebanese Forces, Fouad Abu Nadir. Elie Hobeika was named head of its executive committee, Geagea chief of staff.

On January 15, 1986, Geagea led a movement that removed Elie Hobeika and due to the improprieties of the latter and, above all, to his having signed the so-called "Tripartite Accord" a Damascus-approved peace deal with Jumblatt and parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri. Every sector of Christian opinion was opposed to the accord.

the Lebanese Forces, Geagea was elected permanent member of the politburo of the Kataeb Party. Within months, he had reorganized the Lebanese Forces and established standardized bases of recruitment, selection, training, and promotion and founded the first formal Lebanese Forces military academy at Ghusta. At the same time, the Lebanese Forces became for the first time a political movement with clear-cut socio-economic objectives and programs and with friendly and cooperative ties to many foreign countries. The Lebanese Forces also began the most ambitious and systemic social welfare program ever undertaken in Lebanon and intended to help the disadvantaged and displaced. Although these programs have since been suspended in deference to government demands, the government has yet to replace them.

Since 1989, the Lebanese Forces has worked diligently with the national government and foreign friends to apply the principals of the Taef Accord intended to facilitate the restoration of national unity and the reconstruction of the political, economic, and social foundations of the country. Even in the face of others' continuing and serious violations of the spirit and intent of Taef, Samir Geagea continued to espouse a solution to the challenges Lebanon faces that is bad on national solidarity and consensus.

Initially supporting General Michel Aoun's drive to free Lebanon of all foreign forces in 1989, Geagea later began to question Aoun's motives in pursuing an unpromising war against the much larger Syrian Army and its leftist allies.

When Aoun began taking active steps to undermine and dissolve the LF, Geagea resisted violently, which resulted in a devastating war in 1990 between the LF and Lebanese Army units loyal to Aoun. Aoun's surrender on October 13, 1990, after a Syrian attack on the Presidential Palace, was considered to mark the end of the Civil War.

Imprisonment

Geagea was offered ministerial portfolios several times following the end of Lebanon's civil strife in 1989. However, he declined on the grounds of opposition to Syrian interference in internal affairs. In 1994, Geagea was arrested on charges 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 Civil War - most notably that of then Premier Rachid Karami in 1978. Geagea was subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment on several different counts. The evidence used to convict Geagea was widely viewed as unreliable, circumstantial and inconsistent. Human rights groups, including Amnesty International, decried the judicial process leading to his conviction as seriously flawed and politically motivated. With the signing of the Taif Accord in 1989, the LF was dismantled and outlawed. However, in parliamentary elections held last month the party made a successful comeback onto the political stage, gaining six seats in the new Parliament, one of which went to Geagea's wife Sitrida.

Release

Geagea was the only former warlord from the 1975-1990 civil war ever jailed for his alleged crimes. He was cleared of a 1994 bomb attack on a church that left 11 dead but handed four death sentences, all later commuted to life imprisonment, for offences during the war, notably the 1987 killing of Sunni prime minister Rashid Karameh.

Tall, thin and balding, Geagea is nicknamed "Hakim" (doctor) thanks to his unfinished medicine studies, but his fragile appearance belies a will of steel. His supporters say his imprisonment was part of a Syrian plot to assert complete control over Lebanon to which he was opposed, and that it is only the departure of Syrian troops that has allowed the amnesty.

The campaign for his release was stepped up in the political turmoil that followed the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri on February 14, 2005, and the April 27, 2005, pullout of Syrian troops from Lebanon. The main opposition alliance put together by Hariri's son Saad saw Geagea's wife Sitrida join forces with wartime foes like Druze leader Walid Jumblatt on a platform that included a demand for her husband's release. She won election to parliament on June 21, 2005, from the family's northern hilltown bastion of Bsharreh as part of the victorious alliance that won a 72-seat majority in the 128-member parliament.

A majority of MPs voted in favour of the amnesty by a show of hands Monday, July 25, but the 14 representatives of the anti-Israel Shiite Muslim movement Hezbollah were absent from the house. Sitrida said she regarded parliament's decision as an expression of "wishes of the Lebanese people to definitively turn the page on the war." Amnesty International for one has accused the authorities of mistreating her husband, a wartime Israeli ally, in his isolated Beirut prison cell. Other pro-Syrian warlords -- both Christian and Muslim -- have taken part in post-war governments in Lebanon.

MPs also voted by a show of hands to amnesty dozens of Islamists jailed after deadly 2000 clashes with troops in the far-northern Deniyeh area and an alleged 2004 terror plot uncovered in the eastern district of Majdel Anjar. Parliament's decisions were greeted with celebratory gunfire in the northern Sunni city of Tripoli and in Bsharreh, where champagne also flowed.

Geagea's release is widely viewed as the final step necessary to lift the ban on the party once and for all.

An amnesty law pardoning Geagea was approved by parliament on Monday, July 18, 2005, and published in the official gazette on Thursday, July 21, 2005.