President
Lahoud's regime lowered the boom on right wing Christian
opposition in Lebanon Tuesday as troops and army intelligence
squads staged scores of arrests around the country including
senior leaders of Samir Geagea's Lebanese Forces and
General Michel Aoun's top Lebanon aides.
Aoun's personal representative, General Nadim Lteif,
former general security department chief, was taken
into custody from his home along with sixty Aounists.
Aoun's student organisation chief Joseph Samaha was
almost simultaneously grabbed by troops along with forty
pro-Aoun students, several Beirut TV networks reported
Tuesday night.
Geagea's
advisor, Toufic Hindi, who had just issued a statement
denouncing the crackdown as a quasi-declaration of
martial law, was also arrested at home in the coastal
town of Jounieh, along with forty LF activists assembled
around his home, the broadcast said.
All
TV networks were in accord that this was the harshest
crackdown on Christian opposition since President
Lahoud took office in 1998. Commentators noted that
the anti-opposition move followed last week-end's
historic visit of Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir
to the hinterland of the Druze sect, in which Aounists
and Geagea's supporters turned out en masse waving
banners and shouting chants calling for Syria's exit
from Lebanon.
