Hanna
Shallita, 46, the last detainee held in connection with
the 1978 massacre of Tony Franjieh, the standard –bearer
of the pro-Syrian Franjieh clan, has been set free after
paying an LL5 million bail on Friday, An Nahar said
on Saturday.
Tony Franjieh, the father of current president aspirant
Suleiman Franjieh, was massacred with his wife, his
3-year-old daughter and 31 bodyguards at his summer
villa in Ehden, north Lebanon, on the very day U.N.
peacekeeping forces were deploying in south Lebanon
24 years ago.
Shallita
was arrested during a 1994 government crackdown on
Samir Geagea's Lebanese Forces, the former Christian
civil war militia that was accused of staging the
Ehden carnage.
Shallita
has since been held in solitary confinement without
trial, claiming he had been physically tortured with
electric shocks during interrogation sessions about
his alleged role in the Ehden atrocity, Amnesty International
contends.
His
release, however, leaves no one detained in connection
with the Ehden crime. Suleiman Franjieh, public health
minister in the present government, has declared that
he personally holds no grudge against Geagea or the
Lebanese Forces.
Geagea
is serving a total of 120 years imprisonment on charges
of assassinating rivals in the Christian heartland
during the civil war. But the Lebanese Forces and
Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir contend Geagea's trials
were politically motivated and are demanding his speedy
release.
