Scores
of Lebanese Forces activists have staged a mass prayer
on their knees at the campus of St. Joseph University
in Beirut for the release of their imprisoned leader
Samir Geagea, held for nine years in solitary confinement
at Lebanon's defense ministry in Yarze.
Portraits of the onetime Christian warlord were pinned
on their chests along with the LF crosses as they dropped
to their knees for the prayer that marked the lapse
of 3,280 days since Geagea was arrested in 1994 after
his LF party was outlawed by the government.
"Geagea
is the symbol of steadfastness, the symbol of Lebanon's
cause," read one poster spanning the camps of
the university's engineering faculty in Mansourieh,
where the LF spent the second day of the Solidarity-with-Geagea
Week.
The
protestors shouted such chants as "no national
reconciliation without the LF" and "no LF
without its leader." Patriotic songs blared from
loudspeakers across the campus.
