Strida Takes Besharri LF Victory as Gift to Samir in Yarze
June 3, 2004



Strida Geagea has said she will offer the Lebanese Forces sweeping victory in Besharri's local elections as a present to LF commander Samir Geagea, her husband, at his Defense Ministry jail in Yarze on Tuesday, An Nahar reported.

"I will tell him that our people in Besharri have given me a present to pass to you," Strida Geagea said of the victory that has given the LF the entire municipal council of Besharri as well as the municipalities of all eight neighboring villages of the district.

Mrs. Geagea had personally led the Besharri battle that gave the LF its resounding election triumph since the onetime main Christian militia of the 1975-1990 civil war was outlawed by the Beirut government in 1994. Samir Geagea has since been held in solitary confinement.

"Our hand is stretched out to all in Besharri. Our victory was not only for the Lebanese Forces but for the entire population," Mrs. Geagea said in an apparent consolation to the defeated traditionalists of the city. They were led by parliament members Kabalan Issa Khoury and Gebran Touk, her uncle.



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