Walid Phares
comments on Bashir Gemayel's legacy
"His assassins must be tried"
Washington DC, September 14, 2007.
Commenting on assassinated Lebanese President Bashir
Gemayel (killed by operatives from the Syrian
National-Social Party on September 14, 1982) Dr Walid
Phares said "it is against all logic and norms of
international and national laws that the assassins of
President Bashir Gemayel are still at large inside
Lebanon and in Syria as well." Phares, who knew Gemayel
personally from the early 1970s, said "while the
Lebanese justice system knows very well who committed
this terror act, which organization was behind it, and
which regime was involved in it, no Lebanese Government
since 1982 has proceeded to arrest the perpetrators and
asked the court system to begin the trial."
Phares, who remembers Bashir Gemayel as a teacher in a
high school in the early 1970s, later met him during the
process that led to the issuing of UNSCR 436 in October
1978 calling on the Syrians to cease the shelling of
civilian areas and withdraw from many zones in Lebanon.
"Bashir Gemayel wanted to see Lebanon becoming again a
free, pluralistic and democratic country. He was
committed to fight Terrorism and had been resisting the
Syrian occupation and the terrorist organizations long
time before Western democracies realized the dimension
of the threat after 2001. Even before the Lebanese war,
He was warning politicians that a crisis was to occur if
the Lebanese Army wasn't empowered by the Government to
seize the control of all terror camps in the country.
Unfortunately for Lebanon, that crisis exploded and
lasted 15 years. He was killed by the Terrorists for the
same reasons Gebran Tueni, Pierre Gemayel, Rafiq Hariri,
Walid Eido, Samir Qassir, George Hawi, Kamal Jumblat,
Rene Mouawad, Mufti Hassan Khaled and Riad Taha were
assassinated: maintaining Lebanon under Syrian (and
Iranian) control."
"Had Bashir survived the crime," continued Phares, he
would have asked the UN to issue resolutions similar to
UNSCR 1559 to call on Syria to withdraw, on the militias
to disarm, and even on the Iranian Pasdaran to leave the
country. He would have worked on national reconciliation,
decentralization and on Peace. Lebanon would have
already rejoined the international community as a
prosperous country by the end of the 1980s. And had
Bashir been alive these days he would have certainly
been with the Cedars Revolution and March 14. There is
no doubt about that. He would have been with an ally to
the free world in the War on Terror. Every politician
has issues and he can be criticized for many matters,
but Bashir Gemayel sacrificed his life for the freedom
of his people. A freedom still to be regained."
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