In Lebanon, rivals unconvinced by warlord's apology

They'd already formed their opinion of Samir Geagea, once the leader of a fearsome Christian militia. His supporters loved him regardless of what he did. And his rivals and enemies would never see him as anything but a caricature of the excesses, brutality and impunity of Lebanon's civil war.

But there are twists to Geagea's tale. Unlike other commanders during the civil war, Geagea (pronounced zsa-zsa) paid a price afterward, locked in a windowless prison cell beneath the Defense Ministry building for 11 years. During that time, he said, he studied literature, mysticism and religion, finding spirituality and a longing for salvation.

In September, he told thousands of supporters gathered in the coastal city of Jounieh that he regretted some of his actions during the conflict and asked for God's forgiveness.

"If you don't bury the old ghosts, they'll keep bothering people," the lanky, balding 56-year-old said during an interview at his party's mountaintop headquarters here in Maarab, about 15 miles northeast of Beirut. "All in all, we had to do this immediately after the war. Unfortunately, after the war, there was no peace."

The war, which lasted from 1975 to 1990, set the standard for a new kind of lawless, media-saturated civil conflict now common in desperate corners of the world. It left an estimated 100,000 people dead and nearly a million displaced. Palestinians, Shiites, Sunnis, Druze, Christians and their foreign backers were pitted against one another, and sometimes against their own kind.

Geagea's story illustrates the complexity of coming to terms with that dark past.

He was a year away from completing medical school at the American University of Beirut when he was sucked into the conflict's vortex as a member of a right-wing Christian militia eventually called the Lebanese Forces. He gained a reputation for no-holds-barred killing, including violence against rival Christians.

In 1990, Syrian troops occupied the country, ending a conflict already petering out. There would be no truth commission to examine who did what during the conflict.

All parties agreed to sweep the war's dirty business under the rug. The government offered amnesty to all fighters except those accused of killing foreign diplomats, high-ranking officials and religious leaders.