Michel Moawad, MP for Zgharta, center. (Credit: National News Agency)
Michel Moawad, Member of Parliament for Zgharta, said on Monday that he was turning the “page of injustice” and that the time had come for Lebanon to recover its “sovereignty,” as he spoke the day after the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, at a prayer vigil in front of the burial vault of his father, former Lebanese President René Moawad, in Zgharta.
“Thirty five years during which we were deprived of the justice of the land, and there is only one document in the file of the assassination of the martyr René Moawad,” he denounced. We have remained resistant and dignified, paying the highest price and counting the martyrs [dead] in defending the Lebanese cause.”
René Moawad was elected President of Lebanon in November 1989 and was assassinated just a few days after taking office, in a car bomb attack on Nov. 22, 1989. The Syrian regime has been accused of orchestrating or facilitating several other assassinations in Lebanon.
“Our responsibility is to rebuild Lebanon, to recover a free, sovereign and independent Lebanon, with a single army, a single armament, plurality, true partnership, justice and human dignity,” said Michel Moawad.
“We celebrate this moment to turn the page on injustice and wounds. Today marks the beginning of a new path to reclaim our country, our sovereignty, our stability, and our right to life, justice and hope,” he also said.
Moawad also saluted the “Lebanese detainees in Syrian prisons, where their own country has abandoned their cause.” We hope they will return home,” he said. "Today, justice has been done by the free Syrian people."
After 33 years of detention in Syria, Souheil Hamawi, a Lebanese who was arrested in December 1992 at his home in Chekka, has returned to his home in North Lebanon. He is the first Lebanese detained in Syria and released thanks to the advance of the rebels who toppled Bashar al-Assad's regime to return home. There have been numerous reports of the release from prison of Lebanese who disappeared during the civil war and the years of Syrian occupation of the country. However, only one of these releases has so far been confirmed, according to Wadad Halwani, President of the Committee of Families of the Kidnapped and Missing in Lebanon, on Saturday.