Geagea Slams 'Consensual Security' in Freeing of Father Gharious

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea has warned that the abduction on Monday of Father Walid Gharious in the Bekaa Valley “might jeopardize civil peace.”

In an interview with CNNArabic, Geagea strongly condemned the kidnap operation, stressing that the case “must not be wrapped up through the approach of consensual security, because consensual security implies that the state has ceded its powers to local organizations, which would destroy the state and violate the coexistence charter.”

Unknown individuals on Monday briefly kidnapped Gharious, the pastor of Baalbek’s Our Lady of Good Help Church, on the Baalbek road near the intersection leading to the town of al-Ansar.

The priest was freed a few hours later following mediation by security authorities and Hizbullah’s top official in the area Sheikh Mohammed Yazbek. The agency said the priest was kidnapped for “baptizing a Muslim girl who had fled her family home.”

Archbishop of Baalbek-Deir al-Ahmar Semaan Atallah issued a statement confirming that the priest had been kidnapped, noting that he and Gharious were not aware of the girl’s whereabouts.

“The girl had said she was physically and psychologically tortured by her father for converting to Christianity three years ago, although she is a 24-year-old adult,” said Atallah in his statement. “I have received an unconfirmed report that she had recently fled to an unknown destination after her father forced her to marry someone,” the archbishop added.

According to LBC television, the girl is the daughter of Muslim cleric Ahmed Qataya, the imam of the religiously mixed Bekaa town of Nabha. The girl had left her family home six days prior to the incident, promoting her relatives to threaten Gharious by telephone on Sunday before kidnapping him, LBC said.

Geagea warned that such incidents “might jeopardize civil peace given that the abducted was a priest.”

The LF leader, who had telephoned President Michel Suleiman to discuss the case, called on the state to “perform its duties by arresting the culprits and bringing them to justice.”

Speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, security sources told CNNArabic that the incident was still under investigation, noting that “so far, it has not been confirmed that the girl’s father, a cleric, had directly taken part in the kidnap operation, especially that reports have said that a cleric was among the group who abducted the priest.”