Garm Bel Iblis

Garm Bel Iblis was a human male politician and revolutionary leader who was one of the founding members of the Alliance to Restore the Republic. During the years of the Galactic Republic, Iblis represented his homeworld of Corellia in the Galactic Senate. Charismatic and independent, he strongly opposed the power being gradually built by Supreme Chancellor Palpatine and invoked an ancient Corellian proviso in order to keep his homeworld out of the Clone Wars. When Palpatine reorganized the Republic into a Galactic Empire and declared himself Emperor in 19 BBY, Bel Iblis served in the Imperial Senate, but continued to publicly speak out against the man in spite of strains that it placed on his marriage with a pro-Imperial wife. When agents of the Empire murdered his wife and children, the senator went into hiding and founded a resistance movement with which to fight the Empire. Although Bel Iblis was a skilled military leader, he saw the need to merge his rebellion with other resistance movements, and, after being rescued from the clutches of a bounty hunter by Galen Marek, invited the Alderaanian and Chandrilan Senators Bail Organa and Mon Mothma to Corellia, at a meeting where a Rebel Alliance was formally declared. The meeting was interrupted, by the Emperor's apprentice Darth Vader, whom Marek had secretly been working for. The rebel leaders were taken to the Empire's superweapon, the Death Star, but were freed by Marek in an act of rebellion against his master, and began operating the Rebel Alliance.

When Organa was killed in 0 BBY, tensions that had been escalating between Bel Iblis and Mothma came to a climax, and the Corellian left the Rebellion, forming his own movement against the Empire. The movement was mobile and performed hit-and-run tactics against the Empire for years, and was eventually strengthened by six Dreadnaughts from the fabled Katana fleet. When the Empire was overthrown and the Rebellion became a New Republic, Bel Iblis remained in hiding from the revolutionary government, expecting a power-hungry Mothma to declare herself Empress. On assignment for the New Republic, Han Solo and Lando Calrissian discovered his base in 9 ABY, and convinced him to aid their government in its conflict with the resurgent Grand Admiral Thrawn. Bel Iblis joined the New Republic's military as a general and proved vital in several battles and made amends with Mothma, swallowing his trademark pride and becoming a permanent fixture in New Republic High Command, leading a retreat from Coruscant and doing battle with forces of a reborn Palpatine and later Admiral Daala.

When the Caamas Document Crisis erupted in 19 ABY, Bel Iblis was in command of a small fleet and the elite starfighter unit Rogue Squadron, and used his forces to mediate growing conflicts between feuding New Republic member states. When he was too late to stop a Leresai fleet from destroying a Bothan space station, he grew furious, and was reassigned to the important task of obtaining a complete copy of the Caamas Document from an Imperial Ubiqtorate base at Yaga Minor. Securing the services of the smuggler Booster Terrik and his Star Destroyer, the Errant Venture, he attacked the base, but his forces were caught in tractor beams and trapped by Imperial reinforcements. They were saved, however, and the crisis averted, when information quickly arrived revealing two of the Imperial leaders to be frauds, concurrently with a copy of the Caamas Document being discovered on Nirauan. The galaxy was finally at peace, and Bel Iblis retired, only to return to the military when an extragalactic race of religious zealots known as the Yuuzhan Vong began conquering the galaxy. Bel Iblis played pivotal roles in key victories at Ebaq 9, Duro, Bilbringi, and Coruscant, and the invaders were eventually defeated.

Text and facts from the “Garm Bel Iblis/Legends” article on Wookieepedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Modified for this site.