[VIDEOS] Beirut explosion - Lebanon PM Hassan Diab resigns amid anger over Beirut blast [Post#79]

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MOSCOW/DUBAI/LONDON (Reuters) - In the murky story of how a cache of highly explosive ammonium nitrate ended up on the Beirut waterfront, one thing is clear — no one has ever publicly come forward to claim it.

There are many unanswered questions surrounding last week’s huge, deadly blast in the Lebanese capital, but ownership should be among the easiest to resolve.

Clear identification of ownership, especially of a cargo as dangerous as that carried by the Moldovan-flagged Rhosus when it sailed into Beirut seven years ago, is fundamental to shipping, the key to insuring it and settling disputes that often arise.

But Reuters interviews and trawls for documents across 10 countries in search of the original ownership of this 2,750-tonne consignment instead revealed an intricate tale of missing documentation, secrecy and a web of small, obscure companies that span the globe.

“Goods were being transported from one country to another, and they ended up in a third country with nobody owning the goods. Why did they end up here?” said Ghassan Hasbani, a former Lebanese deputy prime minister and opposition figure.

Those linked to the shipment and interviewed by Reuters all denied knowledge of the cargo’s original owner or declined to answer the question. Those who said they didn’t know included the ship’s captain, the Georgian fertilizer maker who produced the cargo and the African firm that ordered it but said it never paid for it.

The official version of the Rhosus’ final journey depicts its voyage as a series of unfortunate events.

Shipping records show the ship loaded ammonium nitrate in Georgia in September 2013 and was meant to deliver it to an explosives maker in Mozambique. But before leaving the Mediterranean, the captain and two crew members say they were instructed by the Russian businessman they regarded as the ship’s de facto owner, Igor Grechushkin, to make an unscheduled stop in Beirut and take on extra cargo.

The Rhosus arrived in Beirut in November but never left, becoming tangled in a legal dispute over unpaid port fees and ship defects. Creditors accused the ship’s legal owner, listed as a Panama-based firm, of abandoning the vessel and the cargo was later unloaded and put in a dockside warehouse, according to official accounts.

The Beirut law firm that acted for creditors, Baroudi & Associates, did not respond to requests to identify the cargo’s original legal owner. Reuters was unable to contact Grechushkin.

The empty ship eventually sank where it was moored in 2018, according to Lebanese customs.

The Rhosus’ final movements are under fresh scrutiny after the ammonium nitrate caught fire inside the warehouse and exploded last week, killing at least 158 people, injuring thousands and leaving 250,000 people homeless.

Among the still-unanswered questions: who paid for the ammonium nitrate and did they ever seek to reclaim the cargo when the Rhosus was impounded? And if not, why not?

The cargo, packaged in large white sacks, was worth around $700,000 at 2013 prices, according to an industry source.

UNINSURED
Reuters inquiries have raised numerous red flags.

Under international maritime conventions and some domestic laws, commercial vessels must have insurance to cover events such as environmental damage, loss of life or injury caused by a sinking, spill or collision. Yet the Rhosus was uninsured, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

The ship’s Russian captain, Boris Prokoshev, said by phone from his home in Sochi, Russia, that he had seen an insurance certificate but could not vouch for its authenticity.

Reuters was unable to obtain a copy of the ship’s documents.

The Mozambican firm that ordered the ammonium nitrate, Fábrica de Explosivos Moçambique (FEM), was not the cargo owner at the time because it had agreed to only pay on delivery, according to its spokesman, Antonio Cunha Vaz.

The producer was Georgian fertilizer maker Rustavi Azot LLC, which has since been dissolved. Its owner at the time, businessman Roman Pipia, told Reuters he had lost control of the Rustavi ammonium nitrate plant in 2016. UK court documents show that the firm was forced by a creditor to auction off its assets that year.

The factory is now run by another firm, JSC Rustavi Azot, which also said it could not shed light on the cargo owner, according to the plant’s current first deputy director, Levan Burdiladze.

FEM said it had ordered the shipment through a trading firm, Savaro Ltd, which has registered companies in London and Ukraine but whose website is now offline.

A visit to Savaro Ltd’s listed London address on Monday found a Victorian terraced house, with a locked and barred door, near the fashionable bars of Shoreditch. No one responded to knocks on the door.

Reuters contacted UK-registered Savaro Ltd director Greta Bieliene, a Lithuanian based in Cyprus. She declined to answer questions.

A source familiar with the inner workings of Savaro’s trading business said it sold fertilizer from ex-Soviet Union states to clients in Africa.

Ukraine-based businessman Vladimir Verbonol is listed as director of Savaro in Ukraine, according to Ukrainian corporate data base You Control. Reuters was unable to contact Verbonol for comment.

THE RUSSIAN
As grief and anger over the blast turn to civil unrest in Beirut, there are signs the Lebanese government’s promised investigation has already turned its sights back to the Rhosus and Grechushkin, the man the crew considered as its owner.

A security source said Grechushkin was questioned at his home in Cyprus last Thursday about the cargo. A Cypriot police spokesman said an individual, whom he did not name, had been questioned at the request of Interpol Beirut.

The Rhosus arrived in Beirut in November 2013 with a leak and in generally poor condition, captain Prokoshev said. It had already been beset with problems.

In July 2013, four months before docking in Beirut, the ship was detained for 13 days by port authorities in Seville, Spain, after multiple deficiencies including malfunctioning doors, corrosion on the deck area and deficient auxiliary engines were found, according to shipping data. It resumed sailing after inspection firm Maritime Lloyd issued a cargo ship safety construction certificate, which would have involved a survey of the ship, the data showed.

Teimuraz Kavtaradze, an inspector at Georgia-based Maritime Lloyd, which does not rank among the most prominent and widely-used inspection firms, said he could not confirm whether or not the firm had provided any inspection documents to port officials in Seville. He said he was working for Maritime Lloyd in 2013 but that other staff and the management had since changed.

Seville port officials were not immediately available for comment. Paris MoU, a body of 27 maritime states under whose authority the detention was carried out, confirmed in an email that the vessel was detained and inspected in Seville.

Moldova, where the Rhosus is registered, lists the owner of the ship as Panama-based Briarwood Corp, a certificate of ownership seen by Reuters shows. Reuters was not immediately able to identify Briarwood Corp as a Panamanian registered company. Panama’s maritime authorities did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The ship’s charterer, Teto Shipping Ltd, is based in the Marshall Islands and was dissolved in 2014, according to International Registries, which says it provides shipping registry services to the Marshall Islands.

Igor Zaharia, the director of Moldova’s Naval Agency, said Grechushkin was Teto Shipping’s director.

The Rhosus’ captain passed Reuters an email address that he and the crew had been using for Teto Shipping, but requests for comment to the same address went unanswered. The captain said he regarded Grechushkin and Teto as the same entity.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...-blew-up-beirut-no-one-will-say-idUSKCN2571CP

 

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Lebanon registers record daily number of coronavirus cases

Lebanon has announced a record daily number of Covid-19 infections, more than 300, and seven deaths from the virus as the country grapples with the aftermath of the port explosion that rocked Beirut and overwhelmed hospitals.

The country’s totals now stand at 7,121 cases and 87 deaths since February, according to health ministry data. Even before the blast there had been a recent surge in infections.

The 4 August explosion killed at least 171 people, injured about 6,000 and damaged swathes of the capital, leaving around 300,000 people without habitable housing. Hospitals, many of which were damaged and their staff injured, were overwhelmed with wounded people.

The World Health Organization spokesman Tarik Jarasevic told a United Nations briefing in Geneva on Tuesday that the displacement of so many people risked accelerating the spread of Covid-19.

The WHO on 7 August issued an appeal for $15m to cover emergency health needs in Lebanon, where the healthcare sector was already under strain owing to shortages of medical supplies and medicine caused by a deep financial crisis.

“The emergency in Beirut has caused many Covid-19 precautionary measures to be relaxed, raising the prospects of even higher transmission rates and a large caseload in coming weeks,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a report on 10 August.

It said at least 15 medical facilities, including three major hospitals, sustained partial or heavy structural damage from the blast. An assessment of 55 primary healthcare centres in Beirut showed only 47% could still provide full routine services.

 

[MenInG]

The World Health Organization has urged Lebanon to stay vigilant about the threat of Covid-19 as the country struggles to recover from last week’s devastating explosion in Beirut.

There was already an upward trend in the daily number of cases before the disaster, and on Tuesday the Lebanese health ministry reported a record 309 new infections.

“While we have to still continue to respond to the consequences of the blast, we also need to stay vigilant with respect to Covid,” the WHO’s regional emergency director in the Eastern Mediterranean, Dr Richard Brennan, told a virtual briefing.

He said a priority was to restore all of Beirut’s primary healthcare facilities. Just over 50% of those in areas affected by the blast are not functioning, including three major hospitals, he said.

“Lebanon does have a very strong track record to date against Covid. If we can step up our response again, I think we will be able to get on top of this recent acceleration in cases.”

The WHO is also distributing about 25 tonnes of protective equipment that has been brought in over the last couple of days.

 

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Lebanon must fight corruption after Beirut blast, says German foreign minister

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Germany’s foreign minister said on Wednesday that Lebanon needed a government able to fight corruption and enact reforms as he toured Beirut port, scene of the devastating explosion that has kindled protests and led the government to resign.

The Aug. 4 blast at a warehouse storing highly explosive material killed at least 172 people, injured some 6,000, left around 300,000 without habitable housing and wrecked swathes of the Mediterranean city, compounding a deep economic and financial crisis.

“It is impossible that things go on as before,” Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said. “The international community is ready to invest but needs securities for these investments. It is important to have a government that fights the corruption.

“Many in Europe have a lot of interest for this country. They want to know that there are economic reforms and good governance,” Maas added.

The resignation of Prime Minister Hassan Diab’s government has deepened uncertainty. His cabinet’s talks with the International Monetary Fund for a bailout had already stalled over internal differences about the scale of financial losses.

Forming a new government could be daunting amid factional rifts and growing public discontent with a ruling class that many Lebanese brand as responsible for the country’s woes.

The foreign ministers of Russia and Saudi Arabia agreed on Wednesday on the importance of creating “beneficial external conditions” for the formation of a new Lebanese government, the Russian foreign ministry said.

Humanitarian aid has poured in but foreign countries have made clear they will not provide funds to help pull Lebanon from economic collapse without action on long-demanded reforms to tackle systemic graft, waste, mismanagement and negligence.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...st-says-german-foreign-minister-idUSKCN258189

 

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U.S. envoy: FBI to join Beirut blast probe, Lebanon must end 'empty promises'

BEIRUT (Reuters) - A top U.S. diplomat said on Thursday the FBI would join a probe of the massive Beirut explosion that killed at least 172 people, urging change in Lebanon to “make sure something like this never happens again”.

On a tour of a demolished Beirut neighbourhood, U.S. Undersecretary for Political Affairs David Hale said Lebanon needed “economic and fiscal reforms, an end to dysfunctional governance and to empty promises”.

The explosion at Beirut port injured 6,000 people and forced around 300,000 out of their homes in the city, which was already sinking deep into financial crisis. Some 30-40 people remain missing.

Authorities have blamed the Aug. 4 blast on a huge stockpile of ammonium nitrate stored for years at the port without safety measures.

“The FBI will soon join Lebanese and international investigators at the invitation of the Lebanese to help answer questions about the circumstances that led up to this explosion,” Hale said on Thursday.

Lebanese President Michel Aoun has said the investigation will look into whether the cause was negligence, an accident or possibly “external interference”.

Aoun has asked France for satellite imagery for the probe. A UK Royal Navy vessel was also deployed to Beirut to survey the site.

An Israeli seismological expert said on Thursday the explosion was preceded by a series of blasts, the last of which was combustion of fireworks.

Spoiler

FACTIONAL RIFTS
Authorities have estimated losses from the blast at $15 billion, a bill Lebanon cannot pay: it already defaulted on its enormous sovereign debt in March and IMF talks had stalled.

Humanitarian aid has poured in. But foreign countries that once helped have made clear they will not give funds to help Lebanon out of economic collapse without reforms to tackle state corruption and waste.

Hale, the No. 3 U.S. diplomat, said Washington would back any new government that “reflects the will of the people” and enacts reforms. The fallout from the explosion forced the cabinet to resign this week.

But agreement on a new one could be daunting in a country with factional rifts and a sectarian power-sharing system. Public anger has grown at a political elite in power for decades, which many blame for the country’s woes.

The now-caretaker government came to office in January with backing from various political parties, including the heavily armed Shi’ite Muslim Hezbollah. Together with its allies, they have a majority of seats in parliament.

The United States classifies Hezbollah, which is backed by Tehran, as terrorist. Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif landed in Beirut on Thursday evening, local media said.

Security forces were heavily deployed in Beirut on Thursday, stopping protesters from reaching a legislative session.

“They are all criminals, they are the ones who caused this catastrophe, this explosion,” said protester Lina Boubess, 60.

“Isn’t it enough that they stole our money, our lives, our dreams and the dreams of our children? What more do we have to lose?”

Parliament approved an earlier government decision declaring a state of emergency, which activists criticized as an attempt to suppress dissent. It also confirmed the resignations of eight MPs who quit after the blast.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...lebanon-must-end-empty-promises-idUSKCN2590ZT

 

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Beirut explosion: FBI to take part in Lebanon investigation

A team of FBI investigators is due to arrive in Lebanon this weekend to take part in the investigation into Beirut’s explosion, a senior US official has said, after visiting the location of the blast.

David Hale, the US undersecretary of state for political affairs, called on Saturday for a thorough and transparent investigation. He said the FBI team was taking part at the invitation of Lebanese authorities in order to figure out what caused the 4 August explosion that killed nearly 180 people and wounded thousands.

The cause of the fire that ignited nearly 3,000 tonnes of ammonium nitrate at Beirut’s port remains unclear. Documents have emerged showing the country’s top leadership and security officials were aware of the chemicals stored at the port. France is also taking part in the Lebanese-led investigation.

“We really need to make sure that there is a thorough, a transparent and credible investigation. I know that is what everyone is demanding,” Hale said.

Search and rescue crews flew in from around the world in the immediate aftermath. Hale toured the site of the blast with Lebanese army officers.

Many Lebanese people want the investigation taken out of the hands of their government, fearing that bickering among the entrenched political factions, notorious for corruption, will not allow results to come to light that might damage their leadership.

Top Lebanese officials, including President Michel Aoun, have rejected calls for an independent investigation, describing it as “a waste of time” that would be politicised.

On Friday, the leader of the powerful Hezbollah group said he did not trust any international investigation, in a clear reference to the FBI’s assistance. Hassan Nasrallah said the cause of the explosion was still unclear, adding that any international investigation would also have to clear Israel of any responsibility in the port explosion.

Nasrallah added that Israel would be met “with an equally devastating response” if the investigation pointed to its involvement.

Israel has denied involvement and so far no evidence has emerged suggesting otherwise. However, Aoun, who is supported by Hezbollah, has said it is one of the theories being investigated.

Hale also stressed the need for full state control over ports and borders, in an apparent reference to claims that Hezbollah holds influence over both in Lebanon. “We can never go back to an era in which anything goes at the port or borders of Lebanon,” he said.

Lebanon’s government resigned on 10 August. For now, there are no formal consultations under way on who will replace Hassan Diab as prime minister and no likely candidate has emerged. But the flurry of diplomatic visits appeared to be designed to influence the forming of the new government.

Public anger has risen over the ruling elite’s corruption, mismanagement and political uncertainty. Western leaders have said they will send aid directly to the Lebanese people and that billions of dollars will not be pumped into the country before significant reforms take place.

On Friday, the United Nations launched a $565m (£432m) appeal for Lebanon with immediate humanitarian assistance and initial recovery efforts.

Washington and its allies consider Hezbollah a terrorist organization, and have accused the Iran-backed group of abusing government funds. Local media have speculated that Hale would be pushing for a government that excludes Hezbollah.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/15/beirut-explosion-fbi-lebanon-investigation-us

 

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Lebanese president says Beirut aid should go where needed

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanese President Michel Aoun said on Saturday that international aid pledged following a massive explosion in Beirut last week that killed 178 people and made 300,000 homeless should go where it is needed.

In an interview with French news channel BFM TV, Aoun said all hypotheses remained open in the investigation into the blast at the port of Beirut that wrecked huge swathes of the capital.

“I have asked that aid sent by foreign countries be given exactly where it is needed,” he said, adding that he had not considered resigning, after the government quit earlier in the week.

The United Nations has launched a $565 million aid appeal, whose priorities include stabilising the grain supply after the explosion destroyed a huge grain silo at the port.

Six hospitals and more than 20 clinics were damaged and more than 120 schools destroyed, the UN says.

“We would like to be able to rebuild the three hospitals that were completely destroyed,” U.N. humanitarian coordinator Najat Rochdi said earlier.

The United States called for a transparent and credible investigation into the disaster.

The Aug. 4 blast, which authorities say was caused by more than 2,000 tonnes of ammonium nitrate that had been unsafely stored at the port for years.

“We can never go back to an era in which anything goes at the port or the borders of Lebanon that had to contribute to this situation,” said David Hale, U.S. Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs, after visiting the port.

He said FBI agents would arrive this weekend, at the invitation of Lebanon, to help investigate what led to the explosion.

Spoiler

ANGER

The blast has fuelled anger at Lebanon’s ruling politicians who were already facing criticism over a financial meltdown that has sunk the currency, demolished the value of savings and left depositors unable to withdraw their money.

Some Lebanese doubt the authorities can carry out a proper investigation and say foreign countries should intervene.

“We can’t trust this government. They will lie to us. They should form an international committee to investigate this,” said businessman Jimmy Iskandar.

Aoun has said a probe will look into whether the blast was caused by negligence, an accident or “external interference”.

He said in his interview that the investigation would not be as quick as he had hoped because it was complex and would involve an independent magistrate.

Asked why he did not want an international investigation, he said foreign experts, including from France and the FBI, were helping with the Lebanese probe.

“They won’t do a thing in an investigation and the whole world knows that,” said painter Mohammed Khodr, as he helped repair a restaurant damaged in the blast.

The heavily armed, Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah, which is listed as a terrorist organisation by the United States, said on Friday it would wait for results of the official Lebanese investigation into the blast.

But if it turns out to be an act of sabotage by neighbouring Israel then it would “pay an equal price”, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised address. Israel has denied any role in the explosion.

Nasrallah said his group was against an international investigation because its first purpose would be to “distance Israel from any responsibility for this explosion, if it had responsibility”. He said the participation of the FBI in an investigation would serve the same purpose.

The explosion has pitched Lebanon into a political vacuum since the resignation of the government, which had formed in January with backing of Hezbollah and its allies, including Aoun.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-l...irut-aid-should-go-where-needed-idUKKCN25B0IV

 

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Lebanon faces 'biggest danger', needs elections, says patriarch

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon’s top Christian cleric called on Sunday for early parliamentary elections and a government formed to rescue the country rather than the ruling “political class” after the vast explosion in Beirut’s port threw the nation into turmoil.

The now-caretaker cabinet resigned amid protests over the Aug. 4 blast that killed more than 172 people, injured 6,000, left 300,000 homeless and destroyed swathes of the Mediterranean city, compounding a deep financial crisis.

Patriarch Bechara Boutros Al-Rai, who holds sway in Lebanon as head of the Maronite church from which the head of state must be drawn under sectarian power-sharing, warned that Lebanon was today facing “its biggest danger”.

“We will not allow for Lebanon to become a compromise card between nations that want to rebuild ties amongst themselves,” Al-Rai said in a Sunday sermon, without naming any countries.

“We must start immediately with change and quickly hold early parliamentary elections without the distraction of discussing a new election law and to form a new government.”

Several MPs submitted their resignations over the port explosion but not in the number needed to dissolve parliament.

Under the constitution, President Michel Aoun is required to designate a candidate for prime minister with the most support from parliamentary blocs. The presidency has yet to say when consultations will take place.

There has been a flurry of Western and regional diplomacy after the blast, which fuelled public anger at politicians already accused of corruption and mismanagement. A financial meltdown has ravaged the currency and froze depositors out of their savings.

Senior French and U.S. officials have linked any foreign financial aid with implementation of long-demanded reforms, including state control over the port and Lebanese borders.

Iran, seen as a major player in Lebanon through backing the powerful Shi’ite movement Hezbollah that helped form the outgoing cabinet, has said the international community should not take advantage of Lebanon’s pain to exert its will.

Al-Rai said Lebanese want a government that would reverse “national, moral and material” corruption, enact reforms and “rescue Lebanon, not the leadership and political class”.

Spoiler

EXPLOSION ‘MYSTERY’

Aoun has said the investigation is looking into whether negligence, an accident or “external interference” caused the detonation of more than 2,000 tonnes of ammonium nitrate warehoused for years without safety measures.

Aoun’s influential son-in-law Gebran Bassil, who heads the largest Christian political bloc, said probing negligence should be quick as it was “known and documented”, but that the blast itself “is a mystery that requires deep investigation”.

Bassil, whose party is allied with Hezbollah, also said in a televised speech on Sunday that threats of further Western sanctions would “drown Lebanon in chaos and discord”.

His party would not “betray or backstab a Lebanese or act with those abroad against domestic interests”, he said.

The United States has imposed sanctions on Hezbollah, which it classifies as a terrorist group. U.S. officials have said those sanctions could be extended beyond direct affiliates of the heavily armed movement to its allies.

During a visit to Beirut after the blast, French President Emmanuel Macron raised the prospect of sanctions as a last resort to spur Lebanese action on reform.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...-needs-elections-says-patriarch-idUSKCN25C0D5

 

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Beirut explosion: Rescuers investigate ‘heartbeat in the rubble’

Rescuers in Beirut are searching through the rubble of a building amid reports a person could be alive - nearly one month after a powerful blast devastated the Lebanese capital.

Specialist sensor equipment has been brought to the Mar Mikhael area following unconfirmed reports that a heartbeat was detected.

More than 200 people died when 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate in a port warehouse detonated on 4 August.

Some 300,000 people were left homeless.

There has been outrage that so much hazardous material was stored unsafely in the port.

The Lebanese government's resignation shortly afterwards failed to pacify protesters, who clashed with police in the city for several nights.

In a separate development, four containers with 4.3 tonnes of ammonium nitrate were found on Thursday outside Beirut's seaport, the army said.

It said its specialists examined the containers, but gave no further details.

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-54014940

 

[MenInG]

Lebanon's army has found 4.35 tonnes of ammonium nitrate near the entrance to Beirut port, the site of a powerful explosion last month, caused by a large stockpile of the same highly explosive chemical, that killed 191 people.

The military said in a statement on Thursday that army experts were called in for an inspection and found the dangerous chemical in four containers stored near the port.

Army engineers were "dealing with it", according to the statement that was carried by the state news agency NNA.

There were no details on the origin of the chemicals or their owner.

The find comes almost a month after nearly 3,000 tonnes of ammonium nitrate stored at Beirut's port for six years detonated, wreaking death and destruction.

Along with 191 people killed, more than 6,000 were injured.

Entire neighbourhoods were devastated, nearly 300,000 people were left homeless as the blast caused damage worth billions of dollars.

Lebanon's government quit amid public anger in a nation already brought to its knees by an economic crisis.

The public remains anxious that more hazardous materials are being stored badly, putting them at risk.

Days after the August 4 blast, French and Italian chemical experts working amid the remains of the port identified more than 20 containers carrying dangerous chemicals.

The army later said these containers were moved and stored safely in locations away from the port.

French experts, as well as the FBI, have taken part in the investigation into the explosion at the request of Lebanese authorities.

So far, authorities have detained 25 people over last month's explosion, most of them port and customs officials.

Earlier this week, a UN agency warned that more than half of Lebanon's population risk facing a food crisis in the aftermath of the explosion that compounded the country's existing woes.

"More than half of the country's population is at risk of failing to access their basic food needs by the year's end," the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) said.

"Immediate measures should be taken to prevent a food crisis," ESCWA executive secretary, Rola Dashti, said.

Dashti said Lebanon's government must prioritise the rebuilding of silos at the Beirut port, the country's largest grain storage.

Source Al Jazeera

 

[Firebat]

Beirut explosion: Hopes fade in search for survivor

Hopes are fading in Beirut that anyone will be found beneath the rubble of a building destroyed in last month's explosion, following two days of search efforts.

Rescue workers began looking through the debris after sensor equipment detected possible signs of life.

But Chilean rescuers ended a second day of searching without any results.

Beirut held a minute's silence on Friday to mark a month since the explosion, which killed almost 200.

Thousands more were injured by the blast, which happened when 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate detonated.

There has been outrage that so much hazardous material was stored unsafely in a warehouse in the city's port, close to many residential areas.

The Lebanese government's resignation shortly afterwards failed to pacify protesters, who clashed with police in the city for several nights.

One month on, seven people are still missing, according to Lebanese officials.

Read more:

Spoiler

What's happening with the search?

Search efforts got underway after a rescue team from Chile said it had detected possible signs of life under a destroyed building in Beirut's Gemmayze area.

The rescuers were walking through the area on Wednesday night when their sniffer dog - trained to find bodies - gave a sign that there was a person inside. When they returned on Thursday, the dog went to the same place and gave the same sign. Specialist sensor equipment then detected a pulsing signal in the area.

According to a local source, the team's highly sensitive equipment can detect breathing at a depth of 15m (49ft).

Rescue workers cleared rubble from the site, as crowds of people watched, hoping for a miracle.

The head of the Chilean rescue team, Francisco Lermanda, said rescuers dug three tunnels to try to reach the site where pulse signals were detected.

But the team halted their search on Friday night with no sign of any survivor, or any body. They said they would return in the morning.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-54030074

 

[Firebat]

Rescuers search Beirut rubble for third day, with nation transfixed

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Rescue workers continued to dig through the rubble of a Beirut building for a third day on Saturday, still hoping to find someone alive more than a month after a massive port explosion shattered Lebanon’s capital.

About 50 rescue workers and volunteers, including a specialist team from Chile, had yet to locate anyone after sensors on Thursday detected signs of breathing and heat. But they said they would continue while there was a small chance of finding a survivor, and had narrowed their search.

“Always in search operations like this, you can neither lose hope nor absolutely say there is hope,” George Abou Moussa, director of operations in Lebanon’s civil defence, told Reuters.

The Aug. 4 blast killed about 190 people, injured 6,000 more and devastated whole neighborhoods. The authorities held ceremonies on Friday to mark a month since the explosion tore into a city already reeling from a crippling economic crisis.

Rescue efforts dominated local and social media, as the Lebanese were transfixed, desperate for some good news.

The ruined building where the search was continuing lies between the residential districts of Gemmayze and Mar Mikhael, among the hardest hit areas by the blast and home to many old buildings that crumbled as the shockwave ripped through.

Work was slow, rescue workers said, as the badly damaged building was at risk of collapse.

“The building is really crumbling, it’s scary and there’s a lot of danger to the team,” Abou Moussa said.

Workers were using shovels and their hands to dig, while mechanical diggers and a crane lifted heavy debris.

Emmanuel Durand, a French civil engineer who was training local university students, volunteered his services and was working with the rescuers to monitor the structure.

Scanning the building with high-precision lasers, Durand said his team had so far not found any signs of movement.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...day-with-nation-transfixed-idUSKBN25W0J8?il=0

 

[MenInG]

A huge fire has erupted in the port of the Lebanese capital Beirut, one month after a massive explosion there killed more than 190 people.

The blaze broke out in an oil and tyre warehouse in the port's duty-free zone. Officials told local media it was contained to one place.

Smoke could be seen billowing out over the city's skyline.

It was not immediately clear what caused the fire. No casualties have been reported so far.

Firefighters are at the scene, and the military said its helicopters were being used in efforts to extinguish the blaze.

 

[Firebat]

Beirut fire: Large blaze erupts in port a month after explosion

Lebanon has launched an investigation into a huge fire at a warehouse storing aid that erupted in the port of Beirut - one month after a massive explosion there killed more than 190 people.

The blaze broke out where an aid agency had been storing food and cooking oil.

Firefighters and military officials spent hours battling the fire, using helicopters to drop water on it, before getting it under control on Thursday.

No injuries were reported and the cause of the fire is not yet known.

Read more:

Spoiler

What happened?

Footage shared on social media showed port workers running away as the fire broke out at the duty-free zone in the port on Thursday. The blaze sent a plume of dark smoke over the Lebanese capital.

The head of Lebanon's Red Cross, George Kettaneh, said some people were suffering from shortness of breath, but there were no reports of injuries.

Red Cross Regional Director Fabrizio Carboni said the warehouse stocked thousands of food parcels.

He added that the humanitarian operation is at risk of serious disruption.

The area around the fire was cordoned off to prevent it from spreading. Civil defence director general Raymond Khattar told the state-run National News Agency that those working to extinguish the fire would not leave "until the flames are fully quenched."

By the evening, officials said most flames had been extinguished.

The fire broke out just over a month after a huge explosion in the Lebanese capital, which was caused by 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate detonating at a warehouse in the port.

In addition to the fatalities, thousands were injured and as many as 300,000 left homeless by the 4 August explosion.

Despite assurances from officials on Thursday that the situation was under control, some residents, still traumatised by last month's explosion, drove out of the city.

"I am forced to get them out of Beirut from the smoke and the fire that is happening at the port again," Majed Hassanein, who was leaving with his wife and children, told Reuters news agency.

Others described how the fire brought back memories of the explosion.

"For sure we were scared... it's only been a month since the explosion that destroyed Beirut. We saw the same thing happening again," said 53-year-old Andre Muarbes.

What do we know about the cause of the fire?

The Lebanese army announced in a tweet on Thursday that military police had begun an investigation into the blaze.

Port director Bassem al-Qaisi earlier told the Voice of Lebanon radio station that the fire started in a warehouse where barrels of cooking oil were being stored, and then spread to tyres nearby.

"It is too early to know if it is the result of heat or some other mistake," he said.

Michel Najjar, the public works minister with the outgoing government, told local media outlets that initial indications suggested the blaze was started by repair work at the port.

But he said full details on what happened would not be clear until a "comprehensive study" had been completed.

In a meeting with top officials on Thursday, President Michel Aoun said the fire could have been the result of sabotage, a technical error or negligence.

"In all cases, the cause must be known as soon as possible and the perpetrators held to account," Mr Aoun was quoted as saying by the presidential Twitter account.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-54100251

 

[Firebat]

Lebanon's army finds firework cache at devastated Beirut port

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon’s army said it had found 1.3 tonnes of fireworks during a search of Beirut port, which was devastated last month in a huge blast that was blamed on a large quantity of chemicals kept in poor condition.

The army said in a statement, released on its website on Friday, that 1,320 kgs of fireworks were found in 120 boxes in a warehouse during a search of the port. It said army engineers disposed of them.

The port and a swathe of central Beirut was ruined by the huge blast on Aug. 4 that killed at least 190 people. It was blamed on 2,750 tonnes of highly explosive ammonium nitrate kept at the port for years in poor condition.

Warehouses and concrete grain silos at the port were destroyed.

Lebanon’s army said on Sept. 3 it had also found a further 4.35 tonnes of ammonium nitrate near the entrance to Beirut port, which the army said at the time it was dealing with.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...cache-at-devastated-beirut-port-idUSKCN26A0HD

 

[Firebat]

Beirut blast: Lebanon seeks arrest of ship owner and captain

Lebanon has requested the arrest of the foreign owner and captain of the ship which brought material which blew up at Beirut port causing devastation.

The judge leading the probe into the blast has asked international police organisation Interpol to detain the two men without publicly identifying them.

Some 190 people were killed when the improperly stored ammonium nitrate cargo exploded on 4 August.

The blast left 6,000 others injured and inflicted huge amounts of damage.

The captain of the ship, the MV Rhosus, has previously been named as a Russian national, and its owner a Russian national based in Cyprus.

The MV Rhosus had docked in Beirut in 2013 after suffering technical problems while sailing from Georgia to Mozambique.

Some 2,700 tonnes of ammonium nitrate were offloaded the following year and stored in unsafe conditions in a warehouse at the port, where it eventually exploded with catastrophic effect.

The ship itself, which was in poor condition, sank at the port in February 2018.

On Thursday, the Lebanese judge leading the investigation into the disaster, Fadi Sawan, "issued two absentee arrest warrants for the owner of the Rhosus... as well as the ship's captain," an unnamed judicial source told AFP news agency.

According to the source, an investigating team questioned the ship's owner in Cyprus last month.

So far, at least 20 people have been arrested in connection with the case.

The explosion has caused outrage in Lebanon, with blame being directed not only at those in charge of the ship, but also the Lebanese authorities for failing to prevent it from happening.

The blast led to the resignation of the government, and efforts to form a new government have so far been unsuccessful.

The disaster came at a time when Lebanon was already suffering multiple crises with the collapse of its currency, the effects of the coronavirus pandemic and months of demonstrations calling for an overhaul of the country's political system.

Alongside the human toll, the explosion caused as much as $4.6bn (£3.4bn) in damage to buildings and infrastructure, according to the World Bank, and Lebanon has appealed for international help to recover.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-54377408

 

[Firebat]

Beirut blast was 'historically' powerful

The blast that devastated large parts of Beirut in August was one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions in history, experts say.

The Sheffield University, UK, team says a best estimate for the yield is 500 tons of TNT equivalent, with a reasonable upper limit of 1.1 kilotons.

This puts it at around one-twentieth of the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945.

The team mapped how the shockwave propagated through the city.

The group hopes its work can help emergency planners prepare for future disasters.

"When we know what the yield is from these sorts of events, we can then work out the loading that comes from that. And that tells us how to construct buildings that are more resilient," said Dr Sam Rigby from Sheffield's Blast and Impact Engineering Research Group.

"Even things like glazing. In Beirut, glazing damage was reported up 10km away from the centre of the explosion, and we know falling glass causes a lot of injuries."

The 4 August explosion was the result of the accidental detonation of approximately 2,750 tonnes of improperly stored ammonium nitrate. The blast led to some 190 deaths, as well as more than 6,000 injuries.

The Sheffield team arrived at its estimate by studying videos of the event posted on social media.

When the group did this in the immediate aftermath of the blast, it produced an initial estimate in the range of 1.0-1.5 kilotons of TNT.

But this was based on only a limited set of videos, which the team discovered may have dropped frames either when being uploaded to social media or when being pulled down.

The group has now had the chance to review many more videos from the event (16 in total) to generate a broader set of data points from which to make the calculations. This has resulted in the yield estimate being revised downwards slightly.

"Think of it like a kid on a swing," said Dr Rigby. "If you push the child and see how far they go, you can then work out how hard the push was. That's essentially how we work out the yield."

In a matter of milliseconds, the explosion released the equivalent of around 1GWh of energy. This is enough to power more than 100 homes for a year, say the researchers.

The nuclear device dropped on Hiroshima was in the range of 13-15 kilotons of TNT equivalent. By way of comparison, one of the US military's biggest conventional weapons, the GBU-43/B MOAB ("Massive Ordnance Air Blast") device, has a yield of around 11 tons.

"The Beirut explosion is interesting because it sits almost directly in a sort of no-man's land between the largest conventional weapons and nuclear weapons," said Dr Rigby

"It was about 10 times bigger than the biggest conventional weapon, and 10 to 20 times smaller than the early nuclear weapons," he told BBC News.

Dr Rigby said Beirut was in the top 10 in terms of the most powerful accidental man-made explosions in history (neglecting much more energetic natural occurrences like volcanoes, asteroid impacts, etc), and probably just outside the top 10 when some nuclear mock-up tests (such as "Minor Scale" - the largest ever man-made non-nuclear explosion, which was around 3.2 kilotons of TNT) are included.

Beirut was around a third of Minor Scale.

The largest accidental explosion in history occurred in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1917, when two ships (one carrying explosives) collided. That was nearly 3 kilotons of TNT equivalent, so again Beirut was around a third, give or take. More recently, the 2015 explosion in Tianjin (China) was only around half the yield of Beirut. This again involved ammonium nitrate.

"Beirut's certainly the most powerful non-nuclear explosion of the 21st Century," said Dr Rigby.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54420033

 

[James]

That is frightening in of itself — and also additionally frightening given that the Hiroshima nuclear attack was a 20 times larger explosion than that, and then that a modern hydrogen bomb could potentially produce a 200-250 times more devastating explosion than that which was seen at Hiroshima.

 

[Bigboii]

at the rate they are going I feel like one day they'll run out of people to select for cabinet in Lebanon because everyone in the country would have served and resigned as a cabinet member

 

[Giannis]

at the rate they are going I feel like one day they'll run out of people to select for cabinet in Lebanon because everyone in the country would have served and resigned as a cabinet member

Just replace the government with AI, the algorithm can govern them.

 

[Firebat]

Beirut fuel tank explodes in building basement, killing four

A fuel tank has exploded inside a Beirut building, killing four people and injuring several others, the Lebanese Red Cross said.

It was not immediately clear what triggered the blast in the western neighbourhood of Tariq al-Jadida on Friday night. The state-run national news agency said the blaze erupted inside a bakery in the basement of the building.

Reports said the explosion could be heard across the city.

Firefighters quickly put out the flames and later helped building residents stuck in their apartments by the fire to climb down ladders. Lebanese troops also deployed to the area and pushed back onlookers.

A Beirut television station said more than 30 people were hurt, with a medical source adding that three children were hospitalised with burns.

A security source said the fire took hold in an underground premises where there was also petrol.

In the last few weeks, Beirut municipality has been looking for warehouses that could be in breach of the law or pose a danger to residential areas, governor Marwan Aboud told the Lebanese Al-Jadeed television station.

“We feared that such an accident could happen,” Aboud said, adding around 100 sites had been identified as suspect.

Firefighters using mobile ladders evacuated people from buildings in the bustling district.

Friday’s explosion was the latest in a series of terrible events in a country hit with an unprecedented economic crisis and lacking the most basic public services.

Several fires have broken out at Beirut’s port after a cataclysmic blast at Beirut’s port on 4 August killed 203 people, injured at least 6,500 others and ravaged swathes of the capital, causing damage worth billions of dollars. Nearly 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrate, a highly explosive chemical used in fertilisers, exploded. The material had been stored at the facility for six years.

It is still not known what ignited the nitrate but more than two dozen people, many of them port and customs officials have been detained since.

In other parts of Lebanon, wildfires erupted in forests amid a heatwave hitting the Mediterranean country.

Some of the fires broke out in villages along the border with Israel. The state-run news agency said a mine exploded in the Wazzani area because of the fire. There were no casualties.

In neighbouring Syria, wildfires have killed two people and caused breathing problems for about 20 others in the coastal province of Latakia, the health ministry said.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...nk-explodes-in-building-basement-killing-four

 

[Firebat]

Lebanon hires firm to clear dangerous material from shattered Beirut port

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon’s authorities signed a contract this month with a German company to clear dangerous material stored for more than a decade at Beirut port, the site of a seismic blast in August that killed about 200 people and wrecked swathes of the capital.

Combi Lift, which signed the contract three months after a huge quantity of poorly stored chemicals erupted in a mushroom cloud, will remove “flammable and highly reactive” chemicals from 49 containers at the port, the caretaker prime minister’s office said in a statement sent to Reuters.

At least some of the chemicals the German firm will remove had been in storage at the port since 2009, although the statement did not give precise details.

The fact that it took about three months since the blast to sign a deal to remove dangerous material still left at the shattered port, which lies in the heart of Beirut, will add to public frustration and a sense of political drift in a nation whose economy has imploded after years of mismanagement and corruption.

Many Lebanese, particularly those who lost homes or who are still working on repairs since the Aug. 4 blast, are angry that results of an investigation have yet to be released.

“One hundred days after the national tragedy of the Beirut port explosion, one hundred days of investigation engaging serious international expertise and still no clarity, no accountability, no justice,” U.N. special coordinator for Lebanon, Jan Kubis, tweeted on Nov. 13.

He briefed the U.N. Security Council about Lebanon, citing a lack of clarity about the probe despite “numerous appeals and petitions of citizenry” for an impartial investigation.

The cabinet quit after the blast but is still acting in a caretaker role, as Lebanon’s top politicians, many of whom have been in and out of power for decades under a sectarian power-sharing system, have yet to agree on forming a new government.

The state news agency had said on Wednesday a contract with Combi Lift was signed. It did not give the details that were later provided to Reuters.

The ammonium nitrate that exploded in August had been unloaded at the port in 2014. The authorities ignored several warnings by officials about the dangers of storing the material there.

The authorities have detained 25 people, including port and customs officials, and say the probe is moving as fast as possible.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...rial-from-shattered-beirut-port-idUSKBN2801IP

 

[Firebat]

Beirut explosion: Lebanon's caretaker PM 'charged with negligence'

A Lebanese judge has reportedly charged caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab and three former ministers with negligence over the Beirut port blast.

Judicial sources said the four would be questioned next week about the warnings they received over the unsafe storage of ammonium nitrate in a warehouse.

A fire triggered the detonation of 2,750 tonnes of the chemical, causing an explosion that killed 200 people.

The massive blast in August also caused as much as $4.6bn (£3.5bn) of damage.

Mr Diab and his cabinet resigned days after the disaster, which he blamed on what he called a "system of corruption... bigger than the state".

He and the other three men - reportedly former finance minister Ali Hassan Khalil and former public works ministers Youssef Finyanus and Ghazi Zaiter - are the first politicians to be indicted as part of the investigation by Judge Fadi Sawan.

A judicial source told AFP news agency on Thursday that the accused had received "several written notices warning them against postponing the disposal of [the] ammonium nitrate".

"They also did not take the necessary measures to avoid the devastating explosion and its enormous damage," the source added.

There was no immediate comment from Mr Diab, Mr Khalil or Mr Finyanus.

Mr Zaiter told Reuters news agency that he would make a statement once he had been officially informed of the charges.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-55259228

 

[MenInG]

Beirut, Lebanon – Lebanon’s outgoing Prime Minister Hassan Diab and three former ministers have been charged with negligence that led to the deaths of hundreds and injuries to thousands in the massive August Beirut port explosion.

Fadi Sawan, the judge investigating the blast, on Thursday charged Diab, former public works ministers Ghazi Zaeiter and Youssef Fenianos and former finance minister Ali Hassan Khalil, with criminal negligence, a senior judicial source told Al Jazeera. The charges were later confirmed by state media.

Sawan said he would seek to question Diab as a defendant in the case on Monday at the Grand Serail, the seat of government in Beirut. He has also called in the former three ministers for questioning on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, also as defendants.

Sawan had previously questioned them only as “witnesses”.

But Diab’s office indicated the prime minister would not comply with Sawan’s investigation, saying in a statement that Sawan had violated the constitution by overstepping the role of the Parliament of Lebanon, which has a specialised court for the trial of top officials.

The prime minister’s “conscience is clear” and he had dealt with the explosion issue in a “responsible and transparent” manner, the statement said.

“This surprising targeting goes beyond the person to the position per se, and Hassan Diab will not allow the premiership to be targeted by any party,” the statement said.

Sawan’s decision comes two weeks after he sent a letter to Lebanon’s Parliament in which he noted “serious suspicions related to some government officials,” and their involvement in the explosion, according to a statement released on Thursday by a council of senior judges who appointed Sawan to probe the case.

Instead of initiating investigations at the specialised parliamentary court, Parliament’s office, under the control of Speaker Nabih Berri, replied two days later that it had “no suspicions” over the involvement of top officials in the blast based on the evidence Sawan presented in his letter.

The source told Al Jazeera that Sawan had tried to get Parliament “to explore the political responsibility of ministers, but they declined to move forward. This pushed him to file these charges of negligence, which he considers within his jurisdiction”.

The decision to prosecute the outgoing prime minister and former ministers is based on verified written correspondence sent to them, warning the officials about nearly 3,000 tonnes of explosive material at Beirut’s port, the source said.

Kayan Tlais, a spokesperson for a committee of the families of victims, told Al Jazeera that he had full confidence in the judiciary’s ability to prosecute the case and would leave it up to Sawan to determine who was ultimately responsible.

“We don’t want to pre-empt the trial or comment on who should be charged or not – that’s the expertise of the judiciary, not ours,” said Tlais, whose 39-year-old brother Mohammad, a foreman at the port’s container terminal, died in the explosion.

The latest charges raise the number of people being prosecuted over the blast to 37, some 25 of whom are in detention.

The blast killed some 200 people, injured more than 6,000 and caused billions of dollars in damage to the capital. Diab’s government resigned in the wake of the explosion but has continued to function in a caretaker capacity since.

A relative political newcomer, Diab has said he initially learned of the presence of the explosive material on June 3, 2020.

But he said he waited until a report by the State Security agency on the matter was handed to him in late July before he took any action, which he said entailed informing relevant ministries to look into the matter.

Khalil and Zaieter are both veteran ministers with Berri’s Amal Movement, while Fenianos is a senior official in the Marada Movement of Christian leader Suleiman Frangieh.

They held office in the time after the explosive material entered Beirut’s port in late 2013 on board a cargo vessel.

Khalil served as finance minister from 2014 to 2020, during which time he nominally oversaw Lebanese Customs, whose head has been charged and detained in the case, along with a number of other officials.

Zaieter and Fenianos headed the public works ministry from 2014 to 2016 and 2016 to 2020 respectively.

The ministry is in charge of overseeing the port, and it’s director of Land and Maritime Transport, Abdel-Hafiz al-Kaissi, has been charged in the blast case.

Some families of blast victims – and some human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International – have raised doubts about whether Sawan’s probe would lead to full accountability for victims, due to reported political interference and due process issues.

Thursday’s charges were welcomed by some, including Antonia Mulvey, the director of Legal Action Worldwide, which published a report last month that detailed evidence showing high-level officials knew of the explosives at the port but did nothing.

Mulvey in a tweet said that Thursday’s charges “could be a huge step forward in the investigation”.

Yet, other top officials who allegedly knew of the presence of the explosives at the port have not been charged – including President Michel Aoun, who received the same report that Diab received in late July.

Former Prime Minister Najib Mikati, who himself was caretaker prime minister when the ammonium nitrate entered the port, said there was a double standard in charging Diab over the blast when Aoun had seen the security report but has not been investigated.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/12/10/lebanon-pm-former-ministers-charged-over-beirut-blast

 

[Firebat]

Charges in Beirut blast investigation hit political pushback

BEIRUT (Reuters) -Leading Lebanese parties lambasted charges brought against the prime minister and three former ministers over the Beirut port explosion on Friday, highlighting the political minefield facing the investigation.

The heavily armed, Shi’ite Muslim Hezbollah movement said the charges smacked of political targeting, joining a wider pushback by influential parties against the allegations of negligence made by Judge Fadi Sawan.

Four months since the port blast that killed 200 people, injured thousands and destroyed entire districts, victims are still awaiting the result of the investigation. Leaders had promised it would come within days.

The August explosion, one of the biggest non-nuclear blasts on record, was caused by a massive quantity of ammonium nitrate stored unsafely for years.

Sawan charged caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab, whose cabinet quit after the blast, and three former ministers with negligence on Thursday.

In a visit to Diab on Friday, Prime Minister-designate Saad al-Hariri accused Sawan, the judge leading the inquiry, of breaching the constitution. He pledged not to let anyone violate “the post of prime minister” - a seat reserved for a Sunni Muslim in Lebanon’s power-sharing system.

Officials who were informed about the nitrate included Diab and President Michel Aoun, who were warned in July that it could destroy the capital if it exploded, according to documents seen by Reuters.

Diab, who says his conscience is clear, has also accused Sawan of a constitutional breach. So has Ali Hassan Khalil, one of the ex-ministers, a close Hezbollah ally and senior aide to Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri.

While Iran-backed Hezbollah said it supported a transparent inquiry, it rebuked Sawan’s step.

“We absolutely reject the absence of unified standards that has led to what we believe to be political targeting against some people and ignoring others,” it said.

The other two former ministers charged - Ghazi Zeaiter and Youssef Finianos - are also Hezbollah allies.

Zeaiter, a parliamentary deputy from Berri’s bloc, called the charges against him “a blatant violation” that he would not remain silent about. He served as public works and transport minister in 2014, soon after the Rhosus ship carrying tonnes of the highly explosive chemical arrived at Beirut port.

Finianos has yet to comment. The United States has imposed sanctions on Finianos and Khalil, accusing them of enabling Hezbollah, which Washington deems a terrorist organisation.

There has been debate about whether ministers enjoyed immunity in the case. Melham Khalaf, head of the Beirut bar association, praised Sawan’s move, saying it showed courage.

Former premier Najib Mikati suggested that while Diab has been charged, President Aoun, who was also informed about the presence of the dangerous material, was not.

Aoun said in August he had directed the Supreme Defence Council, a grouping of security and military agencies chaired by the president, to “do what is necessary”.

https://www.reuters.com/article/leb...tigation-hit-political-pushback-idUSKBN28L13A

 

[Firebat]

Let us rebuild Beirut's port in less than three years, says France's CMA CGM

PARIS (Reuters) - French container shipping group CMA CGM is pursuing a plan to rebuild Beirut’s port within three years, despite political deadlock in Lebanon that has prevented decisions on the port since a blast last August, a company executive said.

A chemical explosion at the port killed 200 people and destroyed entire neighbourhoods, deepening Lebanon’s worst political and economic crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war.

CMA CGM’s plan, first outlined to Lebanese authorities in September, envisages the reconstruction of damaged docks and warehouses, along with port expansion and digitalisation, at a total cost estimated at $400 million to $600 million, Joe Dakkak, general manager CMA CGM Lebanon, said on Saturday.

“Our offer remains on the table,” he told Reuters. “Our project is a realistic one because the situation is urgent.”

On Friday, German companies presented a separate multi-billion-dollar plan to rebuild Beirut’s port and neighbouring districts, confirming a previous report by Reuters.

Dakkak said the German initiative was more focused on longer-term real-estate development but CMA CGM would be willing to contribute to the port part of that project if invited to.

CMA CGM is controlled by the French-Lebanese Saade family and the group joined French President Emmanuel Macron in relief efforts in Beirut following the explosion last summer.

The French government is not part of CMA CGM’s reconstruction plan, Dakkak said, adding French companies and financial institutions had shown interest, and that the Lebanese state would have a role through a public-private partnership.

As well as devastating the bulk section of Beirut port, last year’s blast destroyed equipment in the container terminal. This has doubled waiting time for vessels, adding to longstanding inefficiencies at the port, according to Dakkak.

CMA CGM is the leading shipping operator at Beirut port, accounting for 60% of volumes, and remains a candidate in partnership with Swiss-based MSC for the concession to run the container terminal, Dakkak said.

It has been told a tender process to run the container terminal, held up by the political crisis, will be relaunched in two weeks, he added.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...hree-years-says-frances-cma-cgm-idUSKBN2BX0BK

 

[Last Monetarist]

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/lebanon-interior-minister-rejects-request-question-security-chief-over-beirut-2021-07-09/

A Lebanese minister has denied a request by the judge probing the Beirut port explosion to question a top security official, a document seen by Reuters on Friday showed, as attempts to deliver justice over the catastrophe continue to flounder.

Nearly a year after the Aug. 4 explosion, which killed more than 200 people, wounded thousands and devastated swathes of the capital, many Lebanese are furious that no senior officials have been held to account.

The blast was caused by a massive quantity of explosive chemicals that had been stored unsafely at the port for years.

The request from Judge Tarek Bitar to question Major General Abbas Ibrahim, head of the powerful General Security agency, was rejected by caretaker interior minister Mohamed Fahmy in a letter to the justice minister.

In a statement, Ibrahim said he was subject to the law like all Lebanese, but the probe should take place "far away from narrow political considerations".

Bitar became the lead investigator into the blast after his predecessor, Judge Fadi Sawan, was removed in February following requests from two former ministers he had charged with negligence over the blast.

Sawan had charged three ex-ministers and the outgoing prime minister Hassan Diab with negligence. But they refused to be questioned as suspects, accusing him of overstepping his powers.

A parliamentary committee convened on Friday to study a request by Bitar for immunity to be lifted from former Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil, former Public Works Minister Ghazi Zeaiter and former Interior Minister Nohad Machnouk.

After being charged, Diab said his conscience was clear, Khalil said he had no role in the blast, and Zeaiter called the charges "a blatant violation". Machnouk has also denied any responsibility.

The committee postponed its decision to an unspecified date as parliamentarians said more correspondence was needed with Bitar to take a decision on the matter.

Families of the victims protested nearby, some holding photos of their relatives, to expressing their anger against the interior minister and parliament speaker Nabih Berri.

"Those who don't submit to questioning by the judge, immunity or no immunity, they will be our target," said Youssef al-Mawla, who lost his son in the blast.

 

[Last Monetarist]

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/probe-into-beirut-blast-stalls-again-leaving-families-fuming-one-year-2021-07-29/

Ibrahim Hoteit lost his younger brother, Tharwat, in the huge explosion that ripped through the port of Beirut last August. He went around hospitals collecting body parts, starting with Tharwat's scalp, and buried his remains in a small coffin.

Nearly a year later, Hoteit, a spokesperson for families of more than 200 people who died in the disaster, is still trying to call to account those he says are responsible for allowing the accident to happen.

Earlier this month, during a protest outside the caretaker interior minister's house in the Lebanese capital, he said security forces used tear gas during scuffles with the crowd.

"We can't be deprived of truth and justice in the face of a crime of such magnitude," he told Reuters.

As Beirut prepares to mark the first anniversary of a blast that flattened large swathes of the city, politicians and senior security officials have yet to be questioned in a formal investigation.

In the latest twist, Tarek Bitar, the judge leading the probe, had a request to question Major General Abbas Ibrahim - head of the powerful General Security agency - turned down by caretaker interior minister Mohamed Fahmy.

Ibrahim said he was subject to the law like all Lebanese, but the investigation should take place "far away from narrow political considerations".

Fahmy's decision prompted some relatives of those killed to march near his house this month, carrying empty coffins covered in images of the victims. The demonstration turned violent.

A senior interior ministry source said measures the security forces took were necessary to protect the private home of the minister.

The relatives' frustration reflects widespread anger among Lebanese about the investigation and, more broadly, over how the country is being run.

Lebanon's debt has spiralled, inflation is high, more than half the population lives in poverty and rival political factions have repeatedly failed to form a government.

Much of the devastation from the blast is still visible. The port resembles a bomb site, and many buildings have been left in a state of collapse.

Major questions remain unanswered, including why such a large shipment of ammonium nitrate, a highly explosive chemical used in bombs and fertiliser, was left stored in the middle of a crowded city for years after being unloaded in 2013.

The immunity enjoyed by senior officials has raised suspicions among some families that there may never be accountability.

"How can you have justice if everyone from the smallest official to the biggest ... has immunity?" said Nizar Saghieh, head of the Legal Agenda, a research and advocacy organization.

Fahmy's move to block the judge from questioning Ibrahim was based on the advice of a judicial committee at the interior ministry not to lift his immunity, according to a letter explaining the decision.

The challenges Bitar faces are not unique.

His predecessor, Fadi Sawan, was removed from the probe in February after a court granted the request of two of the former ministers he charged with negligence for the disaster - Ali Hassan Khalil and Ghazi Zeaiter - to have him removed.

A copy of the decision seen by Reuters cited "legitimate suspicion" over Sawan's neutrality, partly because it alleged his house was damaged in the blast.

Khalil and Zeaiter, along with a third former minister and the outgoing prime minister Hassan Diab, declared their innocence when Sawan charged them, refused to be questioned as suspects and accused Sawan of overstepping his powers.

A document seen by Reuters that was sent just over two weeks before the blast showed the president and prime minister were warned about the security risk posed by the chemicals stored at the port and that they could destroy the capital.

Bitar wants the government and parliament to allow him to question several top officials, including all those charged by Sawan, in addition to former Interior Minister Nohad Machnouk.

With his request to question Ibrahim denied, the immediate fate of Bitar's investigation appears to rest on parliamentary immunity being lifted from Machnouk, Khalil and Zeaiter, all of whom are MPs.

MPs met to discuss Bitar's request earlier this month, saying they needed more information to before deciding.

 

[Last Monetarist]

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/fbi-probe-shows-amount-chemicals-beirut-blast-was-fraction-original-shipment-2021-07-30/

The amount of ammonium nitrate that blew up at Beirut port last year was one fifth of the shipment unloaded there in 2013, the FBI concluded after the blast, adding to suspicions that much of the cargo had gone missing.

As the first anniversary approaches on Aug. 4, major questions remain unanswered, including how a huge quantity of ammonium nitrate - which can be used to make fertiliser or bombs - was left unsafely stored in a capital city for years.

The blast was one of the largest non-nuclear explosions ever recorded, killing more than 200 people, wounding thousands, and devastating swathes of Beirut. The FBI's Oct. 7, 2020 report, which was seen by Reuters this week, estimates around 552 tonnes of ammonium nitrate exploded that day, much less than the 2,754 tonnes that arrived on a Russian-leased cargo ship in 2013.

The FBI report does not give any explanation as to how the discrepancy arose, or where the rest of the shipment may have gone.

In response to a detailed request for comment, an FBI spokesperson referred Reuters to the Lebanese authorities.

FBI investigators came to Beirut after the blast at Lebanon's request. A senior Lebanese official who was aware of the FBI report and its findings said the Lebanese authorities agreed with the Bureau on the quantity that exploded.

Many officials in Lebanon have previously said in private they believe a lot of the shipment was stolen.

The ammonium nitrate was going from Georgia to Mozambique on a Russian-leased cargo ship when the captain says he was instructed to make an unscheduled stop in Beirut and take on extra cargo.

The ship arrived in Beirut in November 2013 but never left, becoming tangled in a legal dispute over unpaid port fees and ship defects. No one ever came forward to claim the shipment.

The senior Lebanese official said there were no firm conclusions as to why the quantity that exploded was less than the original shipment. One theory was that part of it was stolen. A second theory was that only part of the shipment detonated, with the rest blown out to sea, the official said.

The FBI report said "an approximate amount reaching around 552 metric tonnes of ammonium nitrate exploded in warehouse 12".

It noted the warehouse was large enough to house the 2,754 tonne shipment, which was stored in one-tonne bags, but added "it is not logical that all of them were present at the time of the explosion".

 

[Last Monetarist]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/31/a-year-after-beirut-blast-lebanon-sinks-deep-into-mire-of-corruption

At ground zero of Lebanon’s apocalypse a stench of dead rats seeps from hulking piles of rotting grain. Broken silos teeter above, their sides ripped apart by the catastrophic blast that also broke the soul of Beirut; the contents that should have fed a nation still lie spilt over the gaping ruins of its main port.

A year ago this week, one of the planet’s gravest industrial accidents caused one of its biggest ever explosions, shattering a city that was already at a tipping point. The mushroom cloud of chemicals that soared above the Lebanese capital on 4 August 2020 and the seismic force of the shock wave that ravaged its homes and businesses were carried around the world in high-definition horror. Even amid the chaos of a country that had allowed this to happen to its people, this was surely a moment of reckoning.

However, on the eve of the disaster’s first anniversary, Lebanon remains paralysed and anguished. The investigation into the blast has flatlined, and its perpetrators are as far away from accountability as ever. Even worse, for most Lebanese, the global aid pledged in the wake of the destruction remains forsaken by the country’s rulers, who prefer the narrow privileges that flowed to them from a crippled system to a global rescue plan that could save the country.

“Who would have thought our begging bowl would be so big and so empty,” said Nidal Osman, a Tripoli building supplier. “The world must be laughing at us. They wanted to give money, and they instead received a palm in their face. While they laugh, we cry.”

In return for up to $11bn in aid dollars, France demanded structural reforms to governance, and transparency at all levels of spending. Billions more from Europe has been conditioned on an audit of the opaque central bank, which has been critical to the movement of Lebanon’s wealth.

In the year since Beirut began picking up the pieces, the Lebanese currency has plunged 15-fold in value. Hyperinflation has put staple foods out of reach of much of its population. Vital medicines can no longer be found – on Friday a four-year-old girl died from a scorpion sting because anti-venom was out of stock. And there is not enough fuel to supply the undergunned electricity sector, or the private generator mafia that plugs the gap, charging exorbitant prices to do so.

Instead of giving birth to an era of redemption, the explosion has come to define the utter dysfunction of a state that has failed for all intents and purposes. Its political class remains unable to form a government, still bickering over the allocation of ministries as prizes to bolster their fiefdoms. State institutions, likewise, are subservient to dug-in factions. This country’s central bank reserves have dipped below mandatory requirements, meaning an imminent end to subsidies in place to safeguard even the middle classes. Lebanese have joined Syrians and other of the region’s forsaken peoples in taking to the Mediterranean on rafts to flee their conditions, no matter the risk. And there is no solution except for a vast international bailout that would mean severing a system that has prevailed for 30 years since the end of the civil war.

As the sheer scale of Lebanon’s meltdown continues to be absorbed by its people, some are starting to confront an unpalatable view that the state’s very foundations were flawed at each of its incarnations. From the Ottoman empire to French mandate, Syrian tutelage, the ravages of the civil war and then the rentier system that followed the 1991 Taif accords which ended the conflict, Lebanon has never had an easy run. But the past three decades in particular have laid the groundwork for its demise.

“After Taif, [the warlords] got consolation prizes, instead of being punished for keeping the war going as long as they did,” said Nora Boustany, a lecturer in journalism at the American University of Beirut, who covered the conflict and aftermath. “They went to town. It was a bonanza for them. The Syrians knew it was happening and they wanted a piece of the action as well. To keep the peace, there was an accommodation with justice. This created a culture of impunity, and this became the norm.

“Rafic Hariri steamrolled ahead with reconstruction,” said Boustany of the former prime minister who presided over Lebanon’s postwar rebuild, accumulating a vast fortune along the way. Saudi Arabia and Syria were central to Lebanon’s reconstruction, setting up patronage networks and spheres of influence that took decisive stakes in the country’s affairs, while at the same time giving patrons a free rein to corral fortunes.

“There was a wealth, a largesse and an ostentatious living that was brought to Beirut,” she said. “This rubbed off on his circle. The accommodation was to let this happen to keep the peace. They all kept their snout in the trough. They partitioned off aid and money from the big funds, and they just kept stealing. There was so much money for institution-building and barely any of it went there.”

Last week, Lebanon named the country’s richest man, Nijab Mikati, a two-time prime minister and resident of its poorest city, Tripoli, as its designated leader and tasked him with forming a government. For the previous 12 months, Saad Hariri, another former leader and son of the slain Rafic Hariri, had been unable to do so – his various cabinet lineups rejected by the country’s president, Michel Aoun. Hariri, a product of the system – and a beneficiary of it until his fortunes turned – had been tasked by France with breaking it. His other former patron, Saudi Arabia, had abandoned him in 2017 for ceding political power to Hezbollah, which ever since has cemented its influence with the cover of Aoun.

“What is happening now is the clash between two projects, two ideas,” said Khaldoun Charif, a veteran Tripoli-based analyst on Lebanese affairs. “People need to understand that corruption is the system here. It was enshrined as such during the implementation of Taif in 1991. Everyone got gifts to get under way. It was the era of largesse. Everyone started stealing money and they were encouraged to do so. There was no chance of a normal state as envisaged now, given the system put in place back then.

“Every business – electricity, water, garbage collection, reconstruction – it all cost the Lebanese people far more than it should have because giant cuts were being paid to the political players. And now they recognise corruption? What changed? Hezbollah became the most powerful player in the country.”

On some days, before the blazing heat of summer starts to bite, port workers collect the dead rats from the grain silos, tossing them into the bay below. “It’s just that they smell so bad,” said Abu Haitham, a junior officer in one of the security services. The symbolism of the rodents piled at the blast site is not lost on Abu Haitham, nor other Lebanese scarred by the betrayal of a state that has never truly served them and seems unlikely to do so now.

“If now isn’t the moment to change, then when is?” asked Yarr Hadid, 24, a student, who, like her siblings, wants to leave for Belgium. “Are we to accept that this is how it is in Lebanon? If the regional actors and the Europeans agreed to the state being built like this, they either have to really help to dismantle it and build again or be honest about the fact that we’re doomed.”

 

[Last Monetarist]

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hrw-concludes-some-officials-saw-risk-beirut-blast-failed-act-2021-08-03/

A report released by Human Rights Watch on Tuesday concluded there was strong evidence to suggest some Lebanese officials knew about and tacitly accepted the lethal risks posed by ammonium nitrate stored at Beirut port before the fatal blast there on Aug. 4 last year.

HRW called for a U.N. investigation into the explosion, which was caused by the chemicals stored unsafely at the port for years and killed more than 200 people, injured thousands and destroyed swathes of Lebanon's capital.

The report by the international rights watchdog contained over 700 pages of findings and documents. Its investigation also concluded there was evidence that multiple Lebanese authorities were criminally negligent under Lebanese law.

HRW said President Michel Aoun, caretaker prime minister Hassan Diab, director general of state security Tony Saliba and other former ministers wanted for questioning by judge Bitar, had failed to take action to protect the general public despite having been informed of the risks.

Reuters sought comment on the report's findings from Aoun, Diab and Saliba.

The presidential palace offered no comment. Saliba said his agency did all it could within its legal remit, filing legal reports to warn officials, and had an office open at the port only months before the blast. There was no immediate response from Diab.

Aoun said on Friday he was ready to testify and that no one was above the law.

HRW based its report on official documents it reviewed and on multiple interviews with top officials including the president, the caretaker prime minister and the head of the country's state security.

The investigation trailed events from 2014 onwards after the shipment was brought to Beirut port and tracked repeated warnings of danger to various official bodies.

"Evidence strongly suggests that some government officials foresaw the death that the ammonium nitrate's presence in the port could result in and tacitly accepted the risk of the deaths occurring," the report said.

It called on the United Nations Human Rights Council to mandate an investigation into the blast and on foreign governments to impose human rights and corruption sanctions on officials.

A Lebanese investigation into the blast, led by Judge Tarek Bitar, has stalled. Politicians and senior security officials are yet to be questioned and requests to lift their immunity have been hindered.

A document seen by Reuters that was sent just over two weeks before the blast showed the president and prime minister were warned about the security risk posed by the chemicals stored at the port and that they could destroy the capital.

 

[Last Monetarist]

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/beirut-marks-one-year-since-port-blast-with-anger-mourning-2021-08-04/

Thousands of Lebanese gathered to mark the first anniversary of the catastrophic Beirut port blast on Wednesday, calling for justice as a senior Christian cleric demanded to know why explosive chemicals had been stored in the capital.

As a memorial service got underway at the port, water cannon and tear gas were fired at protesters who threw stones towards security forces near parliament. Eight people were wounded, the Red Cross said.

One of the biggest non-nuclear explosions ever recorded, the blast killed more than 200 people, wounded thousands and was felt in Cyprus, more than 240 km (150 miles) away.

One year since the disaster, caused by a huge quantity of ammonium nitrate kept at the port for years, no senior official has been held to account, infuriating many Lebanese as their country suffers financial collapse.

An investigation is stalling, with requests denied for immunity to be lifted from senior politicians and former officials. All those sought for questioning by the Lebanese investigators have denied any wrongdoing.

"We will not forget and we will not forgive them ever. And if they can't bring them to account, we will by our own hands," said Hiyam al-Bikai, dressed in black and clutching a picture of her son, Ahmad, who was killed when masonry fell on his car.

The chemicals arrived on a Russian-leased cargo ship that made an unscheduled stop in Beirut in 2013. An FBI report seen by Reuters last week estimated around 552 tonnes of ammonium nitrate exploded, far less than the 2,754 tonnes that arrived.

"Justice isn't just the demand of the families of the victims but of all Lebanese," Maronite Patriarch Bechara Boutros Al-Rai, Lebanon's most senior Christian cleric, said during the memorial service. All immunities should be lifted, he added.

"We want to know who brought in the explosives ..., who allowed for their unloading and storage, who removed quantities of it and where it was sent," he said.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Lebanese leaders owed the people the truth and heaped new criticism on the governing elite for failing to deal with the economic crisis. The damage is still visible across much of Beirut. The port resembles a bomb site, its huge grain silo still unrepaired. A huge banner on a building overlooking the port said: "Hostages of a Murderous State." Relatives of the dead clutched photos of their loved ones. Army helicopters flew overhead giving off red and green smoke - the national colours - as koranic verses were recited at the start of the service and the victims' names were read.

A Human Rights Watch report released this week concluded that evidence suggested some Lebanese officials knew about and tacitly accepted the lethal risks posed by ammonium nitrate.

Reuters reported last August that Prime Minister Hassan Diab and President Michel Aoun were both warned in July last year that the chemicals posed a security risk and could destroy the capital if they exploded.

Aoun has said he is ready to testify if needed, and that he supports an impartial investigation. Diab, who quit after the blast, has said his conscience is clear.

Leading prayers at a hospital that was badly damaged in the blast, Greek Orthodox Archbishop Elias Audi said nobody was above the law, and "whoever obstructs justice is a criminal, even if they are highly placed".

At the time of the explosion, Lebanese were already facing deepening hardship due to the financial crisis caused by decades of state corruption and waste.

The meltdown worsened throughout the last year with the governing elite failing to establish a new cabinet to start tackling the crisis even as poverty has soared and medicines and fuel have run out.

A donors' conference hosted by France raised $370 million. France has led Western pressure on Lebanese leaders to enact reforms, but to no avail. "Lebanese leaders seem to bet on a stalling strategy, which I regret and I think is a historic and moral failure," Macron said.

Pope Francis wished Macron success and said donors should help Lebanon "on a path of resurrection". He said he had a great desire to visit Lebanon, where many had lost "even the illusion of living". The state has taken no steps towards reforms that might ease the economic crisis, with the sectarian elite locked in a power struggle over cabinet posts.

As the crowds built in Beirut, two people were injured in scuffles between supporters of rival parties in the nearby Gemmayzeh area, a security source said. Gun shots were fired into the air.

 

[Last Monetarist]

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/lebanon-judge-investigating-port-blast-kept-case-by-judiciary-local-media-2021-10-04/

The judge investigating Beirut's catastrophic port explosion survived attempts to have him removed from the inquiry when a court dismissed two complaints against him on Monday.

The investigation into the Aug. 4, 2020 explosion, one of the biggest non-nuclear blasts in history, has made little headway amid a smear campaign against Judge Tarek Bitar and pushback from powerful Lebanese factions.

A senior official in the powerful Iran-backed Hezbollah had warned Bitar last month the group would remove him from the inquiry, according to a journalist and a judicial source.

The complaints against Bitar were lodged by three former ministers he had sought to charge with negligence leading to the blast, which was caused by a massive amount of ammonium nitrate left in the middle of Beirut. All three have denied any wrongdoing.

They questioned his partiality. Bitar has not commented on the accusations. He is not allowed to speak to the media.

Following Monday's decision by the court of cassation, Bitar will now be able to resume requests to interrogate top officials.

But his efforts to question former and serving state officials - including the prime minister at the time of the blast, ex-ministers and senior security officials on suspicion of negligence - have been repeatedly denied.

Many in Lebanon, particularly families of the victims of the blast which killed more than 200 people, are furious that no senior official has been held accountable more than a year on.

The ministers who sought Bitar's removal from the investigation were Nohad Machnouk, a Sunni Muslim MP who was formerly interior minister, and two MPs from the Shi'ite Muslim Amal Movement - Ali Hassan Khalil, the former finance minister, and Ghazi Zeaiter, the former public works and transport minister.

They did not immediately respond on Monday to requests for comment on the dismissal of their complaints.

While Bitar has sought to question several politicians who are allied to Hezbollah, including Khalil and Zeaiter, he has not sought to question any members of Hezbollah itself.

Bitar took over the case when his predecessor, Judge Fadi Sawan, was removed from the investigation in February, on the basis of complaints alleging bias.

The Hezbollah official who delivered the warning to Bitar was Wafik Safa, according to a journalist who says she conveyed the oral message and a judicial source. Safa has not responded to repeated requests for comment.

Bitar described the message in a letter to the public prosecutor and the justice minister and judiciary are following up on the matter, the judicial source said last week.

 

[Last Monetarist]

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/faltering-beirut-port-blast-probe-faces-risk-new-obstruction-2022-01-17/

An investigation into the devastating 2020 explosion at Beirut port, which has struggled to make progress amid resistance from top politicians, may face a further obstruction to its work that could leave the probe in limbo by preventing any indictments.

Judge Tarek Bitar's investigation into the massive blast, which killed more than 215 people and deepened Lebanon's economic crisis, has been suspended repeatedly by lawsuits brought by senior politicians who he has sought to question.

Hezbollah, a powerful group with an armed militia, has led the campaign to remove Bitar, accusing him of bias after he pursued some of its political allies.

In the latest twist, a lawsuit brought by former minister Youssef Finianos, one of the senior figures Bitar wants to interrogate, has been left in limbo by the retirement last week of Judge Roukoz Rizk, who was hearing it, judicial sources say.

"While this lawsuit is not decided, the investigating judge cannot issue the indictment," a judicial source said.

There can be no ruling in the case, which the source said accuses Bitar of "a grave error" in conducting the probe, until a replacement is found for Rizk, who reached mandatory retirement age.

Politicians typically pick judges in Lebanon, which Nizar Saghieh of watchdog Legal Agenda said could allow them to leave the position open and the case pending.

Such a move could stymie the probe.

Bitar's opponents accuse him of bias and of overstepping his powers. His supporters see his efforts as a bold attempt to hold senior officials to account in a country where impunity has been entrenched since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war.

The investigation is currently frozen due to a separate lawsuit.

Families of blast victims protested outside the Beirut headquarters of the judiciary on Monday to demanding the probe move more quickly and for the swift replacement of Rizk.

"We want to reach justice, we don't want to wait for years," said Kayan Tlais, who lost his brother in the blast.

Hezbollah and its allies had been boycotting cabinet meetings for three months, saying they wanted Bitar removed. On Saturday, a few days after Rizk retired, the group and its allies said they were ending the boycott. read more

Heiko Wimmen of Crisis Group said described lawsuits that have been hindering progress as "legal theatre" and said obstructing the probe would further damage public trust in the nation's institutions.

"It's very clear that Judge Bitar will not be allowed to summon anybody, let alone indict anybody," he said. "Whoever doesn't want this investigation to go anywhere has succeeded in that."

 

[MenInG]

Lebanon's top prosecutor has charged the judge leading the inquiry into the 2020 Beirut port blast and ordered the release of suspects in custody.

Ghassan Oweidat summoned Judge Tarek Bitar for questioning, accusing him of "acting without a mandate".

But the judge insisted that Mr Oweidat had no authority to charge him.

On Monday, he unexpectedly restarted the probe after a 13-month suspension and filed unspecified charges against eight officials, including Mr Oweidat.

No-one has yet been held accountable for the blast on 4 August 2020, which killed at least 218 people and injured more than 6,000 others.

A fire triggered the detonation of 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate that had been stored unsafely in a port warehouse for almost six years, causing a massive explosion that devastated a large part of the Lebanese capital.

It is widely believed that officials and politicians were aware of the combustible chemical's existence and the danger it posed but that they failed to secure, remove or destroy it.

 

[FearlessRoar]

Lebanon marks four years since Beirut port blast amid regional tensions​

Protesters are to converge on the Beirut port as Lebanon marks four years since a catastrophic explosion there killed more than 220 people.

Several marches are planned on Sunday to remember the victims of the blast and demand justice as fears of an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah hang heavy over the grim commemoration.

Nobody has been held accountable for the August 4, 2020, disaster, one of the largest nonnuclear explosions in history. The blast injured at least 6,500 people and devastated large parts of the capital.

Authorities said the explosion was triggered by a fire in a warehouse where a stockpile of ammonium nitrate fertiliser had been haphazardly stored for years.

An investigation has stalled, mired in legal and political wrangling.

“The complete lack of accountability for such a man-made disaster is staggering,” United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert said in a statement on Saturday.

“One would expect the concerned authorities to work tirelessly to lift all barriers, … but the opposite is happening,” she said while calling for “an impartial, thorough, and transparent investigation to deliver truth, justice, and accountability”.

In December 2020, lead investigator Fadi Sawan charged former Prime Minister Hassan Diab and three ex-ministers with negligence, but as political pressure mounted, he was removed from the case.

His successor, Tarek Bitar, unsuccessfully asked lawmakers to lift parliamentary immunity for MPs who were formerly cabinet ministers.

In December 2021, Bitar suspended his investigation after a barrage of lawsuits while the powerful Iran-backed Hezbollah group has accused him of bias and demanded his dismissal.

But in January last year, he resumed investigations, charging eight new suspects, including high-level security officials and Lebanon’s top prosecutor, who in turn charged Bitar with “usurping power” and ordered the release of detainees in the case.

The process has since stalled again.

Activists have called for a UN fact-finding mission into the blast, but Lebanese officials have repeatedly rejected the demand.

Tensions loom over this year’s anniversary after the assassination of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh, which Iran blamed on Israel and the United States.

Haniyeh’s killing in Tehran on Wednesday, hours after the Israeli assassination of Hezbollah military chief Fuad Shukr in Beirut, has triggered pledges of revenge from Iran and the “axis of resistance”, armed groups across the Middle East backed by Iran.

Lebanon’s Hezbollah, an ally of the Palestinian group Hamas, and the Israeli army have been trading cross-border fire since the Israeli assault on Gaza began in October after Hamas led a rare attack inside Israeli territory, killing 1,139 people and taking roughly 200 others captive.

At least 39,583 Palestinians have been killed and more than 91,000 wounded in Israel’s war on the besieged enclave.

On Sunday, several Western governments, including the US, the UK and France, urged their citizens to leave Lebanon immediately due to escalating tensions. Several airlines have suspended flights to the region.

Lebanon marks four years since Beirut port blast amid regional tensions

No one has been held accountable for the catastrophic explosion that killed more than 220 people.

www.aljazeera.com