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Relatives of those killed in the Beirut blast continued their protest on Friday for the second day in a row, after a court decided to remove an investigating judge in the blast that shook the capital in August.
Some 70 protesters gathered outside the Palace of Justice in Beirut on Friday, as some burned tires to block roads and others held up photographs of their deceased relatives.
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Judge Fadi Sawan brought charges of negligence in December against three former ministers and the acting prime minister, but the four officials refused to question them as suspects and accused the judge of exceeding his powers.
The Court of Cassation excluded Sawan from the investigation at the request of two accused former ministers.
A copy of the court’s decision cited “legitimate suspicion” of Sawan’s neutrality because his home was damaged in the explosion that destroyed most of the capital’s neighborhoods.
For his part, Muhannad Al-Hajj Ali, a researcher at the Carnegie Middle East Institute, said: “No one in the political class wants such research.”
He added that this would open the way to big trouble, and “these politicians have become used to escaping major crimes since the Lebanese civil war … the judiciary is one of the least trustworthy institutions in the republic.”
Before the investigation can be resumed, the Justice Ministry will have to appoint a new judge to supervise it, and the new judge will also need the approval of the Supreme Judicial Council, which will delay the entire process in time.
Some see the judge’s dismissal as a blow to the case, but Lebanese analyst Sarkis Naoum does not believe the local investigation will lead to real results.
Noam said: “Our country has become a failed state, which means failed security organizations, failed institutions, a failed judiciary, and failures in everything. So I never thought that Judge Sawan would come to anything.”
Documents seen by “Reuters” showed that the president and prime minister received warnings more than two weeks before the blast indicating that ammonium nitrate, which had been stored insecurely for years, could destroy the capital if it exploded.
Authorities are currently detaining about 25 defendants pending an investigation, including the Beirut port chief and customs official, but have so far held no prominent politicians accountable.
Naoum said those currently detained were not primarily responsible for the blast.
Lynn Maalouf, deputy director of Amnesty International’s Regional Office for the Middle East and North Africa, dismissed the investigation’s commitment to impartiality in light of the appointment of the investigating judge by the executive authority.
And 200 people were killed in the Aug. 4 explosion, when a large quantity of ammonium nitrate that had been stored in the capital’s port for years exploded unsafe. The explosion also injured thousands and destroyed entire neighborhoods.
Source: Reuters
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