Port Investigations: Call Woodworking and Hardware Leaders

Major General: Regarding the investigations into the port explosion, tomorrow Thursday the judicial investigator of the case, Judge Fadi Sawan, will hear the statements of the Minister of Public Works and Transport in the interim government, Michel Najjar, and the directors of two services of security, according to a judicial source informed Agence France-Presse and the judicial source said that Sawan summoned the minister. Najjar and the Director General of State Security, Major General Tony Saliba, to hear their testimonies as witnesses. He clarified that “if there are data or suspicions of negligence of any of them, they can be transferred to a defendant and interrogated in this capacity.” According to the same source, Sawan also summoned the general director of Public Security, Major General Abbas Ibrahim, to hear his testimony next Monday as a witness as well.

On August 3, the day before the explosion that turned Beirut into a catastrophic city, Najjar had received a letter drawn up by the Supreme Defense Council, which includes the leaders of all military and security services, about the presence of “a large quantity of ammonium nitrate used for explosives” in the port. Najjar told France Press, days after the explosion, that as soon as he received the message, he asked his adviser to contact the head of the port’s board of directors, Hassan Quraytem, ​​who is currently suspended, to inquire. , and asked him to send all the documents related to the case to the ministry, which is what happened. But the next day, the explosion happened.

After the explosion, the State Security Service announced that it had “informed the authorities of the danger” of these materials, “according to a detailed report”, in which it warned of the occurrence of robberies of the hangar as a result of a large breach in the “south wall”. Several media reports documented with official documents indicated that the amount of ammonium nitrate that exploded is much less than 2750 tons, as it was found that large amounts of the amber (probably stolen) were extracted during the last years.

This was one of the reasons that led the port authorities to repair the gap in the hangar. On Thursday, the Army Command announced that it had uncapped the containers that were present at the customs service, which were found to contain “about 4 tons and 350 kg” of ammonium nitrate, which it later removed. It was not clear if this was part of the base amount. Since receiving the explosion investigation file, Sawan has arrested 25 people under notable arrest warrants, including Director General of Land and Maritime Transport Abdel Hafiz Al-Qaisi, Chairman of the Port Board of Directors, Hassan Quraitem, the Director General of Customs, Badri Daher, and four officers. They also included three Syrian workers who, hours before the explosion, welded a gap in ward 12.