Lebanon judge questions ex-security officials over Beirut port blast

Lebanese judge Tarek Bitar questioned two former security chiefs for the first time on Friday over a catastrophic 2020 explosion in Beirut port, a judicial official said.

Bitar questioned the former head of Lebanon's General Security agency, Abbas Ibrahim for "two and a half hours", the judicial official said, requesting anonymity as they were not authorised to brief the media.

He then questioned former State Security agency chief Tony Saliba for around two hours, the official said, adding that no decision would be announced on any further action until the judge had completed his investigations.

The 4 August, 2020 explosion killed more than 220 people, injured some 6,500 and devastated swathes of Lebanon's capital.

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

Nobody has been held responsible for the blast, one of history's largest non-nuclear explosions.

Bitar, who took up the case more than four years ago and resumed his investigation in January after a two-year pause, began legal proceedings against the pair and a number of other officials in 2023.

Ibrahim and Saliba had refused to appear before Bitar previously, claiming immunity. Both are known for their strong political ties, with Ibrahim's including Hezbollah.

Bitar's probe stalled after the Lebanese militant group accused him of bias and demanded his dismissal, and after officials named in the investigation filed a flurry of lawsuits to prevent it from going forward.

The resumption came with Hezbollah's influence weakened after last year's war with Israel which halted with a November 27 ceasefire.

As the power balance shifted, Lebanon this year appointed former army chief Joseph Aoun as president and former International Court of Justice judge Nawaf Salam as prime minister, after a more than two-year leadership vacuum.

Both have vowed to uphold the independence of the judiciary and prevent interference in its work, in a country plagued by impunity.

Earlier this week, a judicial official told AFP that two French judges would meet with Bitar in Beirut in the last week of April, bringing a detailed report on information that a separate French investigation into the blast had obtained.

The official also said that Lebanon had recently received requests from Germany, the Netherlands and Australia, whose nationals were also among the casualties, for updates on the investigation, including how long it would take.

(AFP)