Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have criticized Lebanese political authorities for obstructing the investigation into the August 2020 Beirut port bombing, starting with a campaign by the Shiite Hezbollah militia-party and the Shiite AMAL party against its investigating judge, Tarek Bitar, which resulted in a series of recusal petitions against the magistrate and eventually stalled the proceedings in December 2021.
«The Lebanese authorities have made it abundantly clear that they are not interested in the truth and will use all the tools at their disposal to obstruct the internal investigation and protect the politicians accused in the case,» Amnesty International’s North African section denounced on its Twitter account on Thursday.
More than two years after the huge detonation in the port of the Lebanese capital, which left at least 218 people dead and 6,500 injured, the lack of results in the investigation has provoked enormous social tension that adds to the economic tension that has been shaking the country for years. Efforts by Bitar to summon former ministers linked to the explosion to testify have failed due to the slowness of the process to remove their immunity while the magistrate has been constantly accused of behaving in a sectarian and partisan manner.
For Amnesty, the blocking of Judge Bitar amounts to the «crushing of an internal investigation» and calls on the international community to «heed the calls of the victims for an international investigation».
In its message, Amnesty finally took the opportunity to condemn as «absurd» the fines against participants in a protest by the victims’ relatives, who threw stones at the Palace of Justice while demanding the reactivation of the investigations while «two and a half years after an explosion that decimated half the city, no one has been held accountable».
For its part, Human Rights Watch considers, in general terms, that the case of the Beirut explosion «has clearly illustrated the lack of independence of the Lebanese judiciary and its susceptibility to political interference». The NGO also warns that the announcement made in September by the Ministry of Justice and the High Council of the Judiciary to appoint a substitute judge is a move that could be considered illegal by experts and judges consulted by the group.
Like Amnesty, HRW calls on the international community to make an effort to speed up the investigations, as promised at the time by French President Emmanuel Macron, whom the NGO accuses of having failed in his «neo-colonialist promises» to relatives of the deceased and survivors of the major explosion at the port.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
