BEIRUT: The Beirut Bar Association on Wednesday handed the public prosecutor almost 700 criminal complaints from victims of the city’s deadly August 4 port blast, Lebanon’s National News Agency said.
The explosion of a massive stockpile of ammonium nitrate in a dockside warehouse killed more than 200 people, wounded thousands and ravaged swathes of the capital Beirut.
“We presented 679 complaints today, in the name of the families of those killed, wounded and affected,” Bar Association head Melhem Khalaf said, according to the NNA.
“We cannot stop until a verdict is pronounced,” Khalaf said, calling the blast “a horrific catastrophe.”
It was the first wave of complaints to be filed of around 1,400 cases being compiled by the Bar Association.
“We need to go deep with the ongoing investigations,” Khalaf added.
The blast was the country’s worst peacetime disaster.
It reignited popular outrage against the political class, after it emerged officials had known the ammonium nitrate had been stored unsafely at the port for years.
Lebanese officials have rejected an international probe, despite demands both from home and abroad for an impartial investigation.
A local investigation has led to the arrest of at least 25 suspects, including the chief of the port and its customs director.
Experts from France and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation took part in the preliminary investigation.
A judicial source told AFP that Lebanon had received the report from the American experts, and was expecting one from France within the next two weeks.
“Much hinges on the French report to determine the causes of the explosion,” the source said.
According to Khalaf, the FBI report relies on information from the Lebanese agencies, whereas the French one will draw on “the results of laboratory tests.”
Lebanon has complained it has yet to receive satellite images of the port before, during and after the blast that it requested from France and Italy.
Lebanon blast victims file almost 700 legal complaints
https://arab.news/wpb96
Lebanon blast victims file almost 700 legal complaints
- The explosion of a massive stockpile of ammonium nitrate in a dockside warehouse killed more than 200 people
Israeli FM urges Jews to move to Israel a week after Sydney attack
- “Today I call on Jews in England, Jews in France, Jews in Australia, Jews in Canada, Jews in Belgium: come to the Land of Israel! Come home!” Saar said
JERUSALEM: Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar called on Sunday for Jews in Western countries to move to Israel to escape rising antisemitism, one week after 15 were shot dead at a Jewish event in Sydney.
“Jews have the right to live in safety everywhere. But we see and fully understand what is happening, and we have a certain historical experience. Today, Jews are being hunted across the world,” Saar said at a public candle lighting marking the last day of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.
“Today I call on Jews in England, Jews in France, Jews in Australia, Jews in Canada, Jews in Belgium: come to the Land of Israel! Come home!” Saar said at the ceremony, held with leaders of Jewish communities and organizations worldwide.
Since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, Israeli leaders have repeatedly denounced a surge in antisemitism in Western countries and accused their governments of failing to curb it.
Australian authorities have said the December 14 attack on a Hanukkah event on Sydney’s Bondi Beach was inspired by the ideology of the Islamic State jihadist group.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged Western governments to better protect their Jewish citizens.
“I demand that Western governments do what is necessary to fight antisemitism and provide the required safety and security for Jewish communities worldwide,” Netanyahu said in a video address.
In October, Saar accused British authorities of failing to take action to curb a “toxic wave of antisemitism” following an attack outside a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, in which two people were killed and four wounded.
According to Israel’s 1950 “Law of Return,” any Jewish person in the world is entitled to settle in Israel (a process known in Hebrew as aliyah, or “ascent“) and acquire Israeli citizenship. The law also applies to individuals who have at least one Jewish grandparent.zz
