BEIRUT: Even after she was taken off an investigation into alleged financial crimes by a money transfer company, the defiant Lebanese prosecutor charged ahead.
Ghada Aoun showed up at the company’s offices outside of Beirut with a group of supporters and a metal worker, who broke open the locked gate.
She obtained data from Mecattaf Holding Company that she contends will reveal the identities of people who sneaked billions of dollars out of Lebanon amid the financial meltdown that has hit the country.
The move was part of a public feud between Aoun and Lebanon’s state prosecutor Ghassan Oueidat, who had dismissed her from the case, saying she’d overstepped with two earlier raids.
Their feud has turned into scuffles between their supporters in the street.
Aoun, an investigating judge for the Mount Lebanon district, presents herself as a crusader against corruption and accuses higher-ups of trying to stop her.
But to her critics, she’s a tool of her backer, Lebanon’s president, who they say uses her to punish his political opponents and protect his allies.
That is the problem in Lebanon: The judiciary is so deeply politicized it paralyzes the wheels of justice, mirroring how factional rivalries have paralyzed politics.
Political interference in the judiciary has for years thwarted investigations into corruption, violence and assassinations. But mistrust of the judiciary is thrown into even starker relief now, when Lebanese are crying out for politicians to be held accountable for the disastrous crises in their country — not only the financial collapse but also last August’s massive explosion in Beirut’s port that killed scores and wrecked much of the capital. The explosion has been blamed on incompetence and neglect.
Lebanon’s political posts are split up in a power-sharing system among sectarian-based factions. Judicial appointments are subject to the same sectarian allotment and horse-trading.
Ghada Aoun is a Maronite Christian, like the country’s president, Michel Aoun, and her supporters are mainly members of the president’s Free Patriotic Movement. The two are not related. The state prosecutor, Oueidat, is a Sunni Muslim, like the prime minister-designate, Saad Hariri. The country’s top financial prosecutor is a Shiite Muslim, chosen by the country’s top Shiite factions, Amal and Hezbollah. Positions all through the judicial hierarchy are similarly divvied up.
“Those who hold on to power have set up a judiciary that is loyal to them in order to fight their opponents and protect their interests,” retired state prosecutor Hatem Madi told The Associated Press.
President Aoun and Prime Minister-designate Hariri have been locked in a power struggle that has prevented the formation of a Cabinet for more than six months. As a result, there is no leadership to carry out reforms to rescue the country even as the currency collapses in value.
Lebanese watched in fury as their own savings and salaries plummet in value and prices skyrocket. The central bank is struggling to gather enough hard currency to ensure fuel for electricity or other key imports, much less maintain its longtime peg of the currency to the dollar.
Even more galling for the public, the wealthy and politically connected transferred billions of dollars to safety outside Lebanon even after banks imposed informal capital controls at the beginning of the crisis. Most people have been unable to access their dollars in bank accounts since late 2019.
Ghada Aoun, the judge, was probing Mecattaf Holding on suspicion it helped in that flight of capital. Mecattaf, one of Lebanon’s largest money and gold-trading companies, denied any links to suspicious transfers, saying all business it does is legal.
Skeptics note that Mecattaf’s owner, Michel Mecattaf, is the publisher of Nidaa Al-Watan, a daily newspaper that is harshly critical of President Aoun and his main ally, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
Ghada Aoun has also pursued cases against Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh and former Prime Minister Najib Mikati, both of them opponents of the president.
In tweets, Aoun said she was being sidelined “because I dared to open a major file and tried to establish the truth with evidence.” She accuses her opponents of using “false accusations” against her to “politicize a case of justice, a case where an oppressed people wants accountability.”
After her previous raids, Ouiedat ordered her taken off financial cases. Then on April 20, both he and Aoun appeared at a session of Lebanon’s top judicial body, where they upheld the order. Outside, supporters of the president and the prime minister got into scuffles and nearly into fist-fights before the army separated them. The next day, she carried out her third raid on the company.
Sami Kara, a Hariri supporter, said Aoun ruined her long reputation by breaking into the company. “She was used for political purposes and now they threw her away,” said the 61-year-old shop owner.
Lebanese are also closely watching the investigation into the Aug. 4 explosion of nearly 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrates poorly stored at Beirut’s port. The explosion killed 211, wounded more than 6,000 and devastated nearby neighborhoods.
The first investigating judge accused two former Cabinet ministers of negligence, but was then removed from the case after the former ministers raised legal challenges against him. Many worry his replacement, Judge Tarek Bitar, will be prevented by politicians from holding anyone accountable for the blast.
Judges know that if they want senior posts, they must be loyal to a political leader, said Bushra Al-Khalil, a prominent Lebanese lawyer.
Knowing this, some people go straight to politicians and ask for their help in cases, rather than go through judicial authorities, she said. Others hire a lawyer with strong political connections to intimidate judges.
Madi said the long-term solution is for the judiciary to be given independence under the constitution. Currently, it comes under the authority of the government.
Lebanon “is proving incapable of fighting corruption,” said outgoing Justice Minister Marie-Claude Najm, pointing to the divisions demonstrated in the feud between Aoun and Ouiedat.
“After all that has happened,” she said, “how can people feel they respect and trust the judiciary?”
As Lebanese cry for justice, politics paralyzes the system
https://arab.news/jcc84
As Lebanese cry for justice, politics paralyzes the system
- Judge Ghada Aoun presents herself as a crusader against corruption and accuses higher-ups of trying to stop her
- Political interference in the judiciary has for years thwarted investigations into corruption, violence and assassinations
Israeli strike killed 36 Syrian soldiers near Aleppo: war monitor
- Syrian state media SANA, quoting a military official, also reported that the airstrike inflicted casualties
- The strike targetted an area near Hezbollah rocket depots, says Syrian Observatory for Human Rights
BEIRUT: An Israeli strike on northern Syria’s Aleppo province killed at least 36 Syrian soldiers on Friday, according to a war monitor.
The attack killed at least “36 Syrian soldiers” and targeted an area “near rockets depots belonging to Lebanese group Hezbollah,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor, which has an extensive network of sources in Syria.
Syrian state news agency SANA said the pre-dawn strike killed and wounded civilians as well as military personnel.
A Syrian military source told SANA that “at approximately 1:45 a.m., the Israeli enemy launched an air attack from the direction of Athriya, southeast of Aleppo,” adding that “civilians and military personnel” had been killed and wounded in the strike.
The Britain-based SOHR, an opposition war monitor, said Hezbollah missile depots targetted in the strikes were in Aleppo’s southern suburb of Jibreen near the Aleppo International Airport.
The Observatory said explosions were still heard two hours after the strikes.
There was no immediate statement from Israeli officials on the strikes. Israel frequently launches strikes on Iran-linked targets in Syria but rarely acknowledges them.
On Thursday, Syrian state media reported airstrikes near the capital Damascus saying it wounded two civilians.
Hezbollah has had an armed presence in Syria since it joined the country’s conflict fighting alongside government forces.
Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and once its commercial center, has come under such attacks in the past that led to the closure of its international airport. Friday’s strike did not affect the airport.
The strikes have escalated over the past five months against the backdrop of the war in Gaza and ongoing clashes between Hezbollah and Israeli forces on the Lebanon-Israel border.
Israel has not received everything it has asked for, top US general says
- Some Democrats and Arab American groups have criticized the Biden administration’s steadfast support of Israel, which they say provides it with a sense of impunity
WASHINGTON: The United States’ top general said on Thursday that Israel had not received every weapon it has asked for, in part because some of it could affect the US military’s readiness and there were capacity limitations.
Washington gives $3.8 billion in annual military assistance to Israel, its longtime ally. The United States has been rushing air defenses and munitions to Israel, but some Democrats and Arab American groups have criticized the Biden administration’s steadfast support of Israel, which they say provides it with a sense of impunity.
“Although we’ve been supporting them with capability, they’ve not received everything they’ve asked for,” said General Charles Q. Brown, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“Some of that is because they’ve asked for stuff that we either don’t have the capacity to provide or not willing to provide, not right now,” Brown added, while speaking at an event hosted by the Defense Writers Group.
A spokesperson for Brown later on Thursday said his comments were in reference to “a standard practice before providing military aid to any of our allies and partners.”
“We assess US stockpiles and any possible impact on our own readiness to determine our ability to provide the requested aid,” Navy Captain Jereal Dorsey said in a statement.
“There is no change in US policy. The United States continues to provide security assistance to our ally Israel as they defend themselves from Hamas,” Dorsey added.
More than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip by Israel’s devastating offensive, according to health authorities in the territory.
Israel retaliated following an attack by militant group Hamas on southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and abducting 253 hostages according to Israeli tallies.
The Israeli offensive prompted opposition from within Biden’s Democratic Party, leading thousands to vote “uncommitted” for him in recent party presidential primaries.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met with Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in Washington earlier this week and the Pentagon said security assistance to Israel was discussed.
“It is a constant dialogue,” Brown said.
Arab News Research and Studies Unit launches latest deep dive on Jerusalem
- Focus on Israel’s land appropriations with settler organizations, marginalization of Christians and Muslims
- Arab News provides details of aim to ‘Judaize’ Palestinian East Jerusalem
LONDON: For the past 20 years Israel’s government has collaborated with the country’s leading settler movement in a plot to appropriate land in East Jerusalem, with the aim of reestablishing the Biblical “City of David,” at the cost of Muslims and Christians alike, and sabotaging any hope of a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
The wealthy City of David Foundation, also known as Elad, has also been given virtual carte blanche by various government departments to develop biblically themed national parks surrounding Jerusalem’s Old City.
It has also embarked on a series of controversial archaeological projects designed to provide evidence that East Jerusalem is the site of the City of David, as mentioned in the Hebrew Bible.
“What we are seeing is the establishment of a very specific, exclusionary, absolutist biblical narrative in and around the Old City, and the etching of that narrative physically into the landscape through archaeology, parks, and so on,” said Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli lawyer and founder of Terrestrial Jerusalem. This is an Israeli NGO that works to track developments in Jerusalem that could impact either the political process or permanent-status options.
The aim was “the marginalization of Palestinian East Jerusalem, politically, geographically and economically, and the marginalization of the Christian presence in Jerusalem.”
Normally, the Christian presence in Jerusalem is never more apparent than during Holy Week, which began on Sunday — Palm Sunday in the Christian calendar — and culminates on Easter Sunday, March 31. Today is Good Friday, when Christians commemorate the crucifixion of Christ, which they believe took place at the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem’s Old City’s Christian quarter.
VIEW THE DEEP DIVE
Battleground: Jerusalem The biblical battle for the Holy City
But presiding over the celebrations at the church on Palm Sunday , Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, expressed his dismay that many parishioners and pilgrims had been unable to participate this year because of the war in Gaza, “which is so terrible and seems never-ending ... and everything going on around us this year.”
The details of what Terrestrial Jerusalem describes as “the strategic encirclement of Jerusalem’s Old City” are revealed today in a special Deep Dive by the Arab News Research and Studies Unit.
The plot has been a long time in the planning. Speaking in June 1998 after Jewish settlers seized four homes in Silwan, Elad spokesman Yigal Kaufman said: “Our aim is to Judaize East Jerusalem. The City of David is the most ancient core of Jerusalem, and we want it to become a Jewish neighborhood.”
Last week Israel dealt a fresh blow to hopes of Palestinian statehood when it announced it was seizing 800 hectares of occupied Palestinian land in the Jordan Valley, a move condemned as illegal by numerous states and institutions from the European Union to the Arab League’s parliament.
The announcement, by Israel’s far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, was made last Friday as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Tel Aviv for talks on Gaza with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Jordanian, Irish foreign ministers discuss Gaza war in phone call
- The two ministers discussed the urgent need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza
- Safadi thanked Martin for his country's position on ceasefire and need for aid
AMMAN: Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi received a phone call from the Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheal Martin on Thursday, Jordan News Agency reported.
The two ministers discussed the urgent need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the prompt delivery of sufficient, sustainable aid to the enclave.
They also stressed the significance of implementing Security Council Resolution No. 2728, adopted on Tuesday, which called for a ceasefire during Ramadan.
Israel bombed at least four homes in Rafah on Wednesday, raising new fears of a long-threatened ground assault.
Safadi highlighted the necessity of upholding international law and humanitarian principles.
Talks also touched upon ongoing efforts to halt Israel’s offensive and address the resulting humanitarian crisis.
Both ministers reiterated their commitment to continued collaboration and joint efforts to facilitate aid into Gaza.
Safadi emphasized the importance of Ireland and other European nations officially recognizing the Palestinian state. He thanked Martin for his country's position on a ceasefire and need for aid, as well as its backing of the two-state solution.
Israel has laid siege to Gaza since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, cutting off food, fuel, water, and power supplies.
Judges at the International Court of Justice on Thursday unanimously ordered Israel to take all necessary action to ensure basic food supplies arrived without delay to the Palestinian population.
On Wednesday, Martin announced the Irish government would intervene in the case brought by South Africa, arguing that the restriction of essential goods in Gaza may constitute genocidal intent.
Shoukry reiterates Egypt’s objection to Rafah ground offensive in phone call with British FM
- Shoukry emphasized to Cameron that Egypt rejects any ground military operation in the Palestinian city of Rafah
- He warned of its grave humanitarian repercussions and its potential security impacts on the region’s stability
CAIRO: Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry and UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron discussed the situation in the Gaza Strip in a phone call.
Shoukry received Cameron’s call within the framework of consultation and coordination about the situation in the Gaza Strip and the necessary action to end the humanitarian crisis there.
The two sides exchanged assessments on the dire humanitarian and security conditions in the Gaza Strip and the regional and international action needed to achieve a ceasefire, swap detainees and deliver humanitarian aid in full to the Strip.
They stressed the necessity of ensuring the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 2728 and building on it to reach a full and sustainable ceasefire.
The discussion addressed means of coordination between international and regional parties to halt the war in the Gaza Strip.
Shoukry affirmed that Egypt was continuing its efforts at all levels to facilitate reaching an agreement to enforce the truce in Gaza, leading to a permanent ceasefire in the Strip for the preservation of the lives of Palestinian civilians.
Shoukry assured his British counterpart of Egypt’s rejection of any ground military operation in the Palestinian city of Rafah, warning of its grave humanitarian repercussions and its potential security impacts on the region’s stability.
He also stressed the necessity of putting an end to Israeli policies and practices attempting to create an uninhabitable situation in the Gaza Strip, including indiscriminate targeting, starvation and collective punishment against Palestinian civilians.
Shoukry reiterated the rejection of the forced displacement of Palestinians outside their territories and any attempts to liquidate the Palestinian cause.
Shoukry and Cameron agreed to continue consultations during the coming period on the path toward curbing the crisis in the Gaza Strip and containing its repercussions.