BEIRUT: An explosion went off in the building that houses the office of lawyer Sakher El-Hachem on Monday afternoon, in the Nakhle Center in Furn El-Chebbak, Beirut.
El-Hachem and his two sons, lawyers Shahid and Nahi, who were with him at the time of the explosion, were not injured, but there was damage in the buidling.
The motives behind the explosion are not yet known.
El-Hachem is the legal representative for many defendants in different cases, but his most prominent client is Nissan in the file of businessman Carlos Ghosn, who is being investigated in Lebanon in corruption cases.
El-Hachem is also the legal representative of some clients who were arrested in the case of the Beirut Port blast on Aug. 4.
Most notably among those are the head of the temporary committee for the management and investment of Beirut Port, Hassan Koraytem, the head of the security and safety department in the port, Mohammed Ziyad Al-Awf, and the maritime agent of the Rossos ship that transported nitrate ammonium to Beirut, Mustafa Baghdadi.
Using the language of bombing has declined in recent years. However, many political and security officials, including the caretaker Minister of Interior Mohammed Fahmy, have expressed fears about the possibility of the deterioration of the security situation through assassinations in light of the crises in Lebanon.
El-Hachem’s wife told Arab News that her husband and two sons were unharmed but that the explosion was huge.
A security investigation was currently underway to find out further details, she added.
Ms. El Hachem said the investigation included surveillance cameras located in the area.
She added that the office windows were shattered, “but my children and husband survived.”
She said that her husband “has previously stated that it is likely that the cause of the Beirut Port blast was negligence, and we do not know if this statement was the reason behind the explosion, which is an obvious message.”
She added: “It is worth noting that my husband has nothing to do with politics, but only works according to the law.”
Lawyer El-Hachem later said that “the security forces and the forensics are carrying out their duties and have started their investigation.”
The Beirut and Tripoli Bar Associations have been on strike for more than 20 days.
The strike is “in defense of the independence and prestige of the judiciary, and in protest of the failure of those involved in the judiciary to correct the relationship with the Bar Association, which violated the Bar’s laws.”
‘Huge explosion’ targets top lawyer’s office in Beirut
https://arab.news/mpprr
‘Huge explosion’ targets top lawyer’s office in Beirut
- El-Hachem is Nissan legal representative in Lebanon and for detainees arrested in August port explosion case
Israel aims to bring ‘permanent demographic change’ to West Bank, Gaza: UN
- UN rights chief Volker Turk says Israeli military operation in West Bank’s north has displaced 32,000 Palestinians
GENEVA: Israel’s actions in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip seem aimed at creating “permanent demographic change,” UN rights chief Volker Turk said on Thursday.
“Taken together, Israel’s actions appear aimed at making a permanent demographic change in Gaza and the West Bank, raising concerns about ethnic cleansing,” Turk said in a speech before the UN’s Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Turk pointed in particular to an ongoing, year-long Israeli military operation in the West Bank’s north that has caused the displacement of 32,000 Palestinians.
Elsewhere in the West Bank, entire Bedouin herder communities have been displaced by increasing harassment and violence from Israeli settlers, including near Mikhmas to the east of Ramallah, and Ras Ein Al-Auja, in the Jordan Valley, since the start of the year.
In addition to roughly three million Palestinians, more than 500,000 Israelis live in settlements and outposts in the West Bank, which are considered illegal under international law.
Israel has approved a series of initiatives this month backed by far-right ministers, including launching a process to register land in the West Bank as “state property” and allowing Israelis to purchase land there directly, in a move condemned by several countries as well as Hamas.
Israel’s current government has accelerated settlement expansion, approving a record 54 settlements in 2025, according to Israeli settlement watchdog NGO Peace Now.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967.
‘Maximum land, minimum Arabs’
In the Gaza Strip, most of the territory’s 2.2 million inhabitants have been displaced at least once since the start of the war sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented attack against Israel on October 7, 2023.
“Intensified attacks, the methodical destruction of entire neighborhoods and the denial of humanitarian assistance appeared to aim at a permanent demographic shift in Gaza,” the UN human rights office said in a report last week.
Israeli far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich also vowed to encourage “emigration” from the Palestinian territories in February.
“We will finally, formally and in practical terms nullify the cursed Oslo Accords and embark on a path toward sovereignty, while encouraging emigration from both Gaza and Judea and Samaria,” he said, using the Biblical term for the West Bank.
“There is no other long-term solution,” added Smotrich, who himself lives in a settlement in the West Bank.
“They want maximum land and minimum Arabs,” Fathi Nimer, a researcher with Palestinian think tank Al-Shabaka, told AFP, referring to a commonly used phrase used to describe Israeli settlement tactics.
