Families of Beirut blast victims angered over stalled probe

Families of the victims of the 2020 Beirut port blast have decried last week’s decision to halt an arrest warrant against a former minister who was under investigation over the tragedy.

Former works minister Youssef Fenianos was the subject of the warrant, issued by judge Tarek Bitar, who had faced pushback from sections of Lebanon’s political class until his removal in 2021.

Fenianos’ warrant, suspended by Judge Sabbouh Suleiman, was the latest to be thrown out by Lebanese courts since Bitar’s removal, in what is viewed by victims’ families as a failure of the country’s justice system.

Many of the families staged a sit-in outside Beirut’s Palace of Justice to condemn last week’s decision.

After four years of investigation, official documents report that the blast killed 230 people and injured 6,500, some of whom are still receiving treatment in hospital.

William Noon, brother of Joe Noon, a firefighter who died during the response to the blast, described the suspension of the warrants as “a form of disrespect.”

Another relative of a slain firefighter, Peter Bou Saab, said: “The state underestimates the people and the file as a whole.”

Several reformist MPs including Najat Aoun Saliba, Paula Yacoubian, Yassin Yassin, Ibrahim Mneimneh, Firas Hamdan and Melhem Khalaf, supported the families in a statement.

They accused authorities of “turning against the constitution, and those who protect it in the security and judicial services,” in an attempt to end the port explosion case.”

Separately, a journalist who had accused Fenianos and Suleiman of corruption appeared in court to stand trial for defamation.

Riad Tawk used social media to accuse Suleiman of receiving a $200,000 bribe over the decision to suspend Fenianos’ warrant. The judge had then transferred the funds abroad to a Swiss bank account, the journalist alleged.

Before entering court, Tawk had claimed he possessed a document “confirming the smuggling of money abroad.”

But Suleiman’s lawyer, Manal Ahmed Itani, said after the hearing that the journalist’s information dated back to the beginning of 2020 — before the Beirut blast — and that it concerned an unrelated matter.