Families protest suspension of Lebanon blast probe

Demonstrators carry banners and flags during a protest in front of the Justice Palace after a probe into the Beirut blast was frozen, yesterday.

Hundreds of outraged Lebanese, mostly relatives of people killed in last year’s Beirut port explosion, protested yesterday against the suspension of an investigation into the blast hampered by political interference. Tarek Bitar, the judge leading the probe into Lebanon’s deadliest peacetime disaster, had to suspend his work on Monday after what the families and human rights groups said was another blatant case of political obstruction. Around 200 protesters - not even one demonstrator for each person killed by the blast - gathered at the palace of justice in Beirut under close surveillance from a heavy police deployment. “You won’t kill us twice,” read a large banner that they unfurled. Carrying portraits of their lost relatives and placards calling for justice, the protesters voiced their support for Bitar, whose summonses targeting senior officials have earned him a series of thinly veiled threats. Bitar’s predecessor Fadi Sawan was also removed from the investigation earlier this year after issuing summonses to former ministers and top brass over the explosion. “We have been suffering for 13 months from the interference of politicians and sectarian leaders in the investigation,” said Rima al-Zahid, whose brother was a port employee and died in the blast. “When I heard that the investigation was halted, I felt that we were being betrayed again, and that they were killing us a second time,” she added, breaking into tears as she spoke. The August 4, 2020 explosion of hundreds of tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertiliser at a port warehouse caused one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history.