The lead investigator into the Aug. 4 Beirut port explosion has charged the caretaker prime minister and three former ministers with criminal negligence. Judge Fadi Sawwan is scheduled to question Hassan Diab, former Finance Minister Ali Hasan Khalil and former Public Works ministers Ghazi Zeaiter and Youssef Fenianos early next week. In response to the charges, Diab’s office suggested he would not comply, saying the move “violates the Constitution.” But Melhem Khalaf, the head of Beirut Bar Association, said there are “no constitutional, legal or political immunities for anyone.” If Sawwan decides to make an official accusatory decision, the case will go to the Court of Justice, where Zeaiter’s brother-in-law is the prosecutor.

A judge postponed until next month the hearings of the eight retired army officers charged in a dramatic corruption case. Lawyers for the officers were granted a week to file procedural motions in their client’s defense, which will then be referred to a higher court. Former Lebanese Army chief Jean Kahwaji and two other officers did not show up to the initial hearing, with lawyers attending in their place, while five of their co-defendants went to the court. The high-ranking former officers were charged on Dec. 2 with using their office for personal profit, the first such prosecution under the “illicit enrichment law” adopted by Parliament on Sept. 30, according to our sister publication L’Orient-Le Jour.

The Special Tribunal for Lebanon is set to sentence Salim Ayyash today at 11 a.m. Ayyash was convicted in August for his part in the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, in which 22 others were also killed. The suspected Hezbollah operative has also been charged in a separate case before the tribunal. In the Hariri case, Ayyash was the only defendant found guilty; all were tried in absentia. Prosecutors are seeking a life sentence.

Human Rights Watch said that Lebanese authorities were demonstrating a “callous disregard for the protection of health care workers at the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic.” In a statement issued yesterday, the NGO criticized state institutions for failing to meet their financial obligations to private and public hospitals, restricting their capacities to “maintain sufficient staffing levels and protect staff from infection.” Syndicate of Private Hospitals chief Sleiman Haroun told HRW that the government owes private institutions LL2.5 trillion, while the head of Rafik Hariri University Hospital said his facility, the largest in Lebanon for treating COVID-19, is owed around LL20 billion. Caretaker Health Minister Hamad Hassan said yesterday that public hospitals had received LL55 billion in back payments.

Medical importers said some foreign suppliers had stopped selling equipment over lack of payment. Salma Assi, the head of the Medical Equipment & Devices Importers Syndicate, told L’Orient Today that merchants are unable to settle their import bills because the central bank stopped offering subsidized dollar facilities to importers in May. She said some foreign suppliers had stopped exporting their products to Lebanon and had even threatened to seize Lebanese merchants’ dollar guarantees if they failed to settle their bills. In September 2019, the central bank promised to provide dollar facilities to cover 85 percent of their imports at the official LL1507.5 peg.

Protests continue to hone in on Banque du Liban Gov. Riad Salameh, the architect of Lebanon’s failed financial policies. Last night, a group of President Michel Aoun’s supporters demonstrated near the central bank chief’s home in the upscale Rabieh suburb outside Beirut. Their demonstration came after Salameh failed to show up for questioning by a judge looking into a case on the waste of subsidized dollars, with his lawyer citing security concerns. The judge in the case, Mount Lebanon Appellate Court Prosecutor Ghada Aoun, is widely perceived as an operative of the Free Patriotic Movement, founded by the president. Last week, civil society activists demonstrated outside a Beirut business school where Salameh was believed to be.