The former director-general of the road traffic department, Hoda Salloum. (Credit: NNA/File photo)
BEIRUT — The Mount Lebanon Indictment Chamber headed by Judge Pierre Francis on Tuesday canceled a decision by Judge Nicholas Mansour to nullify all the records of the preliminary interrogation of the former director-general of the road traffic department Hoda Salloum in an ongoing case related to corruption in the Vehicle Registration Center, the state run National News Agency reported.
Legal experts told L'Orient Today on Monday that the Indictment Chamber has the authority to cancel a judicial decision in the event of it being appealed.
Legal sources had told L’Orient Today that public prosecutor at the Mount Lebanon Court of Appeal, Nazek el-Khatib, conducted Salloum's initial interrogation at the information division at 11 p.m. and no clerk was present to document what was being said; therefore, Mansour decided to reject the document as unofficial.
Mansour had also rejected the formal defense submitted by Salloum's lawyer Marwan Daher, and will keep this defense suspended, pending the expiration of the deadline for appealing his decision to complete the normal procedures regarding the file.
Salloum was arrested last month on Khatib's orders for further investigation in an ongoing case related to corruption in the Vehicle Registration Center. She remains in custody.
Around 70 other employees of the same department have been detained in this case, according to a judiciary source.