
A view of the Great Hall at the Beirut Courthouse leading to the upper floors. (Credit: Claude Assaf/OLJ)
Summoned by phone by the criminal police for a hearing before General Advocate Myrna Kallas at the Court of Cassation, scheduled for Tuesday morning, the editor-in-chief and CEO of the news site Megaphone, Samer Frangieh and Jean Kassir, did not appear. They were represented by their lawyer, Diala Chehadeh.
The journalists are contesting the actions of the criminal police, arguing that any acts they may be accused of fall under the print media law. This law grants authority to print media courts and judicial inquiries, excluding security services.
Frangieh and Kassir emphasize on Megaphone that they have not been informed of the reasons for their summons, speculating that it might be related to a complaint filed by Hicham Itani, the owner of an IT company, following the publication of information about the explosion of beepers that injured thousands of Hezbollah members last September. A video published by the site alluded to the company's possible responsibility for certain technical failures leading to the incident.
Contacted by L'Orient-Le Jour, Kassir indicates that if this is the reason for the complaint, the video merely reported what an investigative journalist, Firas Hatoum, had revealed.
The lawyer for the two journalists, Chehade, maintains that she has not examined the content of the complaint, considering that in form, their summons are illegal on two grounds. "The notification did not comply with the print media law, which jurisprudence interprets as including electronic press. Furthermore, it violated the penal procedure code (article 147) according to which the summons must be written and must mention the name and address of the person summoned, the act that is the subject of the proceedings, and the article of law that punishes this act."
L'Orient-Le Jour could not obtain a comment from the IT company that filed the complaint against Megaphone.