Bitar returns empty-handed from his meeting with Rhosus owner

The owner of the Rhosus, the ship that transported the ammonium nitrate responsible for the Aug. 4, 2020, disaster at the Beirut Port, Igor Grechouchkine, currently detained in Bulgaria, refused on Thursday to give a statement to investigating judge Tarek Bitar and did not answer any questions, a Lebanese judicial source close to the case confirmed. The judge therefore returned to Beirut empty-handed on Friday.

Grechouchkine was accompanied by his lawyer during the hearing, during which he remained silent, as permitted by law.

According to the aforementioned source, the fact that the owner of the Rhosus remained silent does not change his status, given that, according to the ongoing investigation in Lebanon, he remains wanted by the authorities.

His silence is also not a presumption of guilt, and the judge will have to rely on other forms of evidence in his indictment to determine guilt. However, the investigation is not being hindered either.

"Nothing is obstructing" the investigation. Before his interrogation, Judge Bitar, upon leaving the Lebanese embassy in Sofia, was questioned by journalist Firas Hatoum about the prospects for the investigation. Refusing to answer questions, he nevertheless asserted that "nothing is obstructing" his investigation.

Bitar traveled to Bulgaria on Wednesday to question the Rhosus owner, after receiving authorization from the Bulgarian judiciary. This step followed the rejection of a previous Lebanese extradition request for Grechushkin, with Sofia ruling that Beirut had not provided sufficient guarantees that the death penalty would not be used.

However, a judicial source in Lebanon suggested that the Bulgarian public prosecutor's office, which favored extradition, had appealed the court's request, a procedure it was required to file before Dec. 17. The appeals court in Sofia now has 10 working days to issue a ruling.

Arrested on Sept. 5 at Sofia Airport under an Interpol red notice, the 48-year-old Russian-Cypriot national is being prosecuted by the Lebanese justice system for "bringing explosives into Lebanon, committing a terrorist act resulting in the deaths of a large number of people and sabotaging machinery with the intent to sink a ship," according to the Bulgarian prosecutor’s office.

Lebanese judicial authorities were hoping to obtain details about the ammonium nitrate cargo, its buyer and the vessel’s final destination.

This move by Judge Bitar comes after the travel ban imposed on him was lifted last Thursday in connection with a complaint for abuse of power and defying the judiciary, filed in January 2023 by former Cassation Prosecutor General Ghassan Oueidat and reviewed by ad hoc Investigative Judge Habib Rizkallah.

In early 2023, Bitar decided to resume the investigation he had been forced to halt thirteen months earlier amid hostility from much of the political establishment, especially Hezbollah, which accused him of bias before he was prosecuted for insubordination.

He was only able to resume hearings at the start of this year after President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam took office, promising to safeguard the independence of the judiciary, following the war between Israel and Hezbollah, after which the Iran-backed movement emerged significantly weakened in the fall of 2024.

This judicial development also comes amid a rapprochement between Beirut and Sofia. In early November, Aoun traveled to Bulgaria for talks with his counterpart Rumen Radev, praising "judicial and criminal cooperation" between the two countries.

The Aug. 4, 2020, disaster, one of the most powerful non-nuclear explosions in history, left more than 235 dead, injured thousands and devastated entire neighborhoods of the Lebanese capital.