Former ministers Ali Hassan Khalil and Ghazi Zeaiter.
BEIRUT – The First Instance Court in Beirut issued a judgment on Friday fining former ministers Ali Hassan Khalil and Ghazi Zeaiter with 10 billion Lebanese Lira (the equivalent of over $100,000) for repeatedly causing a "delay in the investigation" into the deadly Beirut Port explosion of Aug. 4, 2020.
The complaint against the two Amal Movement MPs was filed by Judge Dania Dahdah.
According to the judgment, Khalil and Zeaiter, both prosecuted as part of the investigation into the Aug. 4, 2020, explosion, are accused of having "caused a delay of several months" after "filing petitions to recuse Judge [Fadi Sawan]" who was in charge of the case in 2021.
Sawan was removed from the investigation by the Court of Cassations in February 2021 following a petition for legitimate suspicion filed by the two Amal MPs.
After the appointment of Judge Tarek Bitar to resume the investigation, the two defendants "filed a recusal request before the Court of Cassations," which was ultimately rejected. They subsequently submitted successive requests seeking to remove Bitar, based on the same arguments, which led to the suspension of the investigation, the judgment noted. The two former ministers were "aware" that this would result in suspension of the probe, according to the text.
According to the decision, Dahdah reserves "the right to waive this compensation [which the two former ministers must pay] in favor of the victims involved in the investigation."
After two years of political and judicial obstruction, the investigation into the double explosion at the port was relaunched in January 2025, nearly coinciding with the arrival of a new executive power, which immediately displayed a desire to break with impunity and made resuming the investigation a priority.
The Aug. 4, 2020, explosion left 235 killed, 6,500 injured, and destroyed or damaged 77,000 buildings, temporarily displacing 300,000 people. Many officials, including senior civil servants, customs officials, magistrates, security chiefs and former ministers, have faced charges by Bitar in this case, particularly regarding the mismanagement and storage, without safety measures, of the ammonium nitrate that caused the blast.
This article originally appeared in French on L'Orient-Le Jour.
