BEIRUT (Reuters) – Dozens of demonstrators gathered outside Lebanon’s justice palace on Thursday to protest steps taken this week to hamstring a probe into the deadly 2020 Beirut port blast.
The judge investigating the explosion announced on Monday he was resuming his probe after a 13-month suspension brought on by legal complaints and high-level political pressure.
However the country’s top public prosecutor objected, saying Judge Tarek Bitar didn’t have the authority to bypass the complaints. He filed charges against the judge and released the remaining detainees still held over the investigation.
Families of those killed within the blast, members of parliament and other Lebanese flocked to Lebanon’s justice palace to demand Bitar be allowed to proceed his investigation.
“It is a judicial scandal,” said Ali Abbas, a lawyer who was protesting on Thursday.
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“Families of the victims are being wronged – there’s complete disregard for this crime,” he told Reuters.
Lebanon’s Supreme Judicial Council is ready to fulfill on Thursday afternoon to debate developments within the port blast investigation.
Families of the victims said they feared the country’s most senior judges could determine to remove Bitar from the case or appoint a supplementary judge that will effectively sap Bitar’s power.
Bitar told Reuters on Wednesday that top prosecutor Ghassan Oweidat “had no right” to file a charge or release detainees because Oweidat himself was charged over the explosion.
Oweidat also issued a travel ban against Bitar and a call saying the judge didn’t have the authority to resume his investigation. Each documents were seen by Reuters.
This week’s developments arrange a tug-of-war in Lebanon’s judiciary, which is susceptible to political influence with many appointments determined by politicians.
The explosion, one in all the most important non-nuclear blasts on record, was brought on by a whole bunch of tonnes of ammonium nitrate unloaded on the port in 2013.
(Reporting by Ahmed al-Kurdi; Writing by Maya Gebeily; Editing by Christina Fincher)
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