Part of Beirut silo complex collapses after fire, following devastating 2020 port blast

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Silos damaged in waterfront explosion that killed over 200 and injured thousands

The Associated Press · Posted: Jul 31, 2022 

Dust rises as part of Beirut's grain silos, damaged in the August 2020 port blast, collapses on Sunday. (Mohamed Azakir/Reuters)

A section of Beirut's massive port grain silos, shredded in the 2020 explosion, collapsed in a huge cloud of dust on Sunday after a weeks-long fire triggered by grains that had fermented and ignited in the summer heat.

The northern block of the silos collapsed after what sounded like an explosion, kicking up thick grey dust that enveloped the iconic structure and the port next to a residential area. It was not immediately clear if anyone was injured.

Assaad Haddad, the general director of the Port Silo, told The Associated Press that "everything is under control" but that the situation has not subsided yet. Minutes later, the dust settled and calm returned.

However, Youssef Mallah, from the Civil Defence department, said that other parts of the northern block of the silos were at risk and that other sections of the giant ruin could collapse.

A section of the silo complex along Beirut's waterfront is seen burning on Friday. The fire ignited on July 7 due to fermentation of remaining grain stocks paired with rising temperatures. (Joseph Eid/AFP/Getty Images)

The 50 year-old, 48-metre-tall giant silos withstood the force of the explosion two years ago, effectively shielding the western part of Beirut from the chemical blast that killed over 200 people, wounded more than 6,000 and badly damaged entire neighbourhoods.

In July, a fire broke out in the northern block of the silos due to the fermenting grains. Firefighters and Lebanese Army soldiers were unable to put it out and it smouldered for weeks, a nasty smell spreading around. The environment and health ministries last week issued instructions to residents living near the port to stay indoors in well-ventilated spaces.

Part of the silos is seen burning during the night of July 14. (Joseph Eid/AFP/Getty Images)

The fire and the dramatic sight of the smouldering, partially blackened silo revived the memories and in some cases, the trauma for the survivors of the gigantic explosion that tore through the port two years ago.

People rush indoors after collapse

Many rushed to close windows and return indoors after the collapse Sunday.

Emmanuel Durand, a French civil engineer who volunteered for the government-commissioned team of experts, told the AP that the northern block of the silo was already been tipping since the day of the 2020 blast, but the latest fire had weakened its frail structure, accelerating a possible collapse.

• ANALYSIS
  Beirut blast a 'knockout punch' after succession of crippling blows to Lebanon

• Thousands of Lebanese call for justice 1 year after massive explosion

When the fermenting grains ignited earlier in July, firefighters and Lebanese soldiers tried to put out the fire with water, but withdrew after the moisture made it worse. The Interior Ministry said over a week later that the fire had spread, after reaching some electric cables nearby.

The silos continued smoldering for weeks as the odour of fermented grain seeped into nearby neighbourhoods. Residents who had survived the 2020 explosion said the fire and the smell reminded them of their trauma. The environment and health ministries last week instructed residents living near the port to stay indoors in well-ventilated spaces.

The Lebanese Red Cross distributed K-N95 masks to those living nearby, and officials ordered firefighters and port workers to stay away from the immediate area near the silos.

Engineer says collapse was inevitable 

Emmanuel Durand, a French civil engineer who volunteered for the government-commissioned team of experts, told the AP earlier in July that the northern block of the silo had been slowing tilting over time but that the recent fire accelerated the rate and caused irreversible damage to the already weakened structure.

Here's a view of Beirut's badly damaged waterfront and the still-intact side of the silo complex as part of it continued to smoulder last Thursday, a week after flames were extinguished. (Hussein Malla/The Associated Press)

Durand been monitoring the silos from thousands of kilometres away using data produced by sensors he installed over a year ago, and updating a team of Lebanese government and security officials on the developments in a WhatsApp group. In several reports, he warned that the northern block could collapse at any moment.

Last April, the Lebanese government decided to demolish the silos, but suspended the decision following protests from families of the blast's victims and survivors. They contend that the silos may contain evidence useful for the judicial probe, and that it should stand as a memorial for the tragic incident.

The Lebanese probe has revealed that senior government and security officials knew about the dangerous material stored at the port, though no officials have been convicted thus far. The implicated officials subsequently brought legal challenges against the judge leading the probe, which has left the investigation suspended since December.

Beirut Silo Collapses, Reviving Trauma Ahead Of Blast Anniversary


By Issam Abdallah, Yara Abi Nader, Laila Bassam and Timour Azhari
07/31/22

A woman uses her phone near the partially-collapsed Beirut grain silos, damaged in the August 2020 port blast, in Beirut Lebanon July 31, 2022.

 Photo: Reuters / MOHAMED AZAKIR

Part of the grain silos at Beirut Port collapsed on Sunday just days before the second anniversary of the massive explosion that damaged them, sending a cloud of dust over the capital and reviving traumatic memories of the blast that killed more than 215 people.

There were no immediate reports of injuries.

Lebanese officials warned last week that part of the silos - a towering reminder of the catastrophic Aug. 4, 2020 explosion - could collapse after the northern portion began tilting at an accelerated rate.

"It was the same feeling as when the blast happened, we remembered the explosion," said Tarek Hussein, a resident of nearby Karantina area, who was out buying groceries with his son when the collapse happened. "A few big pieces fell and my son got scared when he saw it," he said.


A fire had been smoldering in the silos for several weeks which officials said was the result of summer heat igniting fermenting grains that have been left rotting inside since the explosion.

The 2020 blast was caused by ammonium nitrate unsafely stored at the port since 2013. It is widely seen by Lebanese as a symbol of corruption and bad governance by a ruling elite that has also steered the country into a devastating financial collapse.

One of the most powerful non-nuclear blasts on record, the explosion wounded some 6,000 people and shattered swathes of Beirut, leaving tens of thousands of people homeless.

Ali Hamie, the minister of transport and public works in the caretaker government, told Reuters he feared more parts of the silos could collapse imminently.

Environment Minister Nasser Yassin said that while the authorities did not know if other parts of the silos would fall, the southern part was more stable.

The fire at the silos, glowing orange at night inside a port that still resembles a disaster zone, had put many Beirut residents on edge for weeks.

'REMOVING TRACES' OF AUG. 4

There has been controversy over what do to with the damaged silos.

The government took a decision in April to destroy them, angering victims' families who wanted them left to preserve the memory of the blast. Parliament last week failed to adopt a law that would have protected them from demolition.

Citizens' hopes that there will be accountability for the 2020 blast have dimmed as the investigating judge has faced high-level political resistance, including legal complaints lodged by senior officials he has sought to interrogate.

Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati has said he rejects any interference in the probe and wants it to run its course.

However, reflecting mistrust of authorities, many people have said they believed the fire was started intentionally or deliberately not been contained.

Divina Abojaoude, an engineer and member of a committee representing the families of victims, residents and experts, said the silos did not have to fall.

"They were tilting gradually and needed support, and our whole goal was to get them supported," she told Reuters.

"The fire was natural and sped things up. If the government wanted to, they could have contained the fire and reduced it, but we have suspicions they wanted the silos to collapse."

Reuters could not immediately reach government officials to respond to the accusation that the fire could have been contained.

Earlier this month, the economy minister cited difficulties in extinguishing the fire, including the risk of the silos being knocked over or the blaze spreading as a result of air pressure generated by army helicopters.

Fadi Hussein, a Karantina resident, said he believed the collapse was intentional to remove "any trace of Aug. 4".

"We are not worried for ourselves, but for our children, from the pollution," resulting from the silos' collapse, he said, noting that power cuts in the country meant he was unable to even turn on a fan at home to reduce the impact of the dust.

(Writing by Nayera Abdallah and Tom PerryEditing by Hugh Lawson, Nick Macfie and Frances Kerry)

Lebanese protesters call for downfall of president and political elite over Beirut blast

Angry and grieving protesters on Tuesday read aloud the names of at least 171 people killed in last week's explosion at Beirut port and called for the removal of Lebanon's president and other officials they blame for the tragedy.

Gathered near "ground zero", some carried pictures of the victims as a large screen replayed footage of the mushroom cloud that rose over the city on August 4 after highly explosive material stored for years detonated, injuring some 6,000 people and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless.

"HE KNEW" was written across an image of President Michel Aoun on a poster at the protest venue. Underneath, it read: "A government goes, a government comes; we will continue until the president and the parliament speaker are removed."

The president and prime minister were reportedly warned in July about the warehoused ammonium nitrate, according to documents and senior security sources.

Aoun, who has pledged a swift and transparent investigation, tweeted on Tuesday: "My promise to all the pained Lebanese is that I will not rest until all the facts are known."



Lebanon: Beirut falls silent to remember victims
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At 6:08pm in Beirut (15:08 GMT) Tuesday, church bells rang and mosques called for prayer to mark the precise moment that a portside fire ignited a vast stock of ammonium nitrate fertiliser, sparking a huge explosion that was felt as far away as Cyprus.

The fireball and subsequent shockwave, caught in dramatic videos posted on social media, wrought devastation across entire neighbourhoods of Beirut.

Watershed moment

A week later, the blast that left 6,000 people injured and made an estimated 300,000 people temporarily homeless looked like a potential watershed in Lebanon's troubled political history.


Beirut protesters clash with police outside Lebanon's parliament
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On Tuesday, Ali Noureddin joined thousands of people to march solemnly by the wreckage of Beirut port, where his brother Ayman had been stationed as soldier when the blast went off.

"My brother died because of state negligence and corruption," he said, holding a picture of his late brother, who was 27.

Ali dismissed the resignation of Hassan Diab's government on Monday as insignificant unless it were followed by the wholesale removal of Lebanon's hereditary political elite.

"Change will only happen when the entire regime changes," he said, holding back tears. "But I hope all these young people here and my brother's death can bring about change."

In his resignation speech, the 61-year-old Diab cast himself as a champion of the struggle against corrupt political overlords, despite the fact many see him as a puppet rather than a victim.

Some saw his departure as a victory for the protest movement that forced out the previous government last year.

But others warned that given the power of Lebanon's factions and clans, the same old faces may be back before too long.

"It's a long fight that won't end in a month or two," said Hussein El Achi, an activist and lawyer defending the protest camp.

"But (the political elite) are weak, they have never been weaker, even among their own people," he said.

Protests continued for the fourth consecutive night Tuesday, as dozens of demonstrators clashed with security forces and tried to break down barriers leading to the parliament in central Beirut.

The Lebanese Red Cross said 10 people had been taken to hospital while 32 were treated at the scene.


EN NW PKG F24 AR BEIRUT WITNESSES
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The blast rocked a country already on its knees, with an economic collapse sending poverty levels soaring even before the coronavirus pandemic hit.

Some observers argue that deep public anger over the tragedy will reduce Lebanese politicians' room for manoeuvre as foreign pressure grows to pass reforms as a condition for a bailout.

"They will find it very difficult to avoid the kind of structural reforms that the international community has made a precondition for any aid," said political science professor Bassel Salloukh of the Lebanese American University.

France has taken the lead in the international emergency response, organising an aid conference which raised a quarter of a million euros.

President Emmanuel Macron visited blast-ravaged neighbourhoods of Beirut two days after the disaster, adopting a tough tone with Lebanese officials and warning that they needed to strike "a revamped pact with the Lebanese people".

For now Diab's team will continue in a caretaker capacity, but negotiations were underway for a successor.

According to the Al-Akhbar daily newspaper, veteran diplomat Nawaf Salam is favoured by Paris, Washington and Riyadh, three of the key outside power brokers in Lebanon.

Iran, sponsor of Lebanon's dominant Hezbollah movement, also appeared to be on board with such a scenario, which would see Salam head up a neutral government not hostile to the Shiite group.

It was not clear how other factions viewed that solution.

Food 'catastrophe' looms

In the blast zone, the increasingly hopeless search for survivors continued, but rescue teams were only pulling lifeless bodies from the rubble.

The UN refugee agency said that 34 refugees were among the dead.

The blast ripped the sides off towering grain silos that shielded part of the city from the shockwave. But the blast spilt thousands of tonnes of grain, vital to the import-dependant country's food security.

On Monday, the head of the World Food Programme, David Beasley, said Lebanon needed all the help it could get because 85 percent of Lebanon's food used to come in through the port.

He warned that unless port operations resumed quickly, Lebanon would be without bread in two weeks.

Further adding to its woes, the country on Tuesday recorded its highest-yet daily number of deaths and new infections from the novel coronavirus, with seven fatalities and 309 new cases.

Health officials have warned that the chaos caused by the blast risked leading to a spike in infections.

The head a major public hospital warned that the next few days would be critical.

"The events of the previous week have, understandably, shifted attention away from the pandemic," Firass Abiad said on social media.

But, he said, "we cannot afford to allow the virus to go unchecked."

(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS and AFP)

 VIDEOS
 

Next Lebanon government to face $30 billion reform test

Tom Arnold, Ghaida Ghantous

LONDON/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon may be in line for $298 million in emergency aid after the Beirut port blast, but the more than $30 billion (23 billion pounds) that some estimate it may need to rebuild its shattered economy will not be forthcoming without reform.
FILE PHOTO: Demonstrators wave Lebanese flags during protests near the site of a blast at Beirut's port area, Lebanon August 11, 2020. REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic/File Photo

Such change could be stalled by the resignation of Lebanon’s government, while a financial rescue plan drawn up in April is likely to have to be reviewed and possibly even ditched by a new administration, two financial sources close to the plan said.

Forecasts for financial metrics such as debt-to-GDP and the parallel exchange rate contained in the rescue plan, which had already struggled for support before last week’s deadly explosion, now look unrealistic, one of the sources added.

That is likely to push back creditor talks to restructure Lebanon’s international sovereign debt.

Lebanon had begun International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout talks in May after defaulting on its foreign currency debt. But these were put on hold due to a lack of progress on reforms and differences over the size of financial losses.

While Prime Minister Hassan Diab’s cabinet remains as a caretaker government after its resignation, Lebanon’s already diminishing foreign reserves are set to be eroded faster to pay for the rebuilding of Beirut’s port and other infrastructure.

So devising a credible economic plan will be the main test for whoever ends up running Lebanon, which faces tumbling net capital flows amid an intensifying scramble for hard currency.

“The best gauge of the government’s sovereignty will be the economic plan they draft,” Carlos Abadi, an adviser to the Association of Banks in Lebanon, told Reuters.

In the wake of the Aug. 4 explosion, Lebanon’s external financing needs for the next four years swelled to more than $30 billion from $24 billion, Garbis Iradian at the Institute of International Finance (IIF) estimated.

“In order to overcome the U.S. veto at the IMF, the next government will have to produce a plan which is premised on the positioning of the economy for future growth, without the possibility of billions being diverted for nefarious purposes,” Abadi said.

The IMF reaffirmed its support for Lebanon on Sunday, before the government’s resignation, but also the need for reforms, a point stressed by French President Emmanuel Macron last week.

With the number of Lebanese living in poverty nearing half its population, these reforms range from setting up social safety nets to protect the most vulnerable to ensuring Lebanon’s wealthy elite share the burden of financial losses from bank recapitalisations.

Macron also called for an audit of the central bank and the banking system, a comment that has triggered wariness among some bankers fearful that the government may use the data to spare “family and friends”.

French MP Loïc Kervran, chair of the France-Lebanon committee, told Reuters such an audit would aim to uncover “unorthodox” practices which could have led to losses.

SWORD OF DAMOCLES

Foreign donors have made it clear that apart from humanitarian aid, no money would be given to Lebanon without reforms.

President Michel Aoun pledged on Wednesday that the government’s resignation would not hold up the process of a forensic central bank audit.

Some countries are particularly concerned about the influence of Iran through Hezbollah, a Shi’ite Muslim political group and guerrilla army designated as a terrorist organisation by the United States. Hezbollah helped form Diab’s government.

Economist Toufic Gaspard said that as long as Hezbollah controlled the levers of power, economic recovery would be hampered as the group would not accept reforms such as border and customs controls.

“This is the sword of Damocles hanging above everybody’s head...If this situation is not addressed, I don’t see how we can have a sustainable solution,” added Gaspard, who has advised the IMF and the Lebanese finance ministry.

Meanwhile, with limited external funding support, surging inflation and the parallel exchange rate plummeting to 9,290 pounds per U.S. dollar by 2021 under a worst-case scenario, Lebanon will continue to sink, said the IIF’s Iradian.

Lebanon’s central bank has told local banks to extend zero-interest U.S. dollar loans to those impacted by the blast for repairs, which analysts say will come from official reserves.

These could fall by $6 to $7 billion by the end of 2020 from around $18 billion, said Nafez Zouk at Oxford Economics.

“Lebanon would be running out of usable reserves”.

Additional reporting by Michel Rose in Paris, Pamela Barbaglia in London and Rodrigo Campos in New York; Editing by Alexander Smith/Mark Heinrich

Lebanese court removes judge from Beirut blast probe, activists slam ‘mockery of justice’

Issued on: 18/02/2021 - 

A Lebanese court on Feb. 18, 2021 dismissed a judge who had charged top politicians over the Aug. 4, 2020 Beirut port blast. 

© - AFP/File

Text by: FRANCE 24

A Lebanese court on Thursday dismissed a judge who had charged top politicians with negligence over last year's Beirut port explosion, infuriatingfamilies of victims who said it showed that the state would never hold powerful men to account.

Judge Fadi Sawan had led the investigation into the largest non-nuclear blast in history. In December, he charged three ex-ministers and the outgoing prime minister with negligence.

Two hundred people died in the August 4, 2020 blast when a huge stockpile of ammonium nitrate, stored unsafely for years, detonated at the capital's port. Thousands were injured and entire neighbourhoods destroyed.

On Thursday, the Lebanese Court of Cassation called for a new investigating judge to be appointed to lead the probe, nearly six months after it had started.

The court decided to take Sawan off the case after a request from two of the former ministers he charged.

A copy of the decision seen by Reuters cited "legitimate suspicion" over Sawan's neutrality, partly because his house was damaged in the blast which devastated much of the Lebanese capital.

The move will likely delay an investigation that has faced political pushback and has yet to yield any results.

'A mockery of justice'

Rights activists immediately condemned Thursday's ruling as the latest example of an entrenched political class placing itself above the law.

Sawan's removal "makes a mockery of justice and is an insult to the victims of the blast", Human Rights Watch researcher Aya Majzoub said.

The ruling showed "politicians are not subject to the rule of law", she added.

Following the announcement dozens of family members of people killed in the port blast rallied outside the main Beirut court house.

"Today you have killed us all over again! The investigation is over. We're back at square one," cried out one of the protesters, while others carried pictures of the victims.

Hariri, Hezbollah opposed indictment of ministers

On December 10, Sawan had issued charges against caretaker prime minister Hassan Diab and three former ministers for "negligence and causing death to hundreds", triggering outrage from politicians.

Premier-designate Saad Hariri and the powerful Shiite movement Hezbollah were among those to oppose the indictment.

Among those charged were former finance minister Ali Hassan Khalil and ex-public works minister Ghazi Zaiter, who accused Sawan of violating the constitution on the grounds of immunity and moved to have him removed from the case.

'Charade needs to end'

Lawyer and activist Nizar Saghieh said he needed to see the full court decision, but feared the worst.

"By refusing to be held accountable, the ministers and political class are drawing a red line in the investigation," he told AFP.

He said it was a typical pattern in Lebanon that "prevents any justice from being achieved".

Majzoub said: "More than six months later, we are back to square one."

"This charade needs to end ... We need an international, independent investigation as soon as possible."

Not a single politician detained

The probe into Lebanon's worst peace-time disaster has led to the detention of 25 people, from maintenance workers to the port's customs director, but not a single politician.

It has focused mainly on who was to blame for the fertiliser being left to languish unsafely at the port for more than six years, not how the ammonium nitrate ended up in Beirut.

On Monday, however, Sawan requested information from Lebanese security forces on three Syrian businessman thought to be behind the procurement of the fertiliser shipment that arrived on a dilapidated ship from Georgia in 2013.

Diab resigned after the port explosion, but the deeply divided political class has failed to agree on a new cabinet line-up.

Pressure from former colonial power France, whose President Emmanuel Macron has visited twice since the explosion, has failed to end the deadlock.

Lebanon desperately needs the government to launch reforms and unlock international aid to lift the country out of its worst financial crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war.

The value of the local currency has plummeted by more than 80 percent and around half the population live in poverty.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and REUTERS)

How an abandoned ship became a ‘ticking time bomb’ in Beirut

MARK MACKINNON

SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT
LONDON PUBLISHED AUGUST 5, 2020


A survivor is taken out of the rubble after a massive explosion in Beirut, Lebanon.
HASSAN AMMAR/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
1 of 19 https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-how-an-abandoned-ship-became-a-ticking-time-bomb-in-beirut/

The series of events that led to Tuesday’s catastrophic explosion in Beirut appears to have begun in late 2013, when technical problems forced a cargo ship to make an unscheduled stop in the city’s port.

Lebanon’s port authorities were shocked when they boarded the vessel to inspect it. Not only was the merchant vessel Rhosus, flying a Moldovan flag, unfit to continue on its journey – it was carrying an astonishing 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate in its hold.

That ammonium nitrate – which was eventually taken off the ship and stored in a warehouse at the port – is believed to have been responsible for Tuesday’s massive blast. Lebanon’s health ministry said Wednesday that the death toll had risen to 135 with about 5,000 wounded, according to a report from Reuters.


The death toll is expected to rise further as rescue workers continue to search through the rubble of Beirut’s devastated port district, where the explosion left little standing.

Explosion in Beirut: What we know so far about Lebanon’s disaster, and what caused it

Across the city, an estimated 250,000 people were made homeless by the disaster.


Ammonium nitrate, which is most commonly used as fertilizer, becomes explosive when it mixes with fuel oil. Videos of the Beirut explosion show a fire at a port warehouse just before the blast, which sent an orange-tinged mushroom cloud high into the sky, and caused injuries and damage across much of the densely populated Lebanese capital.

The owner of the Rhosus was a Russian national, Igor Grechushkin, whose last known address was Cyprus. He did not answer calls to his mobile phone on Wednesday. His LinkedIn page appeared to have been deleted.

Shipping records show the Rhosus began its fateful journey at the Black Sea port of Batumi, in Georgia, on Sept. 23, 2013. The intended destination for its cargo was Mozambique, but the ship only made it as far as Beirut, where it was impounded on Nov. 21, 2013.

“Upon inspection of the vessel by Port State Control, the vessel was forbidden from sailing. Most crew except the Master and four crew members were repatriated and shortly afterwards the vessel was abandoned by her owners after charterers and cargo concern lost interest in the cargo. The vessel quickly ran out of stores, bunker and provisions,” reads a note posted online by Baroudi & Associates, a Lebanese law firm that, acting on behalf of “various” unnamed creditors, obtained an order to have the ship arrested.

Lebanese Canadians suffer anxious wait for news after tragedy in Beirut

The ship’s captain (or “master”) and the four unfortunate crew members – all of them Ukrainian nationals – were forced to remain on board the Rhosus to keep the ship and its volatile cargo afloat. They became causes célebre in their native Ukraine, where local media regularly reported on the “hostages” who were trapped on board a derelict ship in the port of Beirut.


“The owner, Igor Grechushkin, actually abandoned the ship and the remaining crew,” the ship’s captain, Boris Prokoshev, said in a June 2014 statement he gave, while still aboard the Rhosus, to a Ukrainian legal aid organization. “He says that he went bankrupt. I don’t believe him, but that doesn’t matter. The fact is that he abandoned the ship and the crew, just like he abandoned his cargo, ammonium nitrate, which is on the ship.”

Finally, almost exactly a year after the ship was first detained, a Lebanese judge allowed the seamen to leave the ship and return home. “Emphasis was placed on the imminent danger the crew was facing given the ‘dangerous’ nature of the cargo still stored in ship’s holds,” reads the account by Baroudi & Associates, who said they took on the sailors’ case on compassionate grounds.

The lawyers’ note, published in a shipping industry journal called The Arrest News, which tracks ships that have been impounded, ends on an ominous note. “Owing to the risks associated with retaining the ammonium nitrate on board the vessel, the port authorities discharged the cargo onto the port’s warehouses. The vessel and cargo remain to date in port awaiting auctioning and/or proper disposal.”

Six years later, that same cargo was still in a Hangar 12 at Beirut’s port. It’s a situation that explosives experts have referred to as a “ticking time bomb.”

Lebanon’s Supreme Defense Council, which met following the blast, said the explosion appeared to have occurred during welding work at Hangar 12.

London court orders UK-registered firm to pay nearly $1 mln to Beirut blast victims

By Maya Gebeily

June 13, 2023

A demonstrator holds a black and white Lebanese flag during a protest for Families of the victims of the 2020 Beirut port explosion against Lebanon's top public prosecutor who charged the judge investigating the Beirut port blast and ordered the release of those detained in connection with the explosion in front of the Justice Palace in Beirut, Lebanon January 26, 2023. 

REUTERS/Aziz Taher/File Photo

BEIRUT, June 13 (Reuters) - A London court has ordered a British-registered company to pay more than 800,000 pounds ($1 million) in damages to victims of the 2020 blast at Beirut's port, a lawyers group in Lebanon said on Monday, in the first such verdict over the explosion.

More than 220 people were killed in the Aug. 4, 2020, blast when a huge shipment of ammonium nitrate fertiliser that had been sold by British-registered firm Savaro Ltd exploded.

On Jan. 31, the High Court in London found Savaro Ltd liable for death, personal injury and property damage in a case brought by the Beirut Bar Association on behalf of blast victims.

On Monday, the court ordered Savaro to pay 100,000 pounds plus interest each to three relatives of deceased victims, and slightly over 500,000 pounds to a wounded woman, according to a statement by the Association.

Reuters was unable to find contact details for Savaro or for its listed director.

"It's the first time that any court anywhere renders decisions as to liability and damages in the Beirut port explosion after approximately three years," said Camille Abou Sleiman, a lawyer from legal firm Dechert who was overseeing the case for victims and their families for free.

"It's the first ray of hope in the long march to justice and closure for the victims," Abou Sleiman told Reuters.

But the question of who exactly will pay remains unclear. The woman listed as Savaro's owner and sole director at Britain's Companies House, Marina Psyllou, told Reuters in 2021 that she was acting on behalf of another beneficial owner whose identity she declined to disclose.

Psyllou submitted a request in 2021 to Companies House to wind up Savaro. The Beirut Bar Association asked British authorities to halt that voluntary liquidation.

Lebanon's own probe into the blast has sputtered out. Earlier this year, investigating judge Tarek Bitar was charged with usurping powers after he filed his own charges against top security and political officials over the explosion.

"Everything that is moving forward is outside of the country," said Paul Naggear, whose daughter Alexandra was killed by the blast and who was one of the claimants.

"It shows you how much they've obstructed things in Lebanon. It was really good to hear this news, because it's progress."

($1 = 0.7948 pounds)

Reporting by Maya Gebeily Editing by Mark Potter

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LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for BEIRUT 

The seven years of neglect, and 13 minutes of chaos, that destroyed Beirut

Special report: Speaking to Lebanese port officials, government sources, firefighters and eyewitnesses, and reviewing a dozen documents, Bel Trew, Oliver Carroll, Samira el-Azar and Richard Hall trace the paper trail of negligence and incompetence that led up to the devastating explosion


A helicopter puts out a fire at the scene of the explosion at the port of Lebanon’s capital ( AFP/Getty )


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Residents across central Beirut were peering quizzically at a mushroom cloud of grey above their heads when the sky cracked open and a tidal wave of pressure roared through.

It was like sound itself had imploded in everyone’s ears. The world simultaneously broke apart and snapped shut. Bodies were pulled into the air and thrown across rooms and streets. The facades of apartment blocks, offices and hospitals were peeled off and chewed into pieces.

The explosion unleashed warring tornadoes of pressure that wrestled everything off the walls and the floors, spitting shrapnel that cut through the air like bullets. The power of the blast instantly eviscerated windows, smacked down buildings, crumpled steel shutters and crushed cars like a giant’s fist.

“It was like an atomic bomb,” says Hala Okeili, 33, a yoga instructor who was less than a mile away from the port when disaster struck. “I thought they had started a war and someone was bombing us.”

The blast, which struck the Lebanese capital around 6.08pm on Tuesday, is being called one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in modern history. It killed at least 210 people, and injured 6,000 more. Dozens are still missing.

Investigations into what happened and who is responsible are underway: initial analysis points to nearly 3,000 tons of dangerously stored explosive ammonium nitrate catching on fire.
Watch more
 

Entire Lebanon government resigns amid fury over explosion

A review of a dozen documents as well as interviews with Lebanese port officials, government sources, firefighters and eyewitnesses showed enormous incompetence in both the seven years leading up to the blast and the final 13 minutes before the city was destroyed.

Since 2014 authorities had so often warned about the dangerous nature of the materials being stored at the port that it became common practice to avoid Hangar 12, where the ammonium nitrate was being stored. Port officials may have even left the scene before they could brief first responders about the nature of the substances.

The firefighters, all of them thought to have died in the blast, arrived with inadequate provisions to put out the smouldering fire which may have started with fireworks.

The need for answers as to why it happened is urgent.


Beirut port, before and after Tuesday’s explosion (Maxar Technologies)
The boat that was lost

None of the crew aboard the Russian-owned ship would have guessed seven years ago that their journey, which started in the Black Sea, would ultimately end with the decimation of the Lebanese capital of Beirut more than 1,000km away.

The story began on 23 September 2013. The Rhosus, a 27-year-old cargo ship, set sail from the Georgian port of Batumi with a 2750-ton cargo of ammonium nitrate, an explosive substance frequently used in fertilisers and bombs.

The ship was never supposed to dock in Beirut. A landing docket given to The Independent shows the intended end recipient was an explosives company in Mozambique.

The vessel’s origins are shadowy, like much in the global shipping industry. It was managed by a company registered in the Marshall Islands, and set sail under a Moldovan flag. It was controlled by a small-scale Russian businessman and Cyprus resident named Igor Grechushkin, according to documents reviewed by The Independent.

Russian citizen Boris Prokoshev eventually took charge of the vessel when it made a stop in Tuzla, Turkey.

Trouble was already brewing aboard the ship.
Captain Prokoshev and crew members demand their release from the arrested cargo vessel in 2014 (Reuters)

Captain Prokoshev was greeted by an entirely new Ukrainian crew after the old one unexpectedly stormed out because they had not been paid for four months.

But it was only when the Prokoshev finally met the owner in Pireaus, Greece, during an October fuel stop, that he began to understand the scale of Grechushkin’s financial problems.

“It was bizarre – after first signing off on the supplies, he then refused to pay for two-thirds of them,” Prokoshev tells The Independent. “Then he ordered us to make an additional stop in Beirut to pick up another consignment.”

The Rhosus set sail for Beirut on 15 November and arrived, in the captain’s estimation, approximately four days later. The exact circumstances before landing are disputed. According to lawyers acting for creditors of the vessel, the Rhosus experienced technical problems forcing it to enter the port, where it then failed a safety inspection.
The Rhosus is seen in Volos, Greece (AP)

But Prokoshev tells The Independent he was able to dock in Beirut to take on an extra load of heavy road-making equipment, which he eventually decided could not safely be stowed onboard. Following a “heated” discussion with Grechushkin, the captain agreed to travel on to Larnaca in Cyprus.

But by this point, Lebanese port officials were demanding unpaid fines and port fees, and refused to let them leave. In Prokoshev’s account, Grechushkin then made a decision to “abandon” the ship and its 10-man crew to their fate. Some time in late November, Lebanese authorities impounded the vessel.

The crew quickly ran out of provisions. “If it wasn’t for our Beirut agent, we’d have starved,” Prokoshev tells The Independent.
‘Dangerous’ cargo left behind

After months of furious lobbying by Ukranian diplomats, the majority of the Rhosus crew was allowed to return home in early 2014. But Prokoshev and a skeleton staff were kept on, effectively held hostage by Lebanese authorities as they worked out what to do with the ship.

The captain was even forced to sell off the fuel to pay for lawyers, who applied for the crew’s release on “compassionate grounds”. A Lebanese court eventually agreed, but only after taking consideration of the “imminent danger the crew was facing given the nature of the cargo”.

By the time of their release, the crew was owed over $240,000 (£190,600) in unpaid wages.

The Lebanese authorities knew from the very start just how volatile the shipment was. The next six years were marked by numerous warnings that could have averted disaster had they been acted upon. Instead, a toxic mix of corruption and mismanagement that plagues every public institution in Lebanon paved the way for tragedy.
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The first warning was raised before the cargo was even offloaded in an internal memo dated February 2014 and seen by The Independent.

In it Colonel Joseph Skaf, head of the Lebanese narcotics control division, warned Beirut’s anti-smuggling department that the material was “highly dangerous and a threat to public safety”.

Baroudi & Associates, which represented the Russian vessel’s crew, reportedly sent letters in July 2014 to officials at Beirut port and the ministry of transportation “warning of the dangers of the materials carried on the ship”.

In the end shortly after the crew’s departure from Lebanon, the dangerous cargo was transferred to warehouse number 12.

The Rhosus, without crew or an owner, would remain in Beirut’s docks before sinking “two or three years later”.

For Prokoshev it was the end of a nightmare, and an event he had long shelved in his mind, until news broke of the blast last week. For the citizens of Beirut this would mark the start of theirs.
A damning paper trail

Six years on, it was common knowledge in Beirut’s port that Hangar 12 was “dangerous”, port employees told The Independent.

Not everyone knew exactly what was inside. The rank and file believed it housed confiscated weapons. People steered clear.

At the official level, the contents of the hangar were very well known. In fact concerns about the stockpile were raised at least eight times since 2014, according to documents seen by The Independent and interviews with officials.

Fireworks were even moved into the hangar, despite the dangers, according to one port source.

The paper trail is damning.

In a letter dated 20 May 2016, the then head of the customs department Shafik Merhi wrote to a judge at the Urgent Matters Court asking for permission to sell or export the dangerous stockpile to a Lebanese company. He mentions that it was jeopardising the safety of the port and the workers.

A year later in a 28 October 2017 letter to the same court, Badri Daher, the new head of the customs department, repeats the same plea.

In this communique, seen by The Independent, he writes that it follows similar letters sent in 2014, 2015, twice in 2016 and earlier in 2017. Shortly before his arrest, Daher, who is among more than a dozen port officials currently under investigation, said he received no proper instructions of what to do.

In December 2019, the State Security requested an investigation into dangerous substances in Hangar 12 and completed its findings in January. It informed the presidency and the prime minister a few months later.

President Michel Aoun admitted that nearly three weeks before the blast – on 20 June – he was handed that report and informed that the dangerous material had been there for seven years.

He said he immediately ordered the military and security officials “to do what is needed”.

Prime Minister Hassan Diab, whose government resigned on Monday, received the same letter on the same day and sent it on to the Supreme Defence Council for advice within 48 hours.

But still nothing was done.

The matter was even raised just 11 days before the blast when the public works minister, Michel Najjar, told Al Jazeera he first learnt about the dangerous stockpile.

Because of a new coronavirus lockdown in place at the time, Najjar said there was a short delay and so he spoke to the port’s general manager, Hassan Koraytem, about the matter on the Monday 24 hours before the blast.

The port manager said he would send all the relevant documentation so everyone could look into the matter. But it was too late.
Thirteen minutes that sealed the city’s fate

On the afternoon of Tuesday 4 August, port electrician Joe Akiki, 23, called his mother to say he was starting the night shift.

Most of the port workers clock off at 4pm each day. And so there were comparatively few people on the ground when, a few hours later, a fire started.

Shortly before 6pm local time, Akiki stood on the roof of a building which was part of Beirut’s imposing grain silo. He started filming black smoke billowing out of warehouse 12, which was about 40m away in front of him.

In the clip, the camera pans across left to right across the battered hangar. Faint sirens, perhaps belonging to the incoming fire crew, can be heard sounding in the background.

Joe Akiki films the burning warehouse from on top of the silo minutes before the blast

Around the same time, at 5:55pm, a member of the fire department operations room just east of the port received a call from the Beirut police department saying there was a fire in one of the warehouses.

Fires at the port are not uncommon, he told The Independent. But the way it was reported and handled was unusual. The fire department employee who received the call said no one mentioned ammonium nitrate or explained to them which hangar was affected.

A 10-person team – nine male firefighters and female paramedic – was dispatched to the scene arriving just two minutes later.

There, unusually, there was no port crew to greet them, show them the site and hand them the key. It took them some time to work out the location of the fire.

Fire department officials told The Independent had they known the contents of the warehouse and its location or even been given a key, they would have had more time to assess the danger and the contents of the hanger, possibly put out the initial fire, order an evacuation or just scramble to safety.

Instead the firefighters wasted precious minutes that could have saved lives – their lives – trying to locate and break into the warehouse.

“Each minute counts in our work. If they just had more information,” said fire department chief Fadi Mazboudi.

At some point an unknown person, likely a port worker, began filming from the exact same spot where Akiki was standing. The clip that was shared online and verified by Bellingcat shows the smoke thickening to a deep charcoal. The crackle of dozens of what appear to be fireworks can be heard, popping in time with bright white and red sparks.

The person filming begins to retreat from the fire as it grows. A man screams as a large explosion sends them scrambling across the roof.

Across town, just before 6pm, that initial blast was heard by many residents who took to social media to tweet pictures of the column of smoke towering in the sky.

As the minutes trickled by more people came out of their homes, businesses, and shops, or looked out their window to find out what was going on.

Just 600m south of Hangar 12, Cherine el-Zein, an interior designer and activist, started filming the cloud above the port and telling people they should shut the doors and windows because of the smoke.

Cherine el-Zein films the moment the explosion destroys swathes of Beirut

A few minutes along Armenia Street to her right, Carmen Khoury, 46, a university administrator, stopped buying water and stepped out of the shop with a woman she did not know to look for fighter jets.

Back at Hanger 12, Sahar Fares, 27, the female medic accompanying the all-male fire crew had herself already started filming.

From the footage – broadcast by the BBC and verified by The Independent – it is possible to geolocate her to an area just below where Akiki was standing on top of the grain silo.

Her video shows the warehouse on fire, with her colleagues in uniform looking up at the burning building. She sent this clip to her fiance Gilbert Karaan at 6.03pm, according to Mazboudi. Worried, Gilbert spoke to her on the phone, urging her leave. He was still on the call when, disoriented, she started to run towards the grain silo.

A minute later at 6.04pm, Akiki, presumably scared and confused, sent his three-second clip with no explanation to a WhatsApp group chat: the last time his friends would ever hear from him.

By this point the firefighters realised the enormity of the situation that they had walked into blind. The fire was much bigger than they anticipated.

And so a few seconds before 6.08pm, firefighters Elia Khizami and Charbel Karam called their superiors demanding immediate back-up. They warned they only had “three tons of water” which wasn’t enough to control such a massive fire.

But before anyone within the fire department could scramble together a single piece of equipment, Hangar 12 detonated.

Fares was still on the phone to her fiance and running for safety when the line cut.

The sky above her imploded into a brilliant and billowing roar of orange and deep red, which set off a white ring of pressure consuming everything in its path.

The fire department employee who took the original phone call is thrown metres in the air in his office, which is ripped open.

For Carmen Khoury, just a few hundred metres away from the epicentre, it felt like hell had been unleashed.

“An iron rod swung down and knocked me off my feet. I found myself pinned under a car, with the woman beside me bleeding,” she says, describing the horrific moment.

“I have lived through two wars, and I have never experienced a blast quite like that. For a second I thought the world had come to an end.”
The city torn in two

For nearly one whole minute everything on Armenia street was quiet – in a kind of sharp inhalation of breath before the surge of pain.

Cherine el-Zein’s video capturing the moment is black; the only sounds heard are the hiss of gas and the persistent bleat of car alarms.

Then as people regain consciousness the screams start. The sirens begin.

“What just happened? My daughter is inside the shop, my daughter is inside the shop,” shouts one man in desperation. In the distance a woman says something incomprehensible and quietly whimpers.

Across Beirut, blood-soaked bodies staggered through the dust and smoke and glass and mess. Many asked themselves if a war had started.

View from the ocean of Beirut’s devastated port after warehouse explosion

Hala Okeili, who was approaching Armenia street in her car, says everything was instantly destroyed.

“Our neighbours, faces I recognised. Young people bleeding from every single part of their bodies.”

Citizens started making frantic phone calls to family members across the city. People report experiencing hour-long lapses in memory.

Medical workers at the nearest hospital St George, which was gutted by the blast, were forced to pull their own colleagues and patients from under the fallen masonry. With the emergency room destroyed, the generator broken and parts of the building structurally unsound, they started treating the newly injured in the car park with the light of their mobile phones.

Citizens on motorcycles began to ferry the shell-shocked injured, many hastily patched up by well-wishers, to hospitals outside the city, as those close to downtown Beirut were each capacity.

At the port, the explosion had clawed a 43m-deep crater, overturned cruise ships like beached whales, destroyed half of Lebanon’s main grain silo, and left just the rickety ribs of the warehouses.

Days later, rescue workers issued diminishing percentages of the likelihood of finding survivors there. Angry families gathered at the site demanding bulldozers check under the warehouses in case anyone made it an underground network of tunnels and store rooms.

In succession the bodies of Fares, Akiki and Khizami are found within the rubble, many of them incinerated and in pieces. But the rest of the team, including Karam, remain missing.
‘Hang up the nooses’

Very quickly in the aftermath of the blast, the shattered streets of Beirut begin to simmer with rage. Protesters armed with nooses demand accountability and help from their government whose officials are woefully absent in the rescue and clean-up operation manned by volunteers.

Among the crowds are Khoury and El-Zein, who protest despite having been hospitalised. The unidentified woman pinned under the car with Khoury doesn’t make it.

A nation’s grief turns to fury.

“There’s not one form of death they haven’t used with us,” says Sara Assaf, a Lebanese activist at one rally. She says this was no accident, but the result of years of endemic corruption at every level of public life by the country’s leaders.

“They killed us financially. They killed us economically. They killed us physically. They killed us morally. They killed us chemically.”

Since the explosion, everyone has passed the buck. President Aoun insisted on Friday he is not responsible, saying that he didn’t know where the ammonium nitrate was placed or “the level of danger”.
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Port officials, before their arrests, had expressed similar sentiments, saying they warned the courts, which did nothing. Najjar told Al-Jazeera “no minister knows what’s in the hangars or containers, and it’s not my job to know”.

Hassan Diab, in his resignation speech on Monday, blamed the political elite and his predecessors for hiding the problem for seven years.

The obvious question is why nothing at any point was practically done.

Many have even questioned the little action that was taken: the letters written by the port officials.

One document shown to The Independent – dated June 2014 before the shipment was even unloaded – apparently shows an Urgent Matters Court judge telling port officials that his court did not have the jurisdiction to authorise the sale of the ship or its contents.
Beirut protesters stormed government buildings (EPA)

Investigative journalist Riad Kobeissi says this proves that all the subsequent letters were completely pointless, since the court could not authorise what the customs officials were ultimately asking: to resell or reimport the stockpile of ammonium nitrate.

“Why keep writing the same letter over and over again? Why didn’t they go immediately to the security forces or higher up and press for action all those years ago?” he asks.

The Independent spoke to port officials but they declined to speak on this. The prime minister’s office did not reply to a request for comment.

The security forces manning the rescue effort directed The Independent to the confidential investigation team that is not speaking to the media. The merry-go-round continues.

And while the authorities continue to finger-point and deflect blame, more bodies are unearthed – many of them the first responders.

“I am numb, a lost ship, I have been unable to cry,” says a fellow firefighter describing how he lost 10 of his best friends by that hangar on Tuesday. A team he calls his family.

“They are national heroes and were sent to their certain deaths. We have lost everything. We will make them pay.”

How an investigation into Beirut's port explosion is rattling Lebanon's elite, stirring memories of civil war


Analysis by Tamara Qiblawi, CNN

Updated  Sat October 16, 2021

Lebanon in crisis after worst violence in years 

(CNN)For many in Lebanon, Thursday's scenes from central Beirut brought a sense of deja vu.
Snipers shot people from rooftops. Masked gunmen fired back with rocket-propelled grenades and B7 rockets. Terrified schoolchildren took cover in corridors. And to top it all off, the violence was all playing out along the capital's former "Green Line," a major battle front that divided Beirut's Christian east from the predominantly Muslim west during the 15-year civil war that ended in 1990.

It was enough to send shivers down the spine of a people still reeling from collective traumas both fresh -- such as last summer's Beirut port blast -- and old. The wounds of the civil war continue to fester, and to watch smoke billowing from buildings covered in pockmarks from battles long past was almost too much for ordinary people to bear.

Yet for all the harrowingly familiar optics of Thursday's fighting, the political environment is new. The violence did not pit Muslim against Christian. Nor are the motivations sectarian. Instead, the violence has emerged from a fault-line that is divorced from those terrible realities.

Men help evacuate an elderly woman after gunfire erupted, in Beirut, Lebanon October 14, 2021.

The probe into the port explosion that killed more than 200 people is at the heart of Thursday's tumult. The investigation -- the biggest ever legal challenge to Lebanon's ruling elite, who are also a holdover from the civil war -- is widely seen as a potential milestone, a tool through which the country can begin to shed its blood-drenched past.

Neither the masked gunmen who emerged from a Hezbollah-organized protest against the port probe, nor the unknown snipers who appeared to be posturing as defenders of the investigation, have a vested interest in Lebanon moving forward or finding answers from the devastation of August 2020. Hezbollah and its ally Amal have accused the Christian right-wing party and former militia, the Lebanese Forces (LF), of being behind the sniping -- an allegation the LF has rejected.

Thursday's fighters appear keen to keep the tiny Mediterranean country stuck in the past, just when the population has overwhelmingly voiced support for a better future. The judge leading the investigation into the probe, Tarek Bitar, has emerged as a champion of those people. Hezbollah, on the other hand, has positioned itself as Bitar's most vociferous opponent.

People of all religious stripes were casualties of the August 2020 explosion. Across Lebanon's religious spectrum, people want justice. In that same vein, Hezbollah — which has not been prosecuted in the probe so far — has led a political offensive on behalf of a multi-religious elite.

Bitar has sought to question top officials across the board, and has recently issued arrest warrants against three former ministers — a Sunni Muslim, a Shia Muslim and a Maronite Christian.

The divisions therefore do not play out along Lebanon's age-old confessional lines. Instead some say observers ought to be looking at the implications of the probe itself. The investigation into the Beirut blast has rattled the political elite in a way that the blast itself, one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history, could not.


Photos: Gunfire erupts during protest in Beirut
A man runs for cover as gunfire breaks out at a protest in Beirut, Lebanon, on Thursday, October 14.

The ruling class appears to be shaking in its boots, after having unsuccessfully petitioned to remove Bitar from his position. This is the same elite that survived a civil war, thanks to an amnesty law that marked the end of the conflict, and was largely unfazed by the October 2019 nationwide popular uprising and the devastating economic catastrophe that followed.

The ramifications of the probe could extend beyond Lebanon and to the Arab world at large. This is a region well-known for brazenly undermining its judiciary, even as the appetite for accountability among an increasingly frustrated Arab youth continues to grow.

If, against all odds, Bitar can see his investigation through, then he could be setting a precedent for the entire region. Arab leaders should take note.

Beirut explosion: Judge suspends blast probe amid political pressure
Two ministers charged in explosion investigation have requested that Judge Fadi Sawwan be removed from proceedings

Helicopter battles fire at scene of explosion at port of Lebanon's capital Beirut on 4 August (AFP/File photo)

By MEE and agencies
Published date: 17 December 2020 

The judge overseeing an investigation into the massive explosion that rocked Beirut in August has suspended the probe after two ministers he charged with negligence requested that he be removed, according to judicial sources.

Beirut explosion: Lebanon's investigation on edge following political backlash

Read More »

Judge Fadi Sawwan on 10 December issued charges against former caretaker prime minister Hassan Diab and high-ranking former ministers Ali Hassan Khalil, Ghazi Zaiter and Youssef Fenianos over the 4 August blast.

The four were charged with "negligence and causing death to hundreds and injuries to thousands more" in one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history.

Lebanon's top Cassation Court is now expected to rule on their request for Sawwan to be removed from his post, AFP reported.

"Until then, all investigation proceedings are suspended," a senior court judicial official told the news agency on condition of anonymity.

'This is a security coup'

Earlier this week, a source close to Judge Sawwan told Middle East Eye that the investigation into the blast has been the target of a scathing "political campaign".

Lebanon's politicians have rallied around the argument that any indictment of a minister should be submitted to a vote in parliament.

The four indicted ministers were the first politicians to be charged since the beginning of the investigation, which opened on 14 August. Other officials, including the country’s justice minister and some predecessors, were interrogated, but as witnesses rather than as defendants. 

Beirut explosion: Judge charges PM, ex-ministers over August port blast

Read More »

Diab, who resigned in the wake of the explosion, already testified before Sawwan in September.

Karim Nammour, a lawyer and board member at rights group Legal Agenda, warned last week that the independence of the legal probe was at risk.

"The judiciary is being directly targeted," he told MEE at the time, adding that Lebanon has become far more militarised in recent months. "When you are discrediting the role of the judiciary … this is a security coup in every sense of the word."

Nammour noted that the judiciary has been "discredited publicly", especially as judges have begun to defy political orders. Last month, Mohammed Fahmi, the caretaker interior minister, claimed that "95 percent of judges are corrupt".

The explosion that rocked the capital this summer, killing about 200 people and wounding thousands, was caused by almost 3,000 tonnes of explosive ammonium nitrate left unattended at the port for more than half a decade.

The fact that little light has been shed on the circumstances that led to Lebanon's worst peacetime disaster four months after the blast has caused outrage.

It is also fuelling mistrust among international donors whose support is needed if Lebanon is to stand a chance of surviving its worst-ever economic crisis.