Lebanese MPs question government efforts to deliver justice after explosion
Lebanese Prime Minister Hassan Diab promised to bring the full force of the law against those responsible for Tuesday’s explosion, but MPs in the country said they had no faith in a domestic investigation.
A blame game started in Beirut barely hours after the blast, one of the most devastating incidents in Lebanon since the civil war.
Mr Diab said those responsible for causing the carnage would be held accountable.
After a meeting of the Higher Defence Council, Mr Diab said Cabinet would meet on Wednesday and a committee would be appointed to carry out an investigation within five days.
Justice Minister MarieClaude Najm said she ordered “primary investigations to reveal responsibility” for the explosion.
Former prime minister Saad Hariri’s Future Movement parliamentary group called for an international investigation.
The group said the disaster was “larger than all civil wars and Israeli wars on Lebanon”.
“There are serious suspicions surrounding the explosion, its timing, conditions and location, how it occurred and the flammable material that caused it,” the group said.
“It will not be possible to resolve doubts with ordinary security and judicial measures.”
Future Movement MP Hadi Hobeich said the bloc was in the process of setting up a parliamentary committee to investigate the incident and would ask for international assistance.
The group was not alone in casting doubt on the government’s ability to achieve justice. A senior Lebanese politician who is not represented in government also criticised authorities and other political factions.
“We are seeing an accumulation of decades of state collapse,” he said.
Hadi Abou Hassan, a member of the opposition Progressive Socialist Party, said it was impossible to hold those responsible to account under a “corrupt political system that has not produced anything except tragedies and disasters”.
“There is no trust in domestic investigation committees and the criminal, stupid authorities,” he said.
Even politicians not opposed to the Hezbollah-backed government cast doubt on its ability to deliver.
Qassem Hashem, a Baath party MP and parliamentary ally of Speaker Nabih Berri, said the government was incapable of handling the disaster.
“Sadly, the government does not know how to deal with substances that are so dangerous,” he said. “If it did not know what those hangars contained that makes what befell the homeland even worse.”