Port blast: Judge issues arrest warrant for MP
Retaliatory lawsuit suspends probe for the second time in less than a month
The judge leading Lebanon’s probe into last year’s Beirut port explosion issued an arrest warrant yesterday for a former Cabinet minister, a show of defiance against an entrenched political class that has closed ranks against him.
Judge Tarek Bitar issued the warrant shortly before he was notified of a much-anticipated lawsuit filed by two defendants seeking to remove him from his post. The lawsuit automatically suspended the investigation, the second time in less than a month that defendants have managed to curtail it.
Bitar charged Ali Hassan Khalil, Lebanon’s former finance minister and current member of parliament, and three other former senior government officials with intentional killing and negligence that led to the deaths in the port explosion.
‘Ludicrous attempt to evade justice’
Aya Majzoub, a Human Rights Watch Lebanon researcher, said the politicians implicated in the case filed all the complaints they can think of with the intention of getting the investigation suspended. “It is a ludicrous attempt to evade justice,” she said.
They may succeeded in suspending the probe long enough to once again obtain parliamentary immunity next week, she said. Parliament is currently in recess, offering Bitar a window of opportunity to summon officials that have so far used immunity to avoid answering to him.
Lebanese lawyer Nizar Saghieh said attacks on Bitar are getting more intense and the pressure is rising to remove the probe from him. “The judge is on his own... No one is defending him,” Saghieh, who heads the rights group Legal Agenda, said.
A daring judge
The 46-year-old Bitar is known as a daring judge who has in the past issued swift verdicts, including several death sentences and lengthy punishments against drug dealers.
Bitar also issued hefty fines against two doctors convicted of malpractice in a medical mishap in which all of an infant’s limbs were amputated.