By Karim El Mufti
Published by L'Orient Today on August 4, 2022, link here
“Five
days!” This was the populist promise of a swift investigation, made by the
Interior Minister Mohammad Fahmi in the aftermath of the Beirut port explosion
on Aug. 4, 2020.
Two
years later, as the collapse of some of the port silos reawakens the nightmare
of that moment of horror, impunity remains the order of the day.
The
lead investigating judge on the case, Tarek Bitar, who took over the file after
the dismissal of his predecessor Judge Fadi Sawan, has been hampered by ominous
political maneuvers, which still favor the “strategy of amnesia,” aiming to
gradually lift the weight of accountability from those responsible for the
blast.
After
all, how could authorities who were never worried about war atrocities and
crimes against humanity committed during the 1975-1990 Civil War (thanks to an
unconditional self-proclaimed amnesty in 1991) now worry about what they
themselves consider to be a “series of negligent and incompetent acts,
accumulating over the years at different levels,” to quote President Michel
Aoun in his speech last year commemorating the first anniversary of the
tragedy.
For
their part, the judicial authorities also failed to assess the enormity of this
earthquake that shook the Lebanese capital.
At
first, things seemed to go in the right direction. The government decided on
Aug. 10, 2020 to refer the port blast file to the Judicial Council — a special
body dedicated to crimes undermining the country’s security — in lieu of the
military court. This was despite the council’s serious shortcomings in adhering
to fair trial principles.
It
was also ludicrous to entrust a case of such magnitude to a single
investigative judge and a handful of clerks — a decision that was not
re-assessed or questioned.
Even
requests to internationalize the investigation efforts went unheeded. The day
after the tragedy, I wrote to the Secretary-General of the United Nations to
urge him to activate an existing mechanism that has empowered people in his
post since the late 1980s to investigate allegations of chemical weapons use.
The
suspicions that this gigantic stock of ammonium nitrate, irregularly stored at
the port of Beirut since 2014, was being trafficked to Syria in the midst of
the Syrian war should have prompted him to activate the mechanism, or even to
connect the blast to the investigation mechanism, adopted by the UN Security
Council in 2015 to identify “to the greatest extent feasible individuals,
entities, groups or governments perpetrating, organizing, sponsoring or
otherwise involved in the use of chemicals, including chlorine and other toxic
products, as weapons in Syria.”
Given
the few achievements from the Lebanese justice system, entangled in its
contradictions, and the lack of cooperation from the international community,
perhaps the time has come for Lebanon to explore new tools to activate
truth-seeking processes and to truly recognize the suffering caused to the
blast’s victims and their families.
Actions
under the umbrella of transitional justice could provide a framework to respond
to the vital “right to know” of Beirut residents and the victims.
This
right is not alien to Lebanon. In 2014 the Shura Council recognized that the
families of those who disappeared during the Civil War have the right to know
the fates of their loved ones.
By
transitional justice, we mean measures taken to know the truth, acknowledge
responsibility and offer apologies and reparations for past injustices with the
aim of ensuring real reconciliation.
This
field of action goes back to the framework set by President Nelson Mandela
working to pacify South Africa after nearly 50 years of apartheid.
South
Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a conceptual innovation that
anchored alternative modalities to more conventional judicial practices, one
that acknowledges the dignity of victims, while pointing the finger at those
responsible for atrocities.
Lebanon
has always been against any mechanism remotely related to transitional justice,
but the devastation of swathes of a capital city in a few seconds could be the
founding moment for the country to end the cycle of impunity for its leaders.
To
start such a process, it is not necessary to reconstruct the entire gigantic
puzzle of the case, which could be based on the smallest part of the undisputed
facts of the tragedy, namely the first report of the fire that broke out in the
port and was filmed and shared on social media at 5:54 pm, causing one
explosion at 6:07 pm and a second explosion 35 seconds later at 6:08 pm.
During
these 14 long minutes, no political, military, security or administrative
officials — although aware of large quantities of ammonium nitrate unsafely
stored in the port — saw fit to warn the population to seek shelter.
President
Aoun confirmed that he was informed of the presence of the explosive material
on July 20, 2020. Former Prime Minister Hassan Diab said he knew on June 3. The
concerned ministers and security officials, including then-Army Chief Gen. Jean
Kahwaji were also aware of this.
In
view of the ongoing judicial paralysis, the likelihood of expecting indictments
for “manslaughter” and “non-assistance to persons in danger,” is not great.
This
is where a parallel process of transitional justice would come into play,
establishing a framework for enhancing the expectations of the victims without
having to comply with the procedural requirements of criminal courts, and
without overshadowing the judicial proceedings in progress.
No
authority necessarily has a monopoly on launching such an initiative: MPs,
journalists, activists, families of the victims — any institution or group of
institutions could mobilize and exert enough political and social pressure to
challenge the political class’ criminal negligence.
This
being said, the independent administrative authorities that have recently
emerged in Lebanon (the National Human Rights Commission and others geared
towards anti-corruption and the disappeared) have the necessary tools, notably
the prerogative to form independent fact-finding bodies, to reach such goals.
In
concrete terms, the establishment of a commission under transitional justice
would bring the officials who were aware of the presence of the ammonium
nitrate stockpile to recount — publicly and individually — their actions, moment
by moment, during the 14 minutes of the fire preceding the explosion, before
publicly apologizing for their negligence.
These
testimonies could even take the form of depositions submitted to the Judicial
Council — if it is ever allowed to resume its proceedings — and could be used
as extenuating circumstances in possible indictments, as Lebanese legislation
already allows.
Such
measures revolve above all around the concept of political and moral
wrongdoings while rejecting any direction towards amnesia for the acts
committed. They also sustain the victims’ “right to know” and quash any
possibility of an unconditional amnesty or statutes of limitations for the
offenses.
This
is not an easy feat. But the track of transitional justice offers the advantage
of broadening the field of mobilization beyond the sole judicial instance,
whose pace does not necessarily reflect the immediate expectations of a
population who fell victim, yet again, of another atrocity.
Karim
El Mufti is a visiting professor at the Saint Joseph University of Beirut and
an international expert for justice and security affairs.