On August 4, 2020, at 6:07 in the evening, we lost the people we loved the most. Children and parents, husbands and wives, firefighters who ran towards the port while everyone else ran away. The explosion that killed at least 218 people, wounded 7,000, and left more than 150 physically disabled was no accident. It was the foreseeable result of thousands of tonnes of ammonium nitrate left to rot in the heart of our capital, with the knowledge, in writing, of the highest officials of the state.
For six years, we have been told to wait. We waited while the first investigating judge was removed for daring to summon ministers. We waited while his successor, Judge Tarek Bitar, was buried under lawsuits filed by the very men he sought to question, while the investigation stayed suspended for years, while politicians who owed us answers hid behind immunity they had written for themselves. We buried our beloved ones twice: once in the ground, and once under the paperwork of a state determined to protect itself.
Then, this March, something happened that we had almost stopped believing was possible. Lebanon’s domestic investigation was completed. The file, naming 70 officials and security officers, arrived on the desk of Public Prosecutor Ahmad Rami Al Hajj.
We were told this was a breakthrough, and it was. We welcome it. But here is what we were not told: nothing obliges the prosecutor to finish his review by any date at all. The file must come back with Al Hajj’s opinion before Judge Bitar can issue the indictment that brings the case to trial, and until then, accountability is paused.
The results of the investigation can sit on Al Hajj’s desk for a month, or a decade. In Lebanon, we know what happens to files that sit on desks: they gather dust until the world forgets, and impunity wins.
We will do everything in our power to ensure this is not how this case ends. We are not lawyers; we are families searching for the truth. But we understand something simple: an investigation that never becomes a trial is accountability denied, it is impunity by exhaustion.
Our grief is not confined to Lebanon. Nationals of Syria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Philippines, Pakistan, Palestine, the Netherlands, Canada, Germany, France, Australia, and the United States died or were terribly injured that evening. Fortunately, some governments did not look away.
French forensic experts landed in the days after the explosion, and France’s own judicial investigation shared its findings with Judge Bitar. In 2023, Australia stood before the UN Human Rights Council on behalf of 38 states to demand a “swift, independent, impartial, credible, and transparent investigation”. Diplomats from these countries and more have mourned beside us every August, with a kindness we will not forget.
And Lebanon’s judiciary is not the only one at work. In London, the High Court has already found the company that owned the ammonium nitrate liable for the deaths and the damage. In the United States, a case against the firm that chartered the ship is advancing through the courts. Criminal complaints have been filed in Germany and Belgium, and the owner of the ship itself was arrested in Bulgaria last September.
To the international community, we say: the domestic investigation you called for is complete, but this is not the end of the story. We ask that you continue to raise the question of the status of the case in every meeting with Lebanese officials, until there is a trial. Our loved ones were your citizens, your colleagues, your friends and families.
To the officials named in that file, we say: we are not going anywhere. We have counted more than 2,000 days, and we will continue counting every day.
As Antonia Mulvey, executive director of Legal Action Worldwide, which has represented victims and survivors, told us: “Completing the investigation is a milestone, but nobody has yet been held accountable. What now stands between the victims and a trial is no longer evidence, it is will. Victims have a right to proceedings without undue delay, and every month of silence erodes that right. Those responsible must answer, whatever their rank.”
Today, we appeal to the public prosecutor to submit his opinion on the Beirut port file without delay, so that the indictment can be issued and the case referred to trial. Six years have passed without anyone being indicted.
No justice will ever bring back our loved ones but we deserve the truth of what really happened on August 4, 2020.
Signed:
Mireille Khoury, mother of Elias Khoury
Cécile Roukoz, sister of Joseph Roukoz
Sarah Copland and Craig Oehlers, mother and father of Isaac Oehlers
Mariana Fodoulian, sister of Gaia Fodoulian
Laura Kfouri, sister of Carmen Khoury Sayegh
Nazih el-Adm, father of Krystel el-Adm
Lara Hojaiban, daughter of Yagoda Majkic Hojaiban
The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
