Lebanon Top Prosecutor Charges Beirut Blast Investigator

Lebanon's Prosecutor General Ghassan Oueidat told AFP on Wednesday he had charged the judge investigating a devastating 2020 Beirut port blast for "rebelling against the judiciary" and slapped him with a travel ban

Beirut, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 25th Jan, 2023 ) :Lebanon's Prosecutor General Ghassan Oueidat told AFP on Wednesday he had charged the judge investigating a devastating 2020 Beirut port blast for "rebelling against the judiciary" and slapped him with a travel ban.

Oueidat said that in order to "prevent sedition" he had "charged investigative judge Tarek Bitar and banned him from travel for rebelling against the judiciary." A judicial official said Oueidat had summoned Bitar for questioning on Thursday morning.

Oueidat also ordered the "release of all those detained over the Beirut port explosion case, without exception" and banned them from travel, according to a judicial document seen by AFP Wednesday.

One of history's biggest non-nuclear explosions, the blast destroyed much of Beirut port and surrounding areas on August 4, 2020, killing more than 215 people and injuring over 6,500.

Authorities said the mega-explosion was caused by a fire in a portside warehouse where a vast stockpile of the industrial chemical ammonium nitrate had been haphazardly stored for years.

Bitar this week resumed work on the investigation after a 13-month hiatus, charging several high-level officials, including Oueidat over the blast.

The prosecutor general in turn rejected the charges and Bitar's return to the politically charged case.