Lebanese officials knew risks before last year's Beirut port blast, Human Rights Watch says. The explosion, caused by the chemicals stored unsafely at the port for years, killed more than 200 people and injured thousands.
The report by the international rights watchdog contained over 700 pages of findings and documents. Its investigation also concluded there was evidence that multipleCivilians carry a victim at the scene of the explosion in Beirut, Lebanon, in August last year.Human Rights Watch based its report on official documents it reviewed and on multiple interviews with top officials including the president, the caretaker prime minister and the head of the country's state security.
The investigation trailed events from 2014 onwards after the shipment was brought to Beirut port and tracked repeated warnings of danger to various official bodies. "Evidence strongly suggests that some government officials foresaw the death that the ammonium nitrate's presence in the port could result in and tacitly accepted the risk of the deaths occurring," the report said.to mandate an investigation into the blast and on foreign governments to impose human rights and corruption sanctions on officials.
A Lebanese investigation into the blast, led by Judge Tarek Bitar, has stalled. Politicians and senior security officials are yet to be questioned and requests to lift their immunity have been hindered., caretaker prime minister Hassan Diab, the director general of state security Tony Saliba and other former ministers wanted for questioning by judge Bitar, had failed to take action to protect the general public despite having been informed of the risks.
Reuters sought comment on the report's findings from Aoun, Diab and Saliba. The presidential palace offered no comment. There was no immediate response from Diab and Saliba.A document seen by Reuters that was sent just over two weeks before the blast showed the president and prime minister were warned about the security risk posed by the chemicals stored at the port and that they could destroy the capital.
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