The alert messages are followed for months on the danger posed by the storage of ammonium nitrate at the port. In vain. The explosion has left at least 171 dead.
Throughout the Republic to Lebanon was aware. For months until the eve of the tragic explosion, the messages to alert on the dangers posed by the storage of a huge quantity of ammonium nitrate at the port of Beirut succeeded. But the authorities have done nothing, and no one wants to be. The case puts a new light on the failures and burdens of an administration that was ossified and beset by corruption.
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On August 3, a day before the tragedy in which more than 171 people dead and devastated Beirut, the minister of public Works Michel Najjar receives a letter from the superior Council of defence highlighting the danger represented by the presence of a huge stock of ammonium nitrate at the port. “I have been made aware 24 hours prior to the explosion, when I received the letter from the Board”, said Michel Najjar, whose government resigned on Monday in the face of the anger of the street.
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The letter, dated July 24, is received ten days later. For several days, the official administrations have closed in the framework of the restrictions related to the new coronavirus, and due to the celebration of the Adha. Michel Najjar then asks his advisor to contact the chair of the board of directors of the port, Hassan Koraytem, now in custody, for him to claim all of the documents related to the case. The latter runs.
maintenance work to the origin of the explosion ?
And the direction of the port finally decides to patch up a breach in the warehouse, as requested by a directive sent three months ago by State Security. In this same warehouse number 12, there was also “gun powder, fireworks and buckets of paint”, highly flammable, according to a security source. According to this source, the maintenance work carried out on 4 August and have probably caused a fire, which caused the gigantic explosion that blew away whole neighbourhoods in Beirut and injured more than 6,500 people.
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Why is 2750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate – a substance used in the composition of some fertilizer but also explosives – were stored at the port for six years, in the heart of Beirut? And in addition to that “no precautionary measures” of the confession even of the resigning Prime minister Hassan Diab? The cargo had been captured on a ship that made a stopover in Beirut in November 2013, and kept in a warehouse dedicated to the goods confiscated. This is not until January 2020 as an important security organization of the country, the Security of the State, began its investigation.
In its internal report concluded a few weeks later, she points out that “of the hazardous materials used in the manufacture of explosives” found in the warehouse, and that a “material liquid of the type nitroglycerin highly flammable ooze out” of the hangar. It also quotes an expert in chemistry, which was rendered on site and according to which “these materials, if they catch fire, will cause a huge fire, the consequences of which could almost completely destroy the port”. But for some reason, this report will remain in the drawer for several months.
internal Report
This is only the end of may that the report is sent to the prosecutor, who gives the order to keep the hangar and fill the breach. The same report is just after sent to the management port. Since the explosion, politicians, judicial and security is to reject the responsibility. On 20 July, the president Michel Aoun and Hassan Diab in turn receive the report of the Security of the State.
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last Friday, Michel Aoun has confirmed receipt saying you have sent it to the superior Council of defence, which is addressed to the minister of public Works. “I’m not responsible, I do not have the prerogative to deal directly with the port, there is a hierarchy that needs to know their duties,” said Aoun. Heavy weight of the political lebanese movement Hezbollah, an ally of Michel Aoun, is accused of having his entries in the port, it formally denies.
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After the explosion, the director general of customs Badri Daher, also arrested, has left leak to exculpate himself the text of a letter he had sent in 2017 to a judge in chambers. He renewed his request for re-export or sell the dangerous cargo that no one wanted. And even in 2014, the general Security, another security apparatus, warned against the danger in a letter to the president, the head of the government and the ministers of the Interior and of public Works, according to a justice source.
