Beirut blast investigator charges 10 people: Judicial official

Lebanese judge Tarek Bitar resumed his investigation into the deadly 2020 Beirut port blast on Thursday, charging 10 people including seven security, customs and military personnel, a judicial official told AFP.

The indictments come after a two-year hiatus in the investigation into the explosion that killed more than 220 people, and after Lebanon’s new president, elected after a long vacancy in the post, pledged to work towards the “independence of the judiciary.”

The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, weakened after its recent war with Israel, had previously accused Bitar of bias.

The blast is thought to have been set off by a fire at a warehouse just after 6 p.m. (1600 GMT) on Aug. 4, 2020, detonating hundreds of tonnes of ammonium nitrate.

Originally bound for Mozambique aboard a Russian-leased ship, the chemicals had been at the port since 2013, when they were unloaded during an unscheduled stop.

No one claimed the shipment, tangled in a legal dispute over unpaid fees and defects.

The amount that blew up was one fifth of the 2,754 tonnes unloaded in 2013, the FBI concluded, adding to suspicions that much of the cargo had gone missing.

The blast sent a mushroom cloud over Beirut, and was felt 250 km (155 miles) away in Cyprus.

Despite the devastation, an investigation has so far brought no senior official to account.