Assassination of journalist Lokman Slim in Lebanon: his family calls for a commission of inquiry
From left to right: in the background in red, Monika Borgmann, wife of Lokman Slim;
in the foreground, his sister, Rasha al-Amir and his mother Salma Mirshak Slim, who presents the Lokman Slim prize to Lebanese journalist Dima Sadek, on February 3, 2023, in Beirut.
AFP - ANWAR AMRO
Text by: RFI Follow
2 mins
The family of the Lebanese intellectual called on Friday February 3 for a UN fact-finding mission to determine whether his assassination two years ago and two other murders are linked to the gigantic explosion at the port of Beirut.
Report during the commemorations of his tragic disappearance.
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With our correspondent in Beirut,
Sophie Guignon
It was two years ago, the Lebanese intellectual and journalist
Lokman Slim was found dead,
shot six times in his car in the south of the country, bastion of the very powerful Hezbollah.
The murder of this Shiite political activist and fierce opponent of the "Party of God" has still not been solved two years later.
His name is added to the long list of murders of journalists that have gone unpunished in Lebanon.
Along the highway opposite the port of Beirut, a tent has been erected in homage to Lokman Slim.
Inside, debates, as he was fond of.
On everyone's lips, the impunity surrounding his assassination.
“
We are practically always at a standstill,
deplores master Moussa Khoury, lawyer for the family of the intellectual.
The investigation is ongoing but I still have to tell you that things are stalling and that we have nothing new that could give us hope that in the short term we will identify and arrest the suspects.
»
Lokman Slim's family is calling for a United Nations investigation to determine if his murder is linked to his revelations about the Beirut port explosion.
For the journalist, Hezbollah and the Syrian regime were indeed involved in importing the ammonium nitrate that caused the explosion.
His wife, the German director Monika Borgmann, intends to fight until the end.
“
I met Lokman in June 2001. Among all the work we have done together, we have fought against this culture of impunity.
And today we must lead this fight for him
,” she says.
Together, they founded one of the largest archives in the country, to keep traces of the crimes of Lebanon's tumultuous past.
NGOs and the families of victims of the port explosion, which killed more than 215 people in August 2020, are calling for an international investigation into this tragedy, the political class trying to hinder the local investigation by all means.
The judge in charge of the investigation was even prosecuted for "
insubordination
" last week because of his determination to shed light on the explosion caused by a huge quantity of ammonium nitrate stored at the port since 2013.
Lokman Slim was assassinated two weeks after revealing that quantities of this ammonium nitrate had been used by the Syrian regime to drop barrel bombs on rebel areas at the height of the war in Syria.
Two months earlier, a retired customs officer, Mounir Abou Rjeili, and a freelance photographer, Joe Bejjani, had been murdered, and Lebanese media had suggested a possible link with the port explosion.
(With AFP)
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