Today, Wednesday, Lebanese media reported that former Prime Minister Hassan Diab filed a lawsuit against the Lebanese state, a day after the investigative judge, Tariq Al-Bitar, issued a warrant to bring him for questioning.
Lawyer Nizar Saghieh - of the Legal Agenda group - said that Bitar should stop prosecuting Diab as soon as he was notified of the lawsuit, adding to Reuters that Bitar can sue others in the case.
Diab was charged as part of the investigations into the explosion of the port on the fourth of last August, and Diab did not attend at least two interrogation sessions set by Al-Bitar, who almost all the senior officials he sought to interrogate refrained from appearing before him.
Along with a number of former ministers accused by al-Bitar in the case, Diab said that the judge does not have the power to prosecute him.
They filed a series of lawsuits, requesting that Bitar be removed from the investigation.
It is noteworthy that Al-Bitar had set a session for tomorrow, Thursday, to interrogate Diab, and also set two sessions for the day after tomorrow, Friday, to interrogate the former Ministers of Interior and Works, Nouhad Al-Machnouk and Ghazi Zuaiter.
Council of Ministers
In a related context, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati confirmed that he is conducting contacts and consultations to hold a cabinet session after it was suspended due to a ministerial dispute as a result of some parties' demands to dismiss Bitar.
In a statement today, Wednesday, after his meeting with Lebanese President Michel Aoun, Mikati promised that the government would resume its meetings soon.
On August 4, 2020, a massive explosion occurred in the port of Beirut, killing 217 people and wounding about 7,000 others, as well as massive material damage to residential and commercial buildings, due to the presence of about 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate, which was confiscated from a ship and stored since year 2014.