Lebanon’s new Prime Minister Nawaf Salam pledged justice for the Beirut Port blast victims. Political analyst Ronnie Chatah expressed doubt that accountability will occur in his lifetime.
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00:00President Aoun, he specifically stated in his opening speech to Parliament that no one is above the law.
00:05So, does this mean that we will finally see accountability for those behind the Beirut port blast?
00:12Well, that's a big question and if I were to ask it on an individual level,
00:16without having any preview to knowledge that perhaps other actors should have and are not sharing,
00:23I don't think in my lifetime there will be any accountability for that blast.
00:28This is now nearly five years after the largest non-nuclear blast in modern history happened.
00:34And if I were to bet, a lot of the story goes down with regional war that took shape last year.
00:41And I doubt, I doubt there will be any accountability, any serious accountability
00:46for the type of weapons-grade ammonium nitrate parked in Beirut, best known for bombing Syrian cities.
00:54Or for that matter, the type of sub-state group that could best defend that regime's capabilities,
01:01which lost in battle last year.
01:03But with Hezbollah losing its grip on the country now, because in the past,
01:07when the Beirut blast happened, it was Hezbollah that was stopping the investigations, according to reports.
01:12I mean, two judges were threatened and removed.
01:15So now, I think Lebanon is entering a new era where Hezbollah's power is lessened.
01:20It's a delicate question. I'll try to navigate it the way I understand what has happened.
01:24And first, the second judge is still tasked with the investigation, Tarek Bitar.
01:29He was not fired or removed, but he was threatened.
01:32Now, that threat came from a security liaison official, himself targeted in an Israeli strike,
01:39but survived last year, Wafi Safa.
01:42That threat meant the paralysis, the complete stalling of the port blast.
01:48Now, this is nearly four years ago, three and a half, four years ago.
01:52The kind of, let's, to put it very simply, to have a functioning investigation,
02:01that actually condemns a group, or for that matter, finds individuals guilty.
02:07The last time this happened was the special tribunal for Lebanon.
02:12That tribunal, the investigation, the verdict, took the better part of 15 years.
02:18And after 15 years, there were names listed that were involved.
02:23Actually, one of those names was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Damascus last year, Salim Ayesh.
02:30The names, the Hezbollah individuals found guilty for Rafiq Hariri's assassination,
02:38and the 1,000-page report produced by the special tribunal for Lebanon.
02:43That is perhaps a form of accountability, in that Lebanese were told what happened.
02:48They were given proof by an international standard,
02:51and yet the Lebanese government, 15 years later, could not do anything about it anyway.
02:57These were determined by war, and war crippled Hezbollah, not politics.
03:02War damaged the group, not Lebanese affairs.
03:05So if I were to speculate, if I were to guess, if there's any precedent for this,
03:11you may see a watered-down investigation with certain names, maybe years from now,
03:18and maybe if Lebanon is shining in the generations to come,
03:23they may look back and say they had proof, they had some form of accountability.
03:28But that's after years and years of war, of plunder, of collapse, and a battered country.
03:34So I can't really use the word victory or accountability or justice here.
03:40I don't think that applies.
03:42And I add something.
03:44A lot has moved on, unfortunately, in the wrong direction,
03:48and a lot of what happened in the port blast also ended in war,
03:52which means Lebanese politics, for better or worse, was not part of the story.