George Bezdjian remembers searching for his daughter, Jessica, after a massive explosion at Beirut’s port five years ago. He found her at St Georges Hospital where she worked as a nurse.
The hospital was in the path of the blast and was heavily damaged. He found his daughter lying on the floor as her colleagues tried to revive her. They were not able to save her. She was one of four medical staff killed there.
“I started telling God that living for 60 years is more than enough. If you’re going to take someone from the family, take me and leave her alive,” he told The Associated Press from his home in Bsalim, some 10km away from the port. He sat in a corner where he put up portraits of Jessica next to burning incense to honor her.
Illustration: Mountain People
“I begged him, but he didn’t reply to me,” he said.
The Aug. 4, 2020, blast in Beirut’s port tore through the Lebanese capital after hundreds of tonnes of ammonium nitrate detonated in a warehouse. The gigantic explosion killed at least 218 people, according to an AP count, wounded more than 6,000 others and devastated large swathes of Beirut, causing billions of dollars in damages.
It further angered the nation, already in economic free-fall after decades of corruption and financial crimes. Many family members of the victims pinned their hopes on Judge Tarek Bitar, who was tasked with investigating the explosion. The maverick judge shook the country’s ruling elite, pursuing top officials, who for years obstructed his investigation.
Hundreds gathered near the port on Monday to commemorate the blast, as they have every year since the explosion, carrying placards of lost loved ones and demanding justice. The protests have become smaller and more subdued over the years, compared with mass demonstrations that spiraled into clashes with security forces in the immediate aftermath.
Still, the gatherings stand as a testament that the people of Beirut have not forgotten.
However, five years on, no official has been convicted. The widespread rage over the explosion, and years of apparent negligence from a web of political, security and judicial officials has faded as Lebanon’s economy further crumbled and conflict rocked the country.
Bitar had aimed to release the indictment last year, but it was stalled by months of war between Israel and the Hezbollah militant group that decimated large swaths of southern and eastern Lebanon, killing some 4,000 people.
Early this year, Lebanon elected President Joseph Aoun, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and a Cabinet that came to power on reformist platforms. They vowed to complete the port probe and hold the perpetrators to account.
“There will be no settlement in the port case before there is accountability,” Salam said on Sunday.
Bitar, apparently galvanized by these developments, last month summoned a handful of senior political and security officials, as well as three judges in a new push for the case, but was unable to release an indictment over the summer.
However, the judge has been working on an additional phase of his investigation — now some 1,200 pages in length — aiming for the indictment to be out by the end of the year, according to four judicial officials and two security officials. They all spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.
Before completing his own report, Bitar is waiting to receive a fourth and final report from France, which has conducted its own investigation, as several of those killed were French citizens.
Bitar is also looking to hear the testimonies of some 15 witnesses, and is reaching out to European and Arab countries for legal cooperation, the officials said.
He hopes that some European suspects could be questioned about the shipment of ammonium nitrate and the vessel carrying it that ended up in the Beirut Port.
Despite the malaise across much of Lebanon, Kayan Tlais, brother of port supervisor Mohammad Tlais who was killed in the blast, is hopeful that the indictment would see the light of day.
“We do have judges with integrity,” he said. “The president, prime minister, and all those who came and were voted in do give us hope ... they are all the right people in the right place.”
The port and the surrounding Beirut neighborhoods appear functional again, but there are still scars. The mammoth grain silos withstood the force of the blast, but later partly collapsed in 2022 after a series of fires. Lebanese Minister of Culture Ghassan Salameh on Sunday classified them as historical monuments.
There was no centralized effort by the cash-strapped Lebanese government to rebuild the surrounding neighborhoods. An initiative by the World Bank, Europe and the UN to fund recovery projects was slow to kick off, while larger projects were contingent on reforms that never came.
Many family and business owners fixed their damaged property out of pocket or reached out to charities and grassroots initiatives.
A 2022 survey by the Beirut Urban Lab, a research center at the American University of Beirut (AUB), found that 60 to 80 percent of apartments and businesses damaged in the blast had been repaired.
“This was a reconstruction primarily driven by nonprofits and funded by diaspora streams,” said Mona Harb, a professor of urban studies and politics at AUB and cofounder of the research center.
Regardless of how much of the city is rebuilt and through what means, Aug. 4 would always be a “dark day of sadness,” Bezdjian said.
All that matters to him is the indictment and to find who the perpetrators are. He tries to stay calm, but struggles to control how he feels.
“We will do to them what every mother and father would do if someone killed their child, and if they knew who killed their son or daughter,” he said. “What do you think they would do?”
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