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A Tenacious Judge Resumes the 2020 Beirut Port Blast Investigation

Beirut blast
Port of Beirute after the blast, 2020 (Mehr News / CC BY 4.0)

Published Apr 11, 2025 1:47 PM by The Maritime Executive

 

On April 11, Lebanese Judge Tarek Bitar resumed his investigation into the 2020 explosion in Beirut Port with the subpoenaed testimony of two former senior state officials implicated in the affair, Maj Gen Abbas Ibrahim (ex-Director General of General Security) and Maj Gen Tony Saliba (ex-Director General State Security).

The explosion in the port’s quayside Warehouse 12 on August 4, 2020 killed 218, injured thousands and devastated a wide area of central Beirut. The blast was heard in Syria and 125 miles away in Cyprus.

Judge Tarik was appointed to his role in 2021. His predecessor had named a number of ministers and senior officials as suspects in the inquiry, who then had managed to remove him. The same indicted ministers and senior officials, working with a President and Prime Minister and others aligned with the Hezbollah, Amal and Free Patriotic Movement, used court cases and noncooperation to shut down Judge Tariq’s enquiry. But with a new President and Prime Minister, both dedicated to supporting the independence of state institutions, the Judge has resumed his work - notwithstanding numerous death threats and warnings of ‘chaos’ from Hezbollah-aligned senior Shi’a cleric Mufti Ahmad Kabalan. The new Prime Minister, Nawaf Salam, was (until his recent appointment) President of the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

In Lebanon’s highly divided and contested political landscape, the course of such inquiries never runs smooth. It took 11 years for the international tribunal investigating the assassination of Prime Minister Rafic Hariri in 2005 to issue its verdict – ineffectively, and from the safety of The Hague.

Multiple conspiracy theories and suggestions of Israeli involvement were circulated in the aftermath of the explosion, most designed to put investigators off the scent and to protect the guilty. The cause of the explosion is clear. 2,750 tons of explosives-grade ammonium nitrate were offloaded from the impounded MV Rhosus, which had been declared unseaworthy and detained while enroute from Georgia to Mozambique.

The high density ammonium nitrate was stored in Warehouse 12, the location where customs-confiscated goods were normally impounded. On its own, ammonium nitrate is relatively inert, and even the blasting grade found in the warehouse becomes an explosive only when it is mixed with fuel oil or other more volatile explosives. Nonetheless, ammonium nitrate on its own is a potentially volatile substance, and has caused countless deadly explosions over the last century. It is normally subject to dangerous goods safeguards.

On August 4, 2020, the ambient temperature - reinforced by storage in an unventilated warehouse - would have been at or near the annual peak for Beirut. The ammonium nitrate was being stored alongside a consignment of customs-confiscated fireworks. Apparently, a repair team was conducting welding repairs to the doors of Warehouse 12. A fire crew – Platoon 5 from the Beirut Fire Brigade – was called out to deal with a fire in the warehouse created by the welding activity, and before all perished in the subsequent two explosions, they reported they were dealing with a fire in the confiscated fireworks. There was an initial explosion in the fireworks at 1807 hours, before the catastrophic explosion occurred some 30 seconds later. The conditions and the sequence of events, plus the reporting of those at the scene before they subsequently were killed, make it absolutely clear that the initial firework fire provided sufficient shock, heat and detonating effect to ignite the ammonium nitrate - which because of the storage conditions was already unstable.

Speculation that the explosion was the secondary effect of an Israeli attack on a nearby Hezbollah arms store was an attractive hypothesis to many. Video footage from multiple cameras showed no missile tracks, only seagulls flying above the seat of the explosion. The pattern of attacks in both Lebanon and Syria in preceding years suggested that any Israeli attack would need to be accompanied by an imminent and direct threat to Israeli safety and security, which was never evident in this instance.

Whilst it became clear early on that the explosion had not been initiated by an external attack, many questions remain unanswered.

FBI analysis suggested that only 552 tons exploded on 4 August, less than a fifth of 2750 tons of ammonium nitrate originally consigned to the warehouse. ‘Shrinkage’ in dockside warehouses worldwide is common, but who might have benefitted from this 2000 ton seepage in stocks, beyond any customs officers paid to turn a blind eye? Agricultural fertilizer merchants would have been interested in using the material. But also at this time, the Syrian government was in the throes of civil war, and its capacity domestically to produce ammonium nitrate for use in the manufacture of explosives for barrel bombs fell from nearly 90,000 tons in 2004 to 16,000 tons in 2013, when demand was increasing. A cheap supply from Warehouse 12 may have been a more attractive alternative to circumventing sanctions and ramping up domestic production.

The value of the slowly degrading ammonium nitrate in Warehouse 12 may have been the reason why it stayed put, despite some Port officials demanding that the material should be moved for safety reasons. Customs officials sent six chaser letters to the courts which had ordered the seizure of the ammonium nitrate. None of these follow-ups resulted in any action. This suggested a conspiracy between those pilfering the ammonium nitrate, and officials using their positions to facilitate this, whether for political purpose or for financial gain.

Judge Tarik’s list of suspects is focused on officials who may have facilitated pilfering, rather than on the black market pilferers themselves. The dangers posed by the increasingly unstable ammonium nitrate appear to have been correctly identified by the responsible Port safety officials; neither their competence, nor that of the brave firemen from Platoon 5 from the Beirut Fire Brigade, is being pursued as a line of investigation.

The course of Judge Tarik’s inquiry still has some way to run. The fall of the Assad regime may help by freeing up some information sources in Syria. But whilst Hezbollah’s influence within the machinery of the state in Lebanon is much reduced, the militant group still has some bite in its capacity to disrupt proceedings.

Wafiq Safa (left, Mehr / CC BY 4.0), Hezbollah’s Head of Security and a prominent organizer of anti-Judge Tariq protests in 2020-21, remains an influential figure within the Port of Beirut. Thus in the rebuilding of the authority of the Lebanese state, it is morale-inspiring that the inquiry has not been offshored to the safety of the Hague. Convictions flowing from the inquiry will do much to create confidence in the government - and to give the relatives of the 218 killed some closure. Best of all, Judge Tarik remains in his post and pursuing the case.