...an Iranian colony situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozeen flavors of Christians. It is the home of Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers, a practice dating back to the heady human sacrifice days of Baal Moloch. In 2020 Hezbollahblew up a considerable portion of Beirut and many of its inhabitants when its ammonium nitrate faci8lity exploded. They blamed it on... somebody else. It wasn't them though. Trust them on that...’s investigation into last year’s devastating Beirut port blast issued an arrest warrant for an ex-minister who failed to appear for questioning Thursday, a judicial source said.
"Judge Tareq Bitar issued an arrest warrant in absentia for former public works and transportation minister Youssef Fenianos," the source told AFP.
Fenianos, 57, headed the ministry from 2016 to early 2020. His whereabouts are unknown, but he is thought to be in Lebanon.
The warrant came a day after more than 140 human rights
...not to be confused with
individual rights,mind you...
groups, survivors and relatives of victims called for an international probe into the country’s worst peace time disaster, as "Lebanese leaders continue to obstruct, delay, and undermine the domestic investigation".
Hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer went
kaboom!at Beirut’s port on August 4 last year, killing at least 214 people, injuring thousands, and ravaging entire neighborhoods of the capital.
It emerged later that officials had known the highly volatile substance had been left to linger unsafely at the port for years after it was unloaded in 2014.
But progress in the Lebanese investigation has been slow.
A court threw out a first judge put in charge of the investigation after he charged former prime minister Hassan Diab and former ministers with "negligence and causing death to hundreds" after all had refused to appear before him.
And officials have been working to hamper the probe led by his successor Bitar.
Parliament has refused to lift the immunity of three other former ministers who are also politicians so the judge could question them.
And the former interior minister refused to allow the head of the General Security agency to be interrogated.
Political parties across the spectrum, including powerful Shiite movement
Hezbollah, have accused Bitar of "politicizing" the probe.Bitar in August subpoenaed Lebanon’s then caretaker premier Diab for interrogation on September 20 after he too failed to show up for questioning, but he has flown to the US on holiday.
Diab’s government handed over to a new cabinet earlier this week after more than a year of horse-trading over who would next take the reins of the multi-confessional country.