Lebanon PM Hassan Diab charged with negligence in Beirut blast

The Lebanese judge investigating the massive explosion in the port of Beirut has charged the acting prime minister, Hassan Diab, and three former ministers with negligence in the August blast that killed nearly 200 people, two people briefed on the investigation said Thursday.

The charges were a significant escalation in the effort to identify those responsible for the blast by targeting political figures who many in Lebanon had feared were too powerful to hold accountable.

Since August, a specially appointed judge, Fadi Sawan, has been leading an investigation into the explosion, the largest in Lebanon’s history.

While Sawan’s work has largely been shrouded in secrecy, those arrested during the investigation were mostly low-level port, customs and security officials.

But Thursday, Sawan filed new charges of neglect and carelessness against the four men and informed their representatives that he would question them as suspects next week. This appeared to set the stage for a battle between the judiciary and the politicians over the issue of legal immunity for current and former officials.

Diab denied the allegations Thursday.

Diab did not make clear whether he would submit to the judge’s questioning next week but said he had already said “what he has to say about this file, period.”

The explosion was caused by the combustion of 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate, a compound used to make explosives, that had been stored in unsafe conditions in the port for years despite warnings sent to multiple government officials that the materials posed a grave danger to the port and its surroundings.

It was not clear why Sawan charged only those four men or whether other charges were on the way.

Government documents obtained by The New York Times and other news outlets after the blast showed that warnings about the danger posed by the ammonium nitrate had bounced around the Lebanese state for years.

It appeared that Diab, who had served as prime minister for less than seven months when he and his Cabinet resigned in August after the blast, had been charged because the documents showed that he had been warned about the chemicals weeks before the blast.

The three former ministers who were charged are a former finance minister, Ali Hassan Khalil, and two former ministers of transportation and public works, Ghazi Zaiter and Youssef Finianos, according to the two people with knowledge of the investigation.