Lebanon seeks arrest of blast pair
Lebanon has requested the arrest of the foreign owner and captain of the ship which brought material which blew up at Beirut port causing devastation.
Lebanon has requested the arrest of the foreign owner and captain of the ship which brought material which blew up at Beirut port causing devastation.
The judge leading the probe into the blast asked international police organisation Interpol to detain the two men, without publicly identifying them.
Some 190 people were killed when the improperly stored ammonium nitrate cargo exploded on Aug 4.
The blast left 6000 others injured and inflicted huge amounts of damage.
The captain of the ship, the MV Rhosus, has previously been named as a Russian national, and its owner a Russian national based in Cyprus.
The MV Rhosus had docked in Beirut in 2013 after suffering technical problems while sailing from Georgia to Mozambique.
Some 2700 tonnes of ammonium nitrate were offloaded the following year and stored in unsafe conditions in a warehouse at the port, where it eventually exploded with catastrophic effect.
The ship itself, which was in poor condition, sank at the port in February 2018.
On Thursday, the Lebanese judge leading the investigation into the disaster, Fadi Sawan (pictured), “issued two absentee arrest warrants for the owner of the Rhosus… as well as the ship’s captain,” an unnamed judicial source told AFP news agency.
The judge leading the probe into the blast asked international police organisation Interpol to detain the two men, without publicly identifying them.
Some 190 people were killed when the improperly stored ammonium nitrate cargo exploded on Aug 4.
The blast left 6000 others injured and inflicted huge amounts of damage.
The captain of the ship, the MV Rhosus, has previously been named as a Russian national, and its owner a Russian national based in Cyprus.
The MV Rhosus had docked in Beirut in 2013 after suffering technical problems while sailing from Georgia to Mozambique.
Some 2700 tonnes of ammonium nitrate were offloaded the following year and stored in unsafe conditions in a warehouse at the port, where it eventually exploded with catastrophic effect.
The ship itself, which was in poor condition, sank at the port in February 2018.
On Thursday, the Lebanese judge leading the investigation into the disaster, Fadi Sawan (pictured), “issued two absentee arrest warrants for the owner of the Rhosus… as well as the ship’s captain,” an unnamed judicial source told AFP news agency.
