Lebanon: Whose Fault Was the Beirut Explosion? I ARTE.tv Documentary

[Music] [Music] a year later and mother nature has returned grain silos destroyed by an explosion almost unrivaled in terms of sheer power are now home to growing wheat however beirut's port still looks like a war zone the area is under military control civilians aren't allowed to enter since there's nowhere provided by the authorities victims families meet to mourn in this wasteland next to the motorway they're putting paintings on this wall in memory of their loved ones william noon and his sister nancy lost their brother joe he was one of the ten firemen sent to the port without being warned of the danger of a potential explosion a year has gone by but their pain has stayed and their thirst for justice remains unquenched [Music] foreign foreign foreign the explosion on the 4th of august 2020 killed 214 people more than 6500 were injured [Music] a few days after the catastrophe we filmed joe noon's funeral back then the authorities promised an immediate investigation it was supposed to take five days the authorities claimed the 2750 tons of ammonium nitrate was in the port erroneously after damage to a ship at sea and the powder was lit through a welding accident independent investigators smelt a rat they found that a deadly mix of negligence corruption and weapons smuggling made the port a time bomb these two lebanese activists work for the english aid agency forensic architecture the engineers have created a 3d simulation of what they believe to be a crime scene so the silos here in terms of height were like a challenge because we had to rely on different images to understand exactly the height because if the height is wrong with the silo we would make a mistake with all the warehouses they have analyzed thousands of photos videos and files [Music] they then reconstructed the events in warehouse 12 where the dangerous material was stored they published their results online as a video the sparks that follow suggest the presence of small explosive charges such as fireworks [Music] 35 seconds later at 6 08 pm a large spherical plume appears above the center of the warehouse according to the explosives analyst the symmetrical shape of the sphere suggests that it's a single point explosion originating in one particular place within the warehouse it was the video that helped them identify the gates yeah exactly and where the fume was coming from here yeah it's giving information here about like where the like to understand which door is what where where the fumes are coming in the first part we stabilized the footage to reveal the full extent of the warehouse it shows that many windows and doors are shut according to the expert confinement creates hot spots areas of high temperature in which ammonium nitrate can get close to its combustion point but the negligence runs deeper this shows how the bags of ammonium nitrate was stacked on one another in 2000 square meters without any safety measures the fertilizer is a highly potent explosive it was stored right next to highly flammable goods like fireworks tires and even fuses workers had carried out repairs immediately before the explosion but weren't warned of the danger from an engineering perspective this is the spatial layout of a makeshift bomb on the scale of a warehouse awaiting detonation independent investigators started to do this work and if this work was not done we would have stayed at that early stage where the government completely could control the narrative when the government was still talking to the public in a way then this is a small mistake this is a welding incident governmental officials knew about it and they let it happen it's a tragedy that could have been avoided when like all these like talks about like people making uh improvised explosive devices etc they're using like objects that are around them but like in this one its scale was actually the accumulation of corruption there have been many reports warning those in charge but nothing was done [Applause] protesters were venting their anger in front of the interior minister's home [Music] [Applause] mohammed fahimi refused to lift immunity granted to the head of state security one of the most powerful people here [Applause] as usual william and nancy noon are on the front line everyone is outraged by the judiciary the head judge was removed from office after six months of political pressure the replacement is not permitted to question the lebanese government a country where power is shared by militia heads from the civil war is one of the most corrupt countries in the world after hours of tension police use tear gas to disperse the masses we've got a meeting with the justice minister to find out why the investigation is so slow marie claude najem was a regular citizen she started after the protests which shook the country two years ago she resigned after the explosion but since there's no new government yet she is still in office despite her position she confesses her powerlessness in face of corruption and cronyism um without answers the victims families can't mourn properly [Music] in this small village in the mountains jo noon's parents house is now a mausoleum portraits and shrines in joe's honor are everywhere william shared this room with joe he does the same ritual every day so that he doesn't forget joe foreign joe's parents and their generation lived through the civil war they remember the general pardon decided by the militia covering all massacres the same people in power today they fear that an impenetrable silence could cover these investigations too hello [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] nancy and william noon swore to break the silence [Music] joe's sister is going to beirut today the bar council invited the victims families to a meeting on the investigations for the first time there's a lawsuit filed by 1400 individuals dozens of lawyers agreed to work on the case pro bono melhem khalaf head of the bar council is coordinating the work [Music] [Music] in the midst of political and economic ruin the organization of this case is a mammoth task [Music] foreign foreign the lawyers meet twice a week to investigate aside from the spark and storage conditions they're interested in the root of the ammonium nitrate headed to mozambique from georgia they suspect a tactic known for smuggling weapons into ports saying a ship is damaged in order to take a detour from the planned route foreign as civil plaintiffs the lawyers don't want to name names yet much points to the syrian regime that's the thesis of an investigative journalist who works for al-jadeed one of the few private lebanese channels firas hatum studied the fake companies and offshore accounts he came across a strange company savaro limited so this is the agreement the sales agreement between rustavia azor the factory in georgia and savannah this is actually where everything started when we found this document house so from this we started based on this ferrous hertoom and his crew recreated the route of rosus the scrap ship upon which the ammonium nitrate entered the port ferras hatum's documentary disentangles the funding in a playful foreign we found that savaru had two addresses one address uh we checked this address tens of shell companies at that time were registered on the same address but one of those companies had real activity it was uh hesco engineering and construction esco is an abbreviation for haswani so this company belonged to george haswani those are the syrian businessmen this is george haswani and this is we both are sanctioned by the americans back in 2015 this guy was sanctioned for trying to bring ammonium nitrate to syria they live in russia of course those guys are close to the syrian regime back in november 2013 when the ship arrived in lebanon there was a war in syria al-assad's regime was under embargo they were dropping barrel bombs on rebel areas from planes and helicopters ammonium nitrate was required to make these bombs each one 20 to 40 kilograms of the fertilizer [Music] is one of the few to publicly denounce syria's involvement since accusing assad means accusing his lebanese allies the militia hezbollah this group has formed their own state in the southern outskirts of beirut in the middle is a center for political victims led by the german widow of a shia intellectual website and here is a bibliotheque of english on france on zurian and onton zindibusha of arabesh her husband with whom she created this collection openly criticized hezbollah he accused them of aiding ammonium nitrate smuggling lochman slim lost his life because of this he was found riddled with bullets on february the 4th 2021 exactly six months after the explosion at the port since his brutal death fear of political murder has resurfaced a practice that lokman slim documented and denounced his wife believes his last interview was his death sentence is [Music] [Music] [Music] is it's not that surprising that the authorities are yet to arrest anyone in response the united nations has appointed a special investigator for lochman's murder as with the port explosion the hope to one day convict and imprison those responsible is slim joe's family have built a chapel in his memory in their garden [Music] lebanon's past is shaped by murders crimes and massacres all unpunished and forgotten joe noon's family and the other victims families hope that history won't repeat itself this time [Music] you

Channel: ARTE.tv Documentary

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Keywords: ARTE, TV, arte.tv, arte.tv documentary, full documentary, free documentary, documentaries, documentary, arte english, lebanon, lebanon blast, beirut, beirut explosion reaction, Lebanon: Whose Fault Was the Beirut Explosion?, lebanon explosion, what caused beirut explosion, what caused beirut blast, beirut blast, beirut explosion, beirut port, lebanon news, documentary 2021, beirut news, explosion beirut, beirut lebanon, what happened in beirut, arte documentary, lebanon crisis

Id: MG-I5CXjDKA

Length: 24min 43sec (1483 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 09 2021