Lebanon observed the sixth anniversary Tuesday of the massive explosion that devastated the Port of Beirut on August 4, 2020.
Despite years of promises and several political turnovers, no one has ever been held accountable for the blast, which killed more than 220 people and injured thousands more.
The Beirut Blast was among the largest non-nuclear detonations in human history and its devastating impact was captured on numerous eyewitness videos, spreading shock and horror around the world.
Powerful political forces in Lebanon, prominently including the Iran-backed terrorists of Hezbollah, have used threats and sabotage to stymie investigations of the explosion for years. The first judge in charge of the investigation, Fadi Sawan, was quickly removed. The second, Tarek Bitar, survived several attempts to either sack him or frighten him away, and managed to file a complete report in March 2026 after a newly elected government lifted a judicial block on the investigation.
Prosecutors have ostensibly been “reviewing” Bitar’s report for the past five months. Lebanon’s high court, known as the Court of Cassation, could continue the “review” for months or years, if it so desired.
Lebanese Justice Minister Adel Nassar told a gathering of victims’ families on Tuesday that the “finalized results of the investigation” would be released in 60 to 90 days.
“We have to send a message – certainly to the families of the victims – that justice has to be done and we will follow this case to the end,” Nassar said.
“It is the right of the victims, and of the Lebanese people too, in the face of a crime of this magnitude, for the truth to come out and justice to be served,” he said.
According to various reports, the Lebanese government has long known that the Beirut blast was caused by a huge 2,750-tonne cache of ammonium nitrate. The nitrate arrived in Beirut on a dodgy Moldovan-flagged freighter in 2013 and sat there for seven years, despite repeated warnings to high-level Lebanese officials that it was dangerous.
Some of the deaths remembered on Tuesday were firefighters who rushed to battle a warehouse fire on August 4, 2020, without knowing that enough explosives to level a city were hidden in the warehouse. Others were bystanders, including children, who never stood a chance when the shockwave hit them.
“Until now, we haven’t gotten justice. There has been no accountability and nobody has been arrested,” Hiyam al-Bikai complained at the port gathering on Tuesday. Her son Ahmad was killed in the blast.
“This is an extremely painful anniversary. Our pain has not stopped and our wound has not healed,” she said.
“We are waiting for the indictment in order to know how our children died, who brought the nitrate, who stored it, who set off the blast,” she said. “We want them to be held to account. We want the full indictment, without any cover for anyone.”
“The issuing of the indictment by the investigating judge has become a necessity that can no longer be delayed,” Lebanese President Joseph Aoun declared in a statement on Monday.
Aoun said justice would mean “revealing the whole truth without any omission, and holding accountable” all those responsible for the explosion, “whatever their position.”
“The Lebanese judiciary is called today more than ever before to prove its independence and ability to deliver justice to the victims. The indictment is not just a legal procedure, but a right owed by the living to the martyrs and their families,” he said.
“I know the depth of the national wound that still bleeds, and I grasp the magnitude of the pain borne by the families of the martyrs and victims,” Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said.
“Let no one doubt that there is no cover for any official, whatever their position, neither in the file of the Beirut port explosion nor in any other file. Accountability will spare no one,” he promised.
Eurasia Review noted on Tuesday that 78 percent of the online discussion about the sixth anniversary of the Beirut explosion is “dominated by unresolved justice and state failure.”
The exact topics of discussion have shifted over the years, from calls for “direct justice” for the perpetrators to complaints about “state failure.”
“A justice-focused post asks why those responsible have not been prosecuted. A state-failure post treats the continued absence of prosecution as evidence that Lebanon’s institutions are incapable of holding powerful actors accountable,” the report explained.
“Users repeatedly connect the explosion to impunity, corruption and institutional incapacity. The absence of justice is no longer separate from the memory of the disaster. It has become part of that memory,” Eurasia Review said.
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