Judge Tarek Bitar questioned a new respondent in the investigation into the bombing of the port of Beirut, according to a dispatch from the Lebanese official agency published Friday, 13 November 2026. He was a Chief Warrant Officer of the Army, identified by his first name and first name, Roudy F., who had been instructed by the military institution to inspect hangar number 12 before the explosion of 4 August 2020.
The interrogation took place in the presence of Mohammad Saab, General Counsel at the Court of Cassation, as well as lawyers representing the civil parties. The dispatch does not report the member’s answers or a decision on possible detention. Nor does it specify the time of the hearing.
An inspection whose circumstances have yet to be established
The function assigned to Roudy F. places this hearing in the section of the instruction on pre-disaster interventions in Hangar 12. It was in this warehouse that the ammonium nitrate involved in the explosion was stored.
The information made public does not, however, give the date of such inspection, the content of the mission entrusted to the member, its findings or the addressees of any report. They therefore do not allow us to determine what he would personally have known about stored materials, or the measures he would have proposed or taken. His status as a respondent is not a conviction.
After the hearing of four officers on 4 November
This new stage comes after the interrogation on 4 November of the former Chief of Staff of the Walid Salman Army and retired generals George Moussa, Mounir Abu Zeid and Manuel Kirjian. According to the information then reported by the official agency, these hearings and defendants followed a request from Mohammad Saab concerning their alleged knowledge of the presence of ammonium nitrate.
These suspicions are subject to investigation and do not constitute a definitive judicial finding. Nor is there any evidence available to present the hearing of Roudy F. as a result of the confession or statements of these four officers.
An instruction restarted after a long interruption
The investigation resumed in early February 2025 after two years of blocking. In March of the same year, the interim prosecutor general Jamal Hajjar had lifted the ban on the security services and the prosecution service from cooperating with Judge Bitar, again allowing the execution of summonses and warrants.
The hearing announced this November 13 marks a new procedural step in a case still under investigation. No content of interrogation, final indictment or new judgment is made public in the information consulted on this hearing.
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