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Beirut, Lebanon – August 4, 2020, it was an ordinary morning for Samer Tibati, a Syrian worker from Latakia who lived in the semi-industrial Kalantina community near Beirut port.
“My daughter Bissan walked up to me and told me she loved me and asked me for money,” Tibati told Al Jazeera. “Then she bought chocolate and gave it to everyone who lives on our street.”
Later that day, devastating Beirut Port Explosion Torn the entire block and severely hurt the seven-year-old girl. He ran to her, put her in his arms, and wanted to find someone to take them to the hospital.
Tibati jumped onto the back of a motorcycle driver, who offered them a free ride. It took them several hours to find a hospital that could accommodate Bissan.
“It looked like shrapnel from a bomb pierced her body,” Tibati recalled. “The doctor said it was important, but I would ask her every day if she could get better.”
Seven days later, Bissan passed away.
The explosion killed more than 200 people, injured thousands, and razed several blocks in the Lebanese capital. Bissan was one of at least seven children killed in the disaster. The youngest is only five months old.
“I hung her portrait on the wall, and I watched her while drinking morning tea,” Tibati said. “Then I heard her voice saying’Dad, please help me’, but I can’t help her.”
One year later, Tibati is still in a painful world. Whenever he talked about his daughter, he still tried to hold back his tears. “Look how cute she is,” he said, his voice trembling, flipping through dozens of photos and videos of her on his phone. “She’s just a child.”
Photo of Samer Tibati and daughter Bissan [Kareem Chehayeb/Al Jazeera]Tibati left Syria five years before the explosion to ensure a safer life for Bisang and his two-year-old son Hassan. Instead, he faced one of the worst days of his life in Beirut. He is worried that his wife and Hassan will have a similar fate, because he is worried that similar things will happen again.
“I have lost my daughter, and I don’t want to lose my family,” he said.
As Lebanon commemorated the first anniversary of the port bombing on Wednesday, grieving families who lost their children continued to demand truth and justice in vain.
The explosion was caused by the fire of several tons of highly explosive ammonium nitrate stored in a port warehouse filled with other hazardous materials since 2014.
But rights groups and victims’ families blamed officials Obstruct the probe The bombing incident has so far failed to hold senior officials accountable or reveal the exact cause of the disaster.
So far, officials have rejected Chief Investigator Judge Tarek Bitar’s request to remove the immunity of several senior lawmakers and security chiefs so that they can be suspicious of criminal negligence and possible intentional homicide. Being questioned.
These officials include the caretaker prime minister Hassan Diab, the former public works and transportation ministers Yusuf Fignanos and Gazi Zet, the former finance minister Ali Hassan Khalil and the former interior minister Nu Haad Mahnuk, and Major General Abbas Ibrahim, head of the General Security Service.
At the same time, Lebanon No mature government Nearly a year after Diab resigned due to the explosion.
Although political leaders struggled to get rid of the accountability system and quarreled over various ministries and political positions in the government stalemate for nearly a year, families who lost their children and relatives felt sad for their deaths.
“I want everyone to know who Elias is”
“For me, life has stopped,” Mireille Curry told Al Jazeera. Her 15-year-old son Elias was in his bedroom, only a few hundred meters from the port, when the building was shaking and glass was blowing out of the windows. He died of wounds two weeks later.
“They destroyed our family,” Khoury said.
Elias’ classmates gathered in his high school, carrying his coffin to bid him farewell. They continued to pay tribute to him on social media. One post read: “Our sorrow is the price of loving such a beautiful soul.”
Elias’s family was also injured. Khoury’s lower back fracture is still recovering.
Her 21-year-old daughter Noor suffered a serious injury to her left hand, and her left eyelid still needs surgical repair, but she still completed a university degree and entered medical school.
“She did it for Elias,” Curry told Al Jazeera. “He was so proud of her that she wanted to be a doctor.”
Elias and his friend Shady recorded and released a song together less than a month before the explosion. They produced a second song, which Shady released in late August 2020.
“I have heard this song once,” Khoury said. “I missed his voice, so I started listening to this song, but then I couldn’t continue.”
Elias is regarded as a peacemaker among his friends, and his mother believes that he will devote himself to helping others.
“He will create or do something to change humanity,” she said. “Everyone likes to be with Elias because you can’t talk to him without smiling or laughing.”
“I miss Isaac every second”
Sarah Copland and her husband left Beirut and returned to their home in Melbourne, Australia, just a few weeks after the explosion took the life of their two-year-old son Isaac Oehlers.
“The word I thought of was just’confusing,'” Copeland told Al Jazeera. “I left Isaac, he was miraculously flourishing and changing every day, and suddenly he was gone.”
Moments before the explosion, Isaac was sitting on a high chair in the living room next to her and her husband Craig.
The little boy was hit by glass and died in the hospital.
Two-year-old Isaac Copeland died in the hospital [Courtesy of Sarah Copland]Isaac has been learning Arabic and French. “Everyone is very enthusiastic, especially to Isaac. Everyone loves him. He is an outgoing kid.”
Copeland’s second son, Ethan, was born in late October 2020, nearly three months after the explosion. “He is the reason why I have one foot ahead of the other,” she said. “He is my coping mechanism.”
One year later, she said that most of the shock has now turned into anger.
The family is angry that the investigation remains stagnant, and they continue to support the family who returned to Lebanon to demand justice. Copeland said the world is “advancing too fast”, and many families and human rights organizations have called for international investigations to end the deadlock.
“When you are a mother, everything will not stop,” Copeland explained. “I want to always do things for Isaac. This gives me a goal and I can continue to do things for him.”
Fight for justice
In October 2019, when mass protests swept Lebanon and demanded that their rulers give way, Paul Naggear carried his three-year-old daughter Alexandra on his shoulders and told her Showcasing the ocean of protesters in the Martyrs Square in downtown Beirut.
This is a period of hope. Lebanon has been plagued by conflicts, political crises and rampant corruption throughout its history, and it will soon get better.
But nine months later, the Beirut port exploded and destroyed their home in Gemmazer and took little Alexandra away from him.
“The past year was the hardest year of our lives,” Nagel told Al Jazeera.
“We always miss her.”
Tracy, Paul and Alexandra Nagel [Courtesy of Paul Naggear]After the explosion, Paul and his wife Tracy have been very outspoken, demanding a thorough investigation of how the explosive material entered the capital’s port and which officials were responsible for not removing it for more than five years.
“Every day, you wake up, you cry, and then you come back to reality, you have to fight for your daughter and other victims,” he said. “Since the funeral, we have not stopped.”
Families who lost their loved ones during the explosion set up several committees, mainly to promote and pressure the authorities to stop delaying the investigation.
Some groups lobbied the state agency to compensate the family and supported Judge Bitar. However, Naggear’s called for an international investigation.
“Tracy and I first focused on the consciousness of the international community, but now we are promoting international justice,” he explained. “We expect criminals to protect themselves.”
A few civil society and human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, have called for an independent investigation authorized by the United Nations, citing corruption in Lebanon’s leadership and the fact that its judiciary is not administratively or financially independent of the government.
The families of the victims cooperated in the call for justice, most recently at the house of the Minister of the Interior, Mohamad Fahmi, who refused to lift the immunity of the Chief of Security Abbas Ibrahim.
Nagel and other families held a mock funeral with a white coffin, but encountered a large group of security forces in riot gear. “We held this mock funeral to show the crime of treason that happened to us,” Nagel said.
“We wanted to avoid him (Fahmi) as much as possible, and he had to flee to a safe place like a mouse with the security forces. This is our task.”
Activism is the driving force for Paul and Tracy Nagel to keep going, but besides being saddened by the loss of Alexandra, they are also exhausted, sometimes they are just exhausted.
The family hopes that the truth will come to light and that justice will be done for all victims—but not by Lebanon’s traditional ruling party.
“They are inhumane and illegal and need to be treated like this,” Nagel said.
“As you can see, the road to justice is not easy, so we promoted the international fact-finding mission adopted by the United Nations.”
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