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00:10Beirut, Lebanon, August the 4th, 2020. It is a sweltering day in this ancient
00:17Mediterranean city of 2.2 million. The nation is suffering its worst crisis
00:24since the end of the prolonged civil war that ran from 1975 to 1990.
00:32Without economic reforms by the new government, the Lebanese pound is collapsing
00:37and perishables are disappearing from store shelves as the Covid pandemic spreads across the country.
00:46As the day comes to an end, a fire breaks out in a warehouse in the harbour.
00:57But we literally saw the first explosion in our axis. And I saw the smoke moving very fast towards us.
01:08And I knew it was ushering something, you know, more, something worse.
01:12I have lived through the war in Lebanon and this was a different sound. So my first reaction was
01:18to jump and try to hide. But I didn't have time to reach a place where I could be safe.
01:25That the second blast exploded and that was when all of the glass fell on us like,
01:33I don't know, like bullets of glass.
01:35Yeah, well, the funny part is that, so I wasn't wearing any glass because I usually don't.
01:41But so this wound on this side was like this. So it reached here and was pretty deep.
01:48And it got the eye. The eye was really all out, apparently, from what I understood after they had to
01:53kind of sew it back in.
02:01The same people who caused the civil war are the same people who caused this explosion.
02:11They are still the same. It's the same bloody names. The same.
02:15I mean, I can tell you names from 1975, 1982, 1985, 1988, 1989. They are the people responsible for the
02:25blast.
02:27We don't like giving up. Why? To whom?
02:34The explosion of the 4th of August 2020 is so massive that it can be heard in Cyprus
02:41and is registered in the United States as an earthquake.
02:45The stricken city is shell-shocked and stunned,
02:49with eventually over 200 dead and thousands more wounded or homeless.
03:11It is the 4th of August 2020.
03:16Beirut, the capital city of Lebanon, is picking up pace after the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
03:29Residents and businesses of the area around the port hear the sound of fire and the first explosion.
03:48We literally saw the first explosion in our axis and I saw the smoke moving very fast towards us.
03:59And I knew it was ushering something, you know, more, something worse.
04:03So I was standing a bit shy of him and I grabbed him by the shirt and I said we
04:09have to go inside.
04:10And I turned around thinking that he was following and I had just had the time to cross the threshold
04:16into the TV room.
04:27I went down to the port because it relaxes me to see the sea.
04:33And I see this huge smoke over the port and I asked myself, what's this?
04:39Let's go home, my dear.
04:41I go home and on the way, it must have been a few minutes to six, I reach the house
04:46of Linda Sursok and I hear planes and I think, that's odd.
04:50And I open my car's window and I hear this terrible noise and my car shook in every direction.
04:57Then it stopped and all my airbags opened.
05:07Very, very quickly after that second explosion, there was this wall of smoke coming my way with such speed that
05:16even though I was planning to get in,
05:18it was just impossible for me to make it on time.
05:21So I remember kind of, you know, I must have said something like, oh shit, you know, it's like turning
05:26around and starting to move towards the door to get in, but then I was like just propelled.
05:38Beirut has just been hit by the biggest man-made explosion over a major city since Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
05:48How could this have happened?
05:52Lebanon is a vibrant Mediterranean country known for its joie de vivre.
05:57Though it suffered through civil war, Israeli occupation, Syrian tutelage and political assassinations,
06:04it has remained a relative oasis of peace and progress in the troubled Middle East.
06:16A year before the deadly blast, however, a liquidity crisis and a sovereign debt default plunged the nation into economic
06:24collapse that made tens of thousands destitute.
06:28In a country already hard hit by an influx of millions of Syrian refugees, protests erupted and the government fell.
06:44Maya Shams Ibrahimsha is the founder of Beit El Barakat, a non-governmental organization helping those in economic trouble.
06:54Many schools have been destroyed. Many parents have lost their jobs. We have a very serious economic recession.
07:01We have an enormous Ponzi scheme, unfortunately, that was done at the heart of the central bank,
07:06which means the Lebanese population today lost their foreign currency.
07:11Salaries are still paid at 1,500 Lebanese pounds to the dollar, whereas the black market,
07:18it's 9,000 Lebanese pounds to the dollar. So you can imagine that today's salaries
07:24can no longer cover your daily needs in food, so you can forget about educating your children.
07:31In fact, there is a big, it's like many mafias controlling the country. It's not one, it's everywhere,
07:39and the corruption is everywhere. So it's more like a conglomerate of mafias leading the country
07:46and governing the country. And even if you want to do change, you cannot.
07:54This is the port of Beirut, the most active harbor in the whole of the eastern Mediterranean,
08:00gateway to the Middle East. In the year before the explosion, it was handling 1.2 million standard
08:08containers annually. Like many ports, it is also a hub for illegal trade and corruption activities.
08:22The fire breaks out at some time after 5.40 pm local time. And the fire brigade is called at
08:315.54.
08:33Platoon 5 of the nearest fire station makes its way to the scene.
08:40It is led by Shabel Karan and include not only his brother-in-law, but also 27-year-old paramedic
08:47Sahar Farais, who was due to be married in 2021.
08:54Gilbert Karan was Sahar's fiancé.
09:07Dr. Karan was an angel on earth, even when she wore a uniform. But she had the courage of a
09:16hundred men.
09:20Sahar completed a training course that is one of the toughest that exists. As I said before,
09:25she is more courageous than me. She is afraid of nothing. There are videos of her regiment
09:30showing them being lifted by winches. And she isn't in the slightest afraid.
09:40In these images, we see what they see in the last moments of their lives. And in this photograph,
09:47we see the team desperately attempting to enter the warehouse, already engulfed in smoke and flames.
09:59Fire Chief Michel Al-Hmour was at the fire station when he heard the sound of an explosion.
10:09On the fourth of August, we received a call from the security forces, telling us that a fire had
10:16broken out in the port. While at the same time, we received calls from citizens who were in the street,
10:22telling us there was a lot of smoke. The 7th Division that was on duty that day received the information
10:29straight away.
10:33She went on her mission. Sahar sent a video message to say goodbye. And she was sitting on the center
10:40seat of the ambulance and waving. I asked her what was going on and she gestured with her finger that
10:45she'll call me later. When she got to the port, she video called me again and showed me the warehouse
10:51that was burning.
10:52I asked her, why don't you have your mask? And she said, I've got it, darling.
11:06Seven minutes later, there is an explosion that blows out the southern part of the building.
11:19I video called her again at 6 or 7. But Sahar wasn't looking at me because she was watching the
11:25sky while
11:26holding her phone. And I asked her, is there something wrong? And I shouted, Sahar, answer me.
11:33She was looking into the phone and I said, if there's something wrong, run, run. I saw that she wasn't
11:40running fast and was shaking her head. She was scared. Five or six seconds later, there was this explosion.
11:50A secret stock of deteriorating ammonium nitrate has just blown up, devastating eastern Beirut.
12:01In the aftermath of one of the largest explosions ever to hit a capital city,
12:07life slowly comes back to the devastated streets of Beirut.
12:13The city saw destruction on a massive scale during the civil war of the 1980s that killed thousands.
12:21Peace was eventually brokered in that war between the growing Muslim population and the Christian elites.
12:32But this war zone is provoked by the explosion of a huge shipment of ammonium nitrate that came to
12:40Lebanon in a mystery ship supposedly destined for an explosives factory in distant Mozambique.
12:47A few hours after the explosion took place, news started coming that it was because
12:52the 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate were stored in the warehouse number 12 in Beirut port and everybody
13:01was interested in knowing why this ammonium nitrate shipment was kept all this time in Beirut port.
13:13The ship stopped in Beirut to pick up extra cargo to pay for its passage through the Suez Canal.
13:24The busy port of Beirut is located near the heavily populated city's political and commercial center,
13:31Jamezi.
13:34This is where the general cargo ship MV Rosas, owned by a Russian entrepreneur, docked on 21 November 2013.
13:45The story of the ship is a twisted tale of fraud and cover-up.
13:52Feras Hatoumi is an investigative journalist who tracked the shady web of operations surrounding the lethal cargo.
14:01Feras Hatoumi is an investigative journalist in Beirut.
14:02In all this story, everywhere you find two or three layers.
14:07For every person, for every entity, for every step, there is always a company behind a company,
14:13a person behind a person. So are all those circumstances happening by coincidence? I have my doubts, actually.
14:24Who owned the ship and where it was going are the subject of investigation.
14:30The ship was officially owned by Russian Igor Grykushkin, but he claims he just leased it
14:37from the original owner, Greek Cypriot shipping magnate Karambolos Manoli,
14:42who not only supplied him the ship, but also seaworthiness certificates issued in Moldavia.
14:48The Lebanese authorities saying that Igor Grykushkin is the real owner. Then we discovered that
14:55six or seven months maybe before the shipment, Igor decided to be the operator of the ship.
15:04The weird thing was why Igor's name came in, because for everyone other than the Lebanese authorities
15:10and the people who have the documents about this shipment, it was Karambolos Manoli all the time who was the
15:15owner.
15:17As Firas Hatoumi's paper trail shows, Igor Grykushkin declares bankruptcy with the ship
15:23in the port. And according to the captain, the heavy equipment has damaged the ship's cargo hatches,
15:30making it unseaworthy. The captain is nervous about the state of the ship and its dangerous cargo,
15:38but is trapped aboard the rust bucket that is stuck in Beirut, perhaps not by chance.
15:45If somebody paid the amount of almost maybe $400 or $500,000 to buy this ammonium trade shipment,
15:56is it logical that he doesn't have or he did not keep in mind that he needs some money to
16:01move
16:02through the Suez Canal and carry on to Mozambique? It's like, for example, traveling from here maybe to
16:10USA and then after doing that you remember that you don't have enough money to go from the airport
16:16by taxi to the hotel. You can't do the big part and forget about the small part. It's illogical.
16:23The deadly cargo is offloaded to warehouse 12, the one stood where this 40 meter deep crater is,
16:32right in front of the grain silos that have come to represent the massive explosion.
16:41Certain letters were sent for judges here in Lebanon telling them
16:46that from people in the port or the people who are in charge of the port, telling the judges
16:52give us approval to remove the ammonium nitrate from the ship because the ship will sink at any time,
16:58it's not sea worthy. So they got an approval from the judge. I don't know if the judge knew about
17:05the danger of this material or no. The letter was written in a way to make him believe that there's
17:11a real danger if the ammonium nitrate stayed in ship. He believed what was written for him and he approved
17:17the removal of the ammonium nitrate from the ship and it was put in the warehouse number 12.
17:25In his investigation into the case, Firas found that customs officials sent no less than five letters
17:32to the government asking for advice as to how to handle the cargo, with no reply.
17:38Is that in 2017, an expert which was asked to go and check the warehouse and check how much,
17:48how many bags are left from the ammonium nitrate, she said that what is available or useful is not more
17:58than at that time 900 tons of ammonium nitrate. How did they remove it?
18:06I personally don't have any answer but of course that could not have been done without the key people
18:13in the port and maybe outside the port knowing this. Neither the broker nor the client attempt to
18:21recover the valuable cargo. The Lebanese army refuses to take charge of it. It sits in the warehouse. A silent,
18:32deadly, ticking time bomb.
18:35Or the authorities who are responsible more than other authorities. I can tell you that it's the army
18:41in this case because this is a sensitive material. This is an explosive material and it's clear in the
18:51law, in the Lebanese law, that such a material when it comes to Lebanon for one reason or another, especially
18:57that it was not coming to stay. It was supposed to come as a transit and for one reason or
19:02another it
19:03was kept in Lebanon. The army should have taken responsibility. That of course doesn't mean that
19:07other authorities are not responsible because everybody could have done more.
19:12The state of the warehouse itself is the source of particular concern. Captain Joseph Nadav sends
19:20several reports to the highest authorities in the year preceding the blast. But ironically,
19:26after the explosion is arrested for allegedly approving storage of the explosive in the port years before
19:34he was employed there. He says those charges are false and instead of being hailed as a whistleblower,
19:41he is being made a scapegoat. Halim Nadav is his uncle.
19:56The Agency for State Security selected Captain Joseph Nadav to take over the Port Authority in 2019,
20:03with a re-bit to fight corruption.
20:07One day, around October, somebody went to tell Captain Nadav about the ammonium nitrate stock held in Warehouse 12,
20:15and this was around the end of 2019.
20:22He investigated and searched for information on the issue.
20:28Captain Nadav did not have many men in the port. He had a staff of ten soldiers and could only
20:33use one for
20:37investigations.
20:39Alongside the decaying bags of explosives are other extremely flammable materials. Boxes of fireworks,
20:48ammonium phosphate and tires.
20:56It is only a matter of time before this murderous mix blows up.
21:08He investigated the issue and sent his first report on the 6th of December 2019.
21:14That is eight months before the explosion.
21:18In it, he said that there was a stock of ammonium nitrate in Warehouse 12 that was dangerous.
21:24That it could be stolen to make explosives.
21:28And that if it caught fire, it could destroy the port of Beirut.
21:32We're talking about eight months before the explosion in the port of Beirut.
21:43The warehouse fire starts at the northern end and changes color from white to black,
21:50and then a crackling sound is followed by a first explosion.
21:58Whatever the reason for the ammonium nitrate being detonated, the second red-colored explosion
22:04shoots debris and heat into the air, sucking oxygen out of the surrounding atmosphere,
22:10and then, suddenly, releases a shock wave, just like an atom bomb.
22:21Usually, at that time of the afternoon, we are all in our rooms, preparing, God forbid,
22:27for anything that could happen during the night shift.
22:29When we were out, all the firefighters rushed to the vehicles,
22:32and I went down to make sure they were ready, that they all had their uniforms,
22:37and they were ready to go.
22:38That's when the explosion happened.
22:41That hit us all so hard that it knocked down walls,
22:44and there were pieces of metal and glass thrown into the center of the room.
22:49If the guys had been in their rooms, they would certainly have been hit by the shock wave
22:54that followed the explosion.
23:03The explosion produces the equivalent of 1.1 kilotons of TNT,
23:09the largest non-nuclear explosion of all time.
23:14It is registered as a 4.3 Richter-scale earthquake in Jordan,
23:19and is heard as far away as Cyprus.
23:31The 4th of August is a particularly hot day,
23:34and when the fire breaks out in Warehouse 12,
23:36the fire brigade are on the scene in four minutes.
23:40This is what they see.
23:44The original fire that set off the fireworks is so spectacular,
23:48it attracts many people to their windows to watch,
23:52filming the events as they unfold.
23:55As a result, the first explosion has been captured on video
23:59by dozens of onlookers on their mobile phones.
24:03Along with their panicked reactions,
24:05as the big shock wave breaks their windows, overturns cars,
24:10and destroys their homes, killing hundreds.
24:22In this satellite image from NASA, each pixel represents 30 square meters.
24:28The darker the red, the more extensive the damage.
24:33The heart of the Christian quarter is the hardest hit.
24:39Andre Fatal's car was shattered.
24:44I began walking around, stunned, looking at what was around me,
24:49and I see arriving in the opposite direction, as a straw fried, in her beautiful gown,
24:54holding up her skirt like this, running like crazy all alone, with all the debris around her.
25:01And then I saw a dead bird on the pavement, and I thought, oh, the poor bird died in the
25:06explosion.
25:07Well, I knew I was about to die. I saw the bird and took a picture of it.
25:11And then I saw the bride, and I still thought I was about to die,
25:15that a second explosion was about to happen, and I took a picture.
25:18I was about to die, and I was about to die.
25:22Cassie Shami is a media entrepreneur.
25:26That day I was in Beirut, I was at the hairdresser, and I was washing my hair,
25:32and all of a sudden I heard a huge blast. And I have lived through the war in Lebanon,
25:40and this was a different sound. So my first reaction was to jump and try to hide.
25:47But I didn't have time to reach a place where I could be safe.
25:51That the second blast exploded, and that was when all of the glass
25:57fell on us like, I don't know, like bullets of glass.
26:01I thought at that moment that it might be Israeli warplanes bombing us,
26:05because it was too strong and too loud. I have never heard something as loud.
26:10The pain was really very, very strong, but you don't know, right?
26:16It's like, it's not, you don't have time to process. I was like, on all fours,
26:22just, you know, and I could hear Dani shouting, where are you?
26:26You know, it's like, very quickly she came over, she saw that I was really hurt.
26:33And I guess she must have seen it, I don't know, because I didn't see what was happening.
26:37There was a lot of blood, you know, I was really spewing a lot of blood,
26:41and she came with a wet towel to start cleaning a little bit, but the pain was really too sharp.
26:50St. George's Hospital was in direct line of sight of the blast.
26:59These terrifying images, recorded by CCTV cameras at the St. George's Hospital,
27:05overlooking the port, explain the high number of victims. The shockwave smashes the windows
27:12and pulls down fixtures to walls and ceilings. George Cortas is a gastroenterologist and was working late.
27:22We heard the first blast around 6.07 p.m., and I thought it was an airplane, actually,
27:30that was passing by. And, you know, we have usually a lot of Israeli airplanes that pass
27:37over Lebanon. So I said, this was probably another Israeli airplane. And then the second thing I hear
27:43was the blast in my office. So I'm not sure what happened after the blast, but I think I was
27:54knocked
27:55over for sure. And I have pictures to show that, what happened. And so was my patient. He was knocked
28:01out. And next thing I know, I'm being awakened by a friend of mine who's a surgeon.
28:10And what had happened was, my patient had awakened and called for help, thank God.
28:20Miraculously, 26-year-old pediatric nurse Pamela Dzenoun saves three newborn babies from their incubators.
28:30I was sitting here with the babies. I did my rounds. I finished my rounds.
28:35And then I was talking to my mother on the phone just to tell her that my day was
28:39doing very well. And the blast happened. Okay, everything fell down on the floor.
28:43The ceilings fell down on us. So I was knocked out for a few seconds. And then I woke up,
28:48just made
28:48sure I was okay. I could move my hands and legs. And then directly, I thought of the babies.
28:53They were present in this room and in the other room. They were five babies. I was able to grab
29:00three of
29:00them. And the nurses that were with me were able to grab two of them and give them to the
29:05residents
29:05because they were severely injured. And I was able to go down the stairs to get them to safety.
29:11Fire and ambulance services have been quickly overwhelmed. A nightmare scenario is involving,
29:19in which a huge fire now rages over the port area, while panicked civilians in the streets and
29:26apartments, are calling the emergency services. He assessed me for injuries. And he saw the injuries
29:35and he said, we need to take you out of here. So I walked with them. And we walked to
29:41come to this
29:43area here, right here actually, where they actually laid me on a bed.
29:49On a bed. And my friends, three of them assisted me. And they put pressure on my wounds that were
30:00bleeding.
30:01And then three of them decided that now we cannot take care of you. We need to take you to
30:06the emergency
30:07room. So I walked with them to the emergency room. And we actually walked over all the way and turned
30:13around the hospital to go to the emergency room.
30:15I went from this hospital to two other hospitals. I wasn't able to get admitted because these
30:21hospitals were also in ruins. So I had to walk around five kilometers to reach another hospital
30:26with the three babies and put the three babies in another hospital.
30:31She cradles them close to her chest for more than five kilometers through the chaotic streets.
30:38I had a cut here from glass, a cut here, and a cut right here in the back. And I
30:45was bleeding.
30:45And I was bleeding all over from my head. And blood was all over my body. So we arrived to
30:55the emergency
30:56room with three of my friends and three doctors. And there was no emergency room. The emergency room
31:03was completely obliterated. So other angels came to my rescue. And I say,
31:12a car passed by in front of us with a doctor friend of mine and the manager of our laboratory.
31:19And they were passing by. My three friends stopped that car and told them, take Dr. Cortaz to Hotel Dieu.
31:29The streets are covered in glass and blocked by debris, making getting to hospitals almost impossible
31:37for the injured. It is chaos.
31:44No, we ended up going on foot even though, you know, I was convinced that it was probably shelling
31:50that fell in my building. So in my consciousness, I'm like, I just need to grab my keys, my car.
31:57I was wearing flip flops at the time. And I don't even know why. Don't ask me why. But I
32:01took the time
32:02to go and put sneakers on. And thank God, because I was convinced that in within 10 minutes, we would
32:08get to the emergency room with my car or his or whatever. And when we stepped downstairs and saw
32:15that, you know, there was chaos everywhere, and still we're under the shock. So you can't really
32:21comprehend or absorb the magnitude. Like I had no idea what had just happened.
32:27In the emergency room at Hotel Dieu, there were also been 500 people all over people, all over the
32:33counters, bleeding, but not enough people to forbid me from getting help because it was only 45 minutes
32:43from the blast. So she recognized me, this nurse, and she said, Dr. Cortaz, you need help. She brought a
32:53wheelchair, put me in the wheelchair and took me to the emergency room doctor, who is a colleague
32:59of mine and a friend of mine, because I knew from other friends. He saw me, took him three seconds
33:07to
33:07decide that I need operating room help now. So she wheeled me to the operating room and I get to
33:17the
33:17operating room and they start working on me.
33:19I was bleeding, but I couldn't care. I knew I was going to be okay. I made sure my kids
33:24were okay
33:25and I drove to my sister's house, which was not very far from where I was when the bomb exploded,
33:30but I was driving on glass. It was like a rug of glass, broken glass everywhere. And so the car
33:41was not
33:41moving correctly, but it was okay. I arrived there and my son had arrived just before me.
33:48And when I got there, I saw they were bringing down the cleaning lady.
33:53My son had brought her in a blanket. They were carrying her because there were no ambulances,
33:59no elevators, nothing, eight floors down. And they put her in the first car that stopped. And
34:05my sister and her went to the hospital.
34:08So we actually found help all the way. That was really the most heartwarming kind of part of that
34:16evening. So when we found out that the first hospital was inoperable, we thought of another
34:22one that is, you know, like two kilometers walk. And in my condition, obviously it wasn't easy.
34:27So we walked up to a parallel street and there was a traffic jam actually going towards where we
34:35wanted to go. And this guy on a moped, you know, like a delivery guy probably came up to us
34:43and he
34:43says, hop in. And he was, so he drove us zigzagging amongst the debris and he got us to that
34:50second hospital.
34:50They went to the first, the closest hospital, which was Rizek hospital. And I followed them
34:57with my car and I arrived there. And what I saw in the hospital was something unbelievable.
35:05You cannot forget the smell of the blood, the people on the floor, on the ground, laying on the
35:12ground bleeding. The emergency room was like turned into, I don't know, it was chaos and blood everywhere.
35:20And even dead people on the floor, wounds, horrible wounds, not small wounds.
35:27But at the same time, the staff of the hospital was very efficient.
35:33My son's friend was with me and he was bleeding. So one nurse came and she said,
35:39we're going to make you some stitches. It was like with a stapler, just first aid, emergency first aid.
35:50We started on the road to the mountains. And at a certain point, I was looking around and I get
35:56a call
35:56and they say, you know, she didn't survive. It's as though she, of all the members of the family,
36:04had concentrated on herself all the violence of the explosion. She got it all. We got nothing.
36:10She got, what can I say, she lived right in front of the port. She was literally blown away by
36:17a door
36:17and thrown against a piece of furniture. It's too horrible. Small consolation, believe it or not.
36:25She didn't suffer. Do you realize the depths we have got to, we Lebanese, to say, what luck?
36:32She died immediately. She didn't suffer. It's an aberration.
36:43The cleaning lady, she was actually the lady who took care of my father. And my father passed away
36:50nine months before the blast. And she decided to stay one year longer because she had to pay her
36:59daughter's school and school year. And she said, I would like to stay one more year with you. So she
37:06stayed between me and my sisters, each one of us. She was moving around. And unfortunately,
37:14three days later, after the blast, she was very severely injured and she passed away from the wounds
37:19she had on her head and body.
37:27The death toll rises by the minute to reach more than 200, with 6,500 people injured.
37:35The city infrastructures are devastated. The firehouse where Platoon 5 left from is also destroyed.
37:47Hospitals and police stations have to be abandoned. It is the final catastrophe for this nation in crisis.
37:57300,000 people have been left homeless.
38:06But how did the ammonium nitrate explode? What specifically caused the fire that triggered
38:14the explosion is still unclear. But the images of its early stages show smoke coming from the warehouse.
38:23Witnesses reported hearing strange sounds near the area,
38:27fueling suspicions of a possible missile or drone strike.
38:35These images show what the firefighters see.
38:40Pyrotechnics in warehouse 12.
38:44These are the last moments of their lives.
38:5130 seconds after the fireworks, the ammonium nitrate explodes.
38:58The chemical reaction that brings about such an explosion involves the rapid decomposition of
39:05the ammonium nitrate into its composite parts. Ammonium oxide with its characteristic red vapor and water.
39:14The release of energy, a shock wave, is immense.
39:19Pyrotechnics, a shock wave, is immense.
39:20Having lived through the war, we always live with the fear that something might happen.
39:27We had airplanes bombing us when I was younger, the first Israeli war in 1982.
39:35We had street wars of the civil war, we witnessed it.
39:41We had car bombs and for me the most scary thing ever was the car bombs because you don't know.
39:48You can be anywhere and then a car bomb would explode and you could die.
39:53This bomb we witnessed, the last one, was like a thousand car bombs at the same time.
40:02The drama unfolds in less than 20 minutes from the time the fire is detected to the devastating shock wave.
40:11The explosion comes totally unexpected to the whole of the population of Beirut.
40:17And yet, someone must have known of the deadly menace.
40:24Who is to blame for the 4th August 2020 explosion in the port of Beirut of a huge ammonium nitrate
40:31stock may never come to light.
40:34However, a pall of suspicion falls on the successive governments of Lebanon.
40:41In 2020, Hassan Diab, the new Prime Minister, and President Michel Aoun,
40:47received warnings from the General Directorate of State Security about the state of the explosive.
40:54And in July 2020, the Supreme Defence Council sent its report to the Public Works Minister, Michel Najard.
41:04Nothing was done.
41:07But inefficiency may not be enough to explain the disaster.
41:13In his months-long investigation, journalist Firas Hatoumi took a critical look at the original deal
41:21between the Mozambique explosives factory and the ammonium nitrate producers in Georgia.
41:27When I talked to the factory in Mozambique, their answers were not convincing for me.
41:35And they told me that we have nothing to do with this shipment.
41:39We just ordered 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate from a company called Savaro.
41:45That's all what we know.
41:47So I told them, okay, what's this company?
41:49Do you know with whom you were dealing?
41:52Who was the person you were calling?
41:54Do you have any image?
41:55They refused to give all this information.
41:58So the presence of a middle company, before knowing that it's a shell company,
42:03raised question marks in my approach to the story.
42:08Because why shall a factory, a big factory in Mozambique,
42:12deal with another factory through a middle company?
42:16The proximity of one of the world's longest-running wars,
42:20and the arms embargo imposed on the Syrian regime,
42:23may have tempted friends of Syria to remove some of the powerful explosive for use in bombs.
42:32But thus far, nothing linking the explosives to terrorist groups,
42:37or Hezbollah, has been proved in court.
42:39I tried to find all the shell companies that were in 2013 registered on the same address as Savaro.
42:48There were around 70 at that time.
42:50Yeah, all of them, they were shell companies, just like Savaro.
42:54No real activity, no people with real business activity in charge of them, just front people, front people.
43:04The only company I found sharing the same address with Savaro and with real business activity
43:10was a company called Hesco, Hesco Engineering and Construction.
43:13Hesco Engineering and Construction was owned by George Haswani at that time.
43:18George Haswani is a Syrian businessman who got sanctioned in 2014 for trying to help the Syrian regime.
43:28That's what the Americans accused him of.
43:31The ship's ownership was opaque.
43:34Owned by front men and bought by a bank tied closely to Syrian businessmen,
43:40and now subject to an FBI investigation.
43:44They were all big clients in a bank called FBME.
43:49This bank was later on sanctioned also by the Americans for money laundering.
43:54And in this bank where they have lots of accounts and where they used to move money all the time
44:05from Russia and to Britain and from Britain to Cyprus,
44:11this bank is the same bank that gave Karolombos Manoli, who seems to be the real owner of Rosos,
44:17because in the beginning they said that the owner is a guy called, a Russian guy called Igor Grishishkin,
44:22and then it seems that Igor was just the person who was the operator of the ship,
44:31but Karolombos was the real owner, Karolombos Manoli.
44:34So Karolombos Manoli took a mysterious loan from FBME at the end of 2011.
44:39That's almost one year or one year and a half before the shipment.
44:46These dirty dealings led to the blast that killed more than 200 people, injured 6,000,
44:54destroyed 70,000 homes and buildings, left 300,000 homeless, and sank six ships.
45:04Nearly a year after the tragedy, emissions and obstacles in the investigation are fueling concerns
45:11the truth may never be fully revealed, despite the courageous efforts of investigative journalists.
45:20We have lots of friends who have had physical trauma, friends of my children that were severely
45:28injured, two friends that passed away. You know, this bomb, it's like, if I don't know the person
45:37personally, then my son knows it, or my daughter. It's like, it was a very close circle. Each one,
45:46each Lebanese, I think, during this blast knew someone who had been either severely injured or lost their
45:52homes or passed away. It's a melting pot of emotions. It's, of course, a lot of anger because
46:02during the civil war, unfortunately, none of the politicians and the warlords were punished.
46:10Maybe just one, but on so many levels, there were so many people who needed to go to jail just
46:17for
46:17us as a people to have closure. None of them went to jail except for one. And then now when
46:25you look
46:25at this event that happened, first of all, the same people who caused the civil war are the same people
46:33who caused this explosion. They are still the same. It's the same bloody names, the same. I mean,
46:40I can tell you names from 1975, 1982, 1985, 1988, 1989. They are the people responsible for the blast
46:50of 2020. This is unbelievable. Once again, the Lebanese are rebuilding after a futile and deadly tragedy.
47:01This may be Lebanon's darkest hour, but there is hope buried beneath the rubble.
47:08Hundreds of young Lebanese have come back to Beirut or decided to remain instead of going abroad.
47:15To clean up once again and begin building a new, more promising future for a city forced to once
47:24again rise from the ashes.
47:26Within two villages.
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