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The first of many warnings about a deadly cargo in Beirut\u2019s port came in February 2014, about three months after its arrival. It was made by Colonel Joseph Skaf, described by his family as a diligent customs official.<\/p>\n
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Skaf, then the head of the anti-narcotics and money laundering division, informed the customs authority that the shipment of ammonium nitrate was \u201cextremely dangerous\u201d and posed a risk to the public.<\/p>\n
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In his handwritten letter, reviewed by Reuters and authenticated by a source familiar with the case, he urged that the ship, the Rhosus, be \u201cmoved away from the pier to the breakwater and if possible put under surveillance.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Reuters couldn\u2019t determine whether Skaf, who died in 2017, received a response to his letter or whether he followed up on his warning. The office of the customs director referred questions about the matter to the finance ministry. The ministry didn\u2019t respond.<\/p>\n
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Skaf\u2019s brother Elie recalls the colonel saying of the cargo, in 2014: \u201cWe will refuse to let them unload it.\u201d Skaf\u2019s son Michel says his father\u2019s determination to keep the Rhosus out of the port was typical of a man who \u201cdidn\u2019t let things pass\u201d and challenged the wrongs he saw.<\/p>\n
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Skaf\u2019s letter, dated Feb. 21, 2014, was the first of several warnings by port, customs and security officials about the ammonium nitrate on board the Rhosus. None were acted on.<\/p>\n
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Skaf moved a few months later to a new job overseeing airport customs. Shortly afterwards, in late 2014, the Rhosus\u2019 cargo was transferred to a dockside warehouse. It exploded on August 4 this year, destroying whole neighborhoods and killing nearly 200 people.<\/p>\n
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For the people of Lebanon, the wreckage of the port, and the failure to heed the warnings of Skaf and others, has a wider symbolism. Nearly three months on from the blast, they are still waiting for the results of an investigation their leaders promised would reveal the truth within days. Efforts to form a new, non-partisan government foundered on Lebanon\u2019s sectarian politics. In this chaos, international aid money, contingent on a new government stamping out corruption, has yet to flow.<\/p>\n
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Skaf\u2019s family believes his death in 2017 was murder, possibly connected to his long career as a customs officer fighting criminality and drug smuggling, or his recent entry into politics. The official medical report, produced in 2017, found Skaf died in a fall. A second report, commissioned by the family, concluded in 2018 that Skaf was attacked.<\/p>\n
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Corruption beyond imagination<\/strong> <\/p>\n The port mirrored the country at large, with jobs shared out along sectarian lines among mainly Muslim and Christian groups. It\u2019s an arrangement that has governed Lebanon over the past three decades, and is blamed by many for plunging the country into financial ruin.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n As one senior minister told Reuters: \u201cThe level of corruption in all layers of the state is beyond imagination. How much more corruption, like the port, is hidden beneath the cloaks of politicians?\u201d He said he has received threats warning him \u201cnot to dig into corruption.\u201d He didn\u2019t elaborate.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n After Lebanon\u2019s 1975-1990 civil war, a transitional committee, representing the main sectarian political groups, was formed to manage Beirut\u2019s port temporarily. The committee remains to this day.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Port chief Hassan Koraytem is widely seen as a loyalist of Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri, a Sunni Muslim, while customs boss Badri Daher\u2019s nomination was backed by Christian President Michel Aoun\u2019s party.<\/p>\n maritime professional<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The first of many warnings about a deadly cargo in Beirut\u2019s port came in February 2014, about three months after its arrival. It was made by Colonel Joseph Skaf, described by his family as a diligent customs official. Skaf, then the head of the anti-narcotics and money laundering division, informed the customs authority that the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20281,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[12773,9743,12772,2551,9756,953],"class_list":["post-20280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-maritime-news","tag-bare","tag-beirut","tag-ills","tag-laid","tag-lebanons","tag-port"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/20281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
The port, one of the busiest in the eastern Mediterranean, handling an estimated $15 billion of trade a year at its height, was rife with corruption, negligence and sectarian politics, according to nine people involved in shipping, clearance and administration. Their accounts were buttressed by import documents that one of the sources showed to Reuters.<\/p>\n