At least seven people were killed and dozens injured in the worst violence in Lebanon’s capital since 2008
FOR MANY Lebanese, the scenes in Beirut on October 14th harked back to their country’s darkest days. Gunmen crouched behind cars and fired wildly at apartment blocks or rushed out from cover to launch rocket-propelled grenades. Frantic parents searched for safe routes to collect children from school. Residents cowered in hallways and bathrooms. The guns fell silent after a few hours, but the streets were left carpeted with broken glass, the buildings pockmarked with bullet holes.
It would be more accurate to call this a protest against the investigation itself: a rally for impunity, of which Lebanon has a long history. An amnesty law passed in 1991 meant that almost no one was held accountable for atrocities during the 15-year civil war, which ended in 1990. Since then politicians, security officials and intellectuals have been assassinated, with few consequences for their killers.
They have already removed one judge. Mr Bitar’s predecessor was dismissed in February, in part because his own house was damaged in the blast. This supposedly made him too biased to oversee the work—an absurd standard that would disqualify about one in seven Beirutis .
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