Overview

• Judge Bitar has assembled a 1,200-page indictment against senior officials that is on hold pending a fourth French technical report.
• Families of blast victims have flooded Beirut’s streets in mass protests to demand accountability for years of political obstruction.
• Victims’ relatives have filed lawsuits in the United States and the United Kingdom against shippers and companies linked to the ammonium nitrate cargo.
• In the absence of a government-led reconstruction plan, private donors, diaspora remittances and NGOs have driven rebuilding in devastated Beirut districts.
• Lebanon’s dire economic crisis and last year’s Israel–Hezbollah war further delayed proceedings despite promises by new reform-minded leaders to prioritize the port case.