Interpol issues wanted notices over Lebanon’s massive port blast

Interpol has issued a wanted notice for two Russians and a Portuguese man over explosive material that had been shipped to Beirut and stored at the city’s port for six years until it exploded in August, the state-run National News Agency reports.

The August 4 explosion killed 200 people, injured thousands and caused wide destruction in Beirut.

NNA says the Interpol-issued Red Notices were for the owner and captain of the Rhosus, the ship that carried the 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate to Lebanon in 2013, as well as a Portuguese nitrate trader who visited the port’s warehouse in Beirut in 2014 where the material was stored.

The notice is a non-binding request to law enforcement agencies worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a fugitive. It is not an arrest warrant and does not require authorities to arrest a wanted suspect.

Lebanon’s state prosecutor, Ghassan Khoury, had asked Interpol to issue the notices, NNA says. The agency does not give the names of the three but local media posted the notices identifying them as the vessel’s former captain Boris Prokoshev and Igor Grechushkin, a Russian businessman residing in Cyprus who had bought the cargo ship in 2012. The Portuguese man was identified as Jorge Manuel Mirra Neto Moreira.

The ammonium nitrate, a highly explosive material used in fertilizers, was not even supposed to be in Lebanon. When the Rhosus set sail from the Georgian Black Sea port of Batumi, it was bound for the Mozambican port of Beira.

Lebanese and Chilean rescuers search in the rubble of a collapsed building after getting signals there may be a survivor, early Friday, Sept. 4, 2020, in Beirut, Lebanon. A pulsing signal was detected Thursday from under the rubble of a Beirut building that collapsed during the horrific port explosion in the Lebanese capital last month, raising hopes there may be a survivor still buried there. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

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