Rights group slams Lebanon for ‘flawed’ murder probes

Human Rights Watch accuses Lebanon of “flawed” assassination probes and urges donors to review millions of dollars in aid to security forces in a country where crimes often go unpunished.

“The unsolved murders and shoddy homicide investigations are a reminder of the dangerous weakness of Lebanon’s rule of law in the face of unaccountable elites and armed groups,” Aya Majzoub of Human Rights Watch says.

Lebanon is gripped by political and economic dysfunction to the point that even investigations into the 2020 Beirut port blast which killed more than 200 people and ravaged entire neighborhoods have yet to identify a single culprit.

The US-based watchdog reviewed preliminary investigations into the murders of four people since 2020, including Lokman Slim, an intellectual and outspoken critic of the Iran-backed Shiite Hezbollah movement.