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The Lebanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement Saturday afternoon saying that they are dealing with Lebanon’s Ambassador to France, Ramy Adwan, in a responsible and cautious manner that would preserve the reputation of Lebanon and its diplomatic representation all over the world in general and in France in particular. Adwan is facing two rape, verbal, and physical abuse charges in Paris filed against him by two ex-embassy employees.
A decision has been made to proceed with sending an investigative committee to the Lebanese embassy in Paris. The committee is headed by the ministry’s secretary general and accompanied by the inspection director.
The committee will interrogate the ambassador and listen to statements from diplomats and embassy employees. After that, the committee is set to meet with French officials to ask them for further clarifications about the credibility of the news reported on various media outlets.
After several attempts to contact the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a source who preferred to remain anonymous told This Is Beirut that the ministry is keeping all communications on this matter silent for the time being.
A diplomatic source confirmed that the French Foreign Ministry formally requested that its Lebanese counterpart revoke Adwan’s diplomatic status in order to facilitate legal procedures.
However, a source in Lebanon’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs told LBCI that Lebanon was not officially informed by the French side regarding this issue.
In terms of the legal procedures, a lawyer who requested anonymity, told This is Beirut that “France cannot prosecute Adwan, mainly because of his diplomatic immunity. However, the Lebanese Republic should summon him back and revoke his immunity, therefore allowing the general prosecution to take legal action.”
According to our legal source, if the Lebanese government decides to take legal measures against Adwan, there are two ways to go about this action. The first option would entail the Lebanese government revoking the ambassador’s diplomatic status and trying him in a criminal court. The other option would be for the Minister of Foreign Affairs to appoint another official employee from the ministry of the same position and status as Adwan, in this case another ambassador, and charge him or her with conducting a fact-finding mission to further investigate the case and, depending on the outcome, impose suitable disciplinary measures.
The first option requires the approval of the Minister of Foreign Affairs; the second one doesn’t.
However, it is within the French government’s purview to consider Adwan a “persona non grata,” an unwanted person, and expel him from the country, he added.
In the details of the accusations that Adwan is facing, the first plaintiff, a 31-year-old woman, filed a complaint in June 2022 stating that she was raped in May 2020 in a private apartment belonging to the Lebanese ambassador to France. She elaborated, saying that she had rejected sexual intercourse with Adwan and screamed and cried, noting that she was also emotionally and physically abused on a daily basis. The first plaintiff admitted she was in a relationship with the ambassador.
The second plaintiff, a 28-year-old woman, developed an intimate relationship with Adwan right after the start of her internship at the embassy in 2018. She filed a complaint in February 2023, stating that she was subjected to several acts of abuse, mainly for her refusal to perform sexual acts at the request of Adwan. She also confirmed that Adwan tried to run her over with his car due to an altercation after a convention they were attending last September in Caen, west of France, and that he tried to suffocate her in her own residence in December 2022.
From his end, Adwan denies all the accusations, stating, however, that the nature of his relationships with both plaintiffs was often loud and involved fights and conflicts.
Adwan was appointed to his diplomatic post in 2017. Prior to that, he was the office manager of Free Patriotic Movement head MP Gibran Bassil.
What remains to be seen is the Lebanese side’s move toward trying to preserve healthy diplomatic ties with France and, by doing so, preventing a diplomatic precedent from occurring.
Never in the history of diplomacy has a Lebanese ambassador been expelled from his host country.
The diplomatic ties between countries are governed by the Vienna Convention, signed on April 18, 1961.
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