A delegation from the Lebanese Forces (LF) parliamentary bloc visited Mazen Shaqoura, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights regional representative, on Tuesday.
The delegation handed him a petition addressed to the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, “hailing his position on the need to form a fact-finding mission to investigate the crime of the Beirut port explosion that took place on August 4, 2020.”
The delegation, counting MPs Georges Okais and Jihad Pakradouni, and the LF Head of Foreign Relations, Richard Kouyoumjian, thanked Türk “for his support of the Lebanese people’s demands.” They asked him to speed up the process of creating this mission.
The petition has 291 signatories. They include MPs, representatives of humanitarian and human rights organizations, as well as victims or families of victims of the double explosion that left 237 dead and over 7,500 injured.
Türk had asserted, in a speech delivered at the opening ceremony of the 54th session of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on September 11, that “it was perhaps time to consider a fact-finding mission” in relation to the Beirut port explosion, an assertion that was encouraged by the joint statement under which around thirty countries, including France and Australia, had previously supported the establishment of such a mission.
