For the fifth consecutive time, the Attorney General at the Court of Appeal, Ghada Aoun, who has been struck off the judiciary, refused to appear before the Higher Disciplinary Council on Monday. It was, in fact, she who had brought the appeal to this instance to invalidate the decision of the Judicial Disciplinary Council to dismiss her from her duties due to a series of behaviors that were, to say the least, contrary to the principles of the profession and justice and that damaged the image of the Lebanese judiciary.          

The Higher Disciplinary Council, chaired by judge Souheil Abboud, President of the Higher Judicial Council, has set the next hearing date for June 10, which judge Aoun is unlikely to attend.

To summarize, the judge is now following the same selective policy that led the Judicial Disciplinary Council to dismiss her in May 2023, particularly because she had refused to comply with a series of judicial decisions taken against her by the then Attorney General, Ghassan Oueidat.

In a dispute with judge Abboud, who criticized her highly publicized transgressions, including her repeated violations of judicial discretion and public criticism of her colleagues on her X (formerly Twitter) account, Aoun wants to push the standoff she initiated with the President of the Higher Judicial Council to the end, through appeals for “legitimate suspicion” that she has filed against him.

The dismissed judge arrived at the Palace of Justice on Monday, but only to inform the Higher Disciplinary Council that she had filed a new recusal motion against its president and that she had referred to the State Council another appeal in which she demands “the annulment of the decision of the Higher Judicial Council that rejected her request to remove judge Abboud from the case.” At the time, the Higher Judicial Council considered itself incompetent to review this appeal.

“Judge Aoun continues to trample on legal principles by refusing to appear before the Higher Disciplinary Council, even though she was the one who had appealed to invalidate the Judicial Disciplinary Council’s decision to strike her off the judiciary,” a judicial source commented to Houna Loubnan. “She is deliberately blocking all the procedures she herself had demanded,” according to the same source, who believes that Ghada Aoun “is once again trampling on all the laws that ensure the proper functioning of the judiciary.”

According to this source, “Her behavior has only one explanation: she is trying to buy time and block her trial before the Higher Disciplinary Council until her retirement in nine months.”