France surprises Lebanon with a 40-year-old case

Lebanon has received a new correspondence from the French judiciary, which in form bears a legal request, and entails a sensitive political message in content, as it requests the Lebanese judiciary to interrogate two people with whom France had “suspicions of their involvement in the bombing of the headquarters of the French Parachute Battalion near Beirut International Airport with a truck bomb.” , which took place on October 23, 1983, and resulted in the killing of 54 soldiers from the battalion. The letter requests the Lebanese judiciary to provide assistance in the framework of the investigation that the French judiciary is conducting in this suicide bombing. It requests the interrogation of two people, Youssef Khalil and Sana Khalil, whom France accuses of being involved in the bombing.

The Lebanese side was surprised by the request and its timing, and it was decided to wait to respond to it, especially since it deals with a crime that has passed for forty years and has fallen with the passage of time. An informed source confirmed to Asharq Al-Awsat that the authorization “has not yet been registered in the records of the Public Prosecution Office at the Court of Cassation, and it has not even been translated into Arabic, pending what the Public Prosecutor at Court of Cassation, Judge Ghassan Oweidat, decides on it.” The source linked this request to “the French attack on the Lebanese judicial files, starting with the French involvement in the investigation of the financial files, and passing through the Beirut port explosion case, and the prosecutions against the former CEO of Nissan-Renault Carlos Ghosn and other cases in which France sent judges to Lebanon.” To conduct investigations, in coordination with the Lebanese judiciary. He pointed out that the French delegation “needs clarifications, especially since the two persons concerned in it are completely unknown, and it is not known if they are Lebanese or hold another nationality.”
France opens the file of the bombing of its battalion in Beirut 40 years ago