The High Judicial Council has asked the Judicial Inspection Board to take the required action regarding Mount Lebanon Public Prosecutor Judge Ghada Aoun over her recent actions in the Mecattaf case.
Following a meeting held on Tuesday to question her, the Council affirmed that Judge Aoun “must adhere to the decision of the State Prosecutor,” announcing that she would be referred to the Inspection Board.
Commenting on the events that unfolded last weekend, the Council said that what happened was “not between those who want to combat corruption and penalize corrupts and those who don’t want that or are preventing it.”
The Council added that the incident “was not a conflict between the State Prosecutor and the Mount Lebanon Public Prosecutor, and, certainly, it is not a political conflict between two movements as some are depicting it, and it is not recent nor is it the result of a file.”
What actually happened, the Council explained, was that “the High Judicial Council took a decision based on the role assigned to it by the laws to ensure the proper functioning of the judiciary and its dignity and independence.”
The Council asked the Inspection Board to take the appropriate measures regarding Judge Aoun‘s “breach of the obligation of reticence, her failure to honor her repeated pledges before the Council, her refrainment from appearing before the public prosecution, and her stances and behavior after the State Prosecutor issued a decision on 15/4/2021, redistributing tasks at the Mount Lebanon prosecution.”
“The course of any investigation in any judicial file will be followed up to its end by the competent judiciary, whoever the judge following it is, regardless of any considerations outside the judicial framework,” the Council noted.
The High Judicial Council meeting comes 4 days after Judge Aoun first raided the headquarters of the Mecattaf company in Awkar, despite having been dismissed from that case and other financial cases by a judicial decision by State Prosecutor Judge Ghassan Oueidat.
During her two raids of the company’s offices, Aoun committed 17 violations, according to judicial sources.
