The number of individuals charged in connection with the August 4th Beirut explosion has increased to 33 after State Prosecutor Ghassan Khoury filed charges against two more people on Tuesday.
The new entries to the list are senior customs official Hani Haj Shehadeh and former customs chief in Beirut Moussa Hazimeh, the National News Agency reported, without elaborating on the charges.
According to the NNA, the number of people charged in relation to the Beirut Port explosion is now 33, 25 of whom are currently under arrest.
The two new cases have been referred to Judicial Investigator Judge Faid Sawwan, who was appointed to probe the explosion in August. Judge Sawwan had questioned Haj Shehadeh and Hazimeh as witnesses earlier during the ongoing investigation.
They will both be questioned again as suspects, as per the NNA.
The pace of the mostly-secretive investigation itself has been slow, and there has yet to be a verdict nearly 4 months after the massive explosion erupted, killing over 200 people, injuring thousands of others, and causing widespread damage in Beirut.
Lebanon had refused to have an international investigation take place.
Nonetheless, foreign investigative teams, namely a French team of explosives experts and a team from the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), operated briefly in Beirut after the explosion before returning to their countries to attempt to work out its cause.
However, neither has delivered a conclusive report on the matter.
