The Lebanese authorities officially requested Interpol to issue an international arrest warrant for two Russians - the owner and captain of the ship Rhosus, which in 2013 delivered to the seaport of Beirut 2 700 tons of ammonium nitrate.
According to the national agency El Watania, Lebanese judge Fadi Sawan, who is investigating the August 4 explosion in the seaport of Beirut, sent on October 1 a request for the arrest of two Russian citizens to the Prosecutor General's Office, which appealed to Interpol. Earlier, as the agency notes, a delegation of Lebanese investigators and representatives of special services visited Cyprus to meet with the owner of the ship living there.
El Watania did not mention the names of the owner and captain Rhosus. On August 5, Boris Prokoshev, who in 2013 was the captain of the ship, told TASS that the owner of the Rhosus was at that time an entrepreneur from Khabarovsk Igor Grechushkin, living in Cyprus.
According to the Russian Seafarers' Trade Union, in 2013, a bulk carrier under the flag of Moldova carried dangerous cargo from Batumi to Mozambique and made an unscheduled stop in Beirut. There, the ship was detained by the port authorities because of technical malfunctions. The crew, consisting of citizens of Russia and Ukraine, appealed to the International Federation of Transport Workers (ITF) and reported that the employer, the Cyprus company Teto Shipping, had not paid the seamen their salaries since the beginning of the contracts. In response to the ITF appeal, the shipowner, a businessman from Khabarovsk, promised to sell the ship and pay off the debts, but this never happened.
The ammonium nitrate cargo unloaded six years ago in the port of Beirut was stored in a warehouse and detonated on August 4. The explosion had a capacity of 1.5 thousand tons in TNT equivalent. The blast wave destroyed and damaged thousands of houses, killed 193 people, affected 6.5 thousand and more than 300 thousand citizens were left homeless. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Lebanon, the cause of the explosion was the fire of more than 2.7 thousand tons of ammonium nitrate, stored in barn number 12 in the port during the welding works.
More than 20 people were arrested in the Beirut port blast case, including former port director Hassan Kreitem and customs chief Badri Daher.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
Photo: Maxim Grigoriev / TASS