Al-Awf returned to America immediately after the discriminatory Public Prosecutor, Judge Ghassan Oweidat, was released. Like the rest of the detainees, the decision to release him was accompanied by a travel ban, knowing that the American effort to release Al-Awf is not new, but rather goes back months.
However, the scenario of the judicial conflict between the judicial investigator, Judge Tariq Al-Bitar, and Oweidat, which followed Shea’s visit to the latter, and the President of the Supreme Judicial Council, Suhail Abboud, and the issuance of the embassy’s statement calling for “the completion of a quick and transparent investigation into the file,” in addition to the visit of the French judicial delegation to Al-Bitar a few hours before His explosive move, all of this sowed doubts about the existence of a tacit American-Lebanese agreement in the port file.
Regarding the consequences of the American investigation, information indicates that a “lobby” of American and international institutions and humanitarian organizations is considering sending a letter to the US State Department with the aim of ensuring that the investigation is completed and that it does not return to square one, based on 3 broad questions, the most prominent of which are: Did the administration consider Al-Awf a hostage to the Lebanese state? Under US law? Is this step due to the lack of confidence in the Lebanese judiciary and the consequent push for an international investigation? What is to be done to support Judge Al-Bitar, who is shackled in the face of the refusal of the nine summonses, including current deputies, to appear before the investigation?
Within the framework, representatives of these institutions and organizations are looking for “how to go to an international commission of inquiry that secures the personal protection of the forensic investigator by the United Nations forces, and ensures that Al-Bitar follows up on his investigations through an urgent letter from the widest segment of the Lebanese parliament to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres.”
What is remarkable about the matter is that the deputies who arrived in Washington at the beginning of this week do not carry any agenda or work project to transfer it to the American administration, and that their meetings with American officials are nothing more than a mixture of opinions and listening to unresolved political orientations that do not exist at the current level in Lebanon. And meetings with the Lebanese community, without returning to any development in the port file and other files.
Wasn’t it more useful to take a step by signing a parliamentary petition, by the opposition representatives who gathered in one picture exceptionally, and then go and carry it to the capital of decision? Visits to Washington remain presidential politics without fruit.