A Sofia court on Wednesday refused to extradite a shipowner wanted by Lebanon over a devastating blast at Beirut’s port in 2020.<\/p>\n
Lebanon wants Bulgaria to extradite Igor Grechushkin, a 48-year-old Russian-Cypriot, over the disaster.<\/p>\n
The blast on August 4, 2020 was one of the world’s largest non-nuclear explosions, destroying swathes of the Lebanese capital, killing more than 220 people and injuring more than 6,500.<\/p>\n
Grechushkin, who was arrested in September at Sofia airport, is accused by Lebanese judicial authorities of “introducing explosives into Lebanon — a terrorist act that resulted in the death of a large number of people — (and) disabling machinery with the intent of sinking a ship”, according to Bulgarian prosecutors.<\/p>\n
But the Sofia city court refused Lebanon’s extradition request, ordering his release.<\/p>\n
“Lebanon did not provide guarantees that, if he were sentenced to death, the sentence would not be carried out,” Grechushkin’s lawyer Ekaterina Dimitrova told AFP.<\/p>\n
The ruling can be appealed within the next seven days before the Sofia Court of Appeal, whose decision will be final, and the suspect will remain in custody until then.<\/p>\n
Authorities in Lebanon say the 2020 explosion was triggered by a fire in a warehouse where tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertiliser had been stored haphazardly for years, despite repeated warnings to senior officials.<\/p>\n
Beirut authorities have identified Grechushkin as the owner of the Rhosus, the ship that brought the ammonium nitrate into the port.<\/p>\n
A Lebanese investigation into the blast was long bogged down by legal and political wrangling.<\/p>\n
Those questioned in the investigation include former Lebanese prime minister Hassan Diab, as well as military and security officials.<\/p>\n
ros-str\/jza\/cc<\/p>\n
\u00a9 Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Sofia court on Wednesday refused to extradite a shipowner wanted by Lebanon over a devastating blast at Beirut’s port in 2020. Lebanon wants Bulgaria to extradite Igor Grechushkin, a 48-year-old Russian-Cypriot, over the disaster. The blast on August 4, 2020 was one of the world’s largest non-nuclear explosions, destroying swathes of the Lebanese capital, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20439,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"subtitle":"","format":"standard","override":[{"template":"7","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"left-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"topbottom","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"1","show_view_counter":"1","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"1","show_post_related":"0","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"jnews_post_split":{"post_split":[{"template":"1","tag":"h2","numbering":"asc","mode":"normal","first":"0","enable_toc":"0","toc_type":"normal"}]},"footnotes":""},"categories":[79],"tags":[126,2381,299,330],"class_list":["post-20438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-regional","tag-blast","tag-bulgaria","tag-investigation","tag-lebanon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20438"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20441,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20438\/revisions\/20441"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}