Beirut - (AFP) - The Lebanese judiciary issued, on Wednesday, a decision to reserve the property of two defendants in the Beirut port explosion case, based on a lawsuit filed by the Beirut Bar Association on behalf of the families of the victims, according to a judicial source told Agence France-Presse.

The source said, "The head of the Beirut Implementation Department, Judge Najah Itani, issued a decision to seize the property of MPs Ali Hassan Khalil and Ghazi Zuaiter at a value of 100 billion pounds."

The issuance of the decision came within the framework of a lawsuit filed by the Prosecutor’s Office at the Beirut Bar Association before the Civil Court of First Instance in Beirut to hold the two deputies, who previously held the positions of Minister of Finance (Khalil) and Minister of Public Works and Transport (Zuaiter), accountable for their “abusive use of the rights of defense and prosecution, through They filed lawsuits that impede the progress of the investigation, and demanded compensation for this arbitrariness in the amount of one hundred billion pounds,” according to the same source.

In the aftermath of the port explosion , the Prosecution Office of the Beirut Bar Association took over the prosecution of the state by filing claims on behalf of nearly 1,400 families of the victims and those affected by the explosion.

And the two deputies belonging to the Amal movement, which is led by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, have submitted several lawsuits against them, along with other officials, to stop the judicial investigator, Judge Tariq al-Bitar, from investigating the explosion that killed more than two hundred people on August 4, 2020, and injured. More than 6,500 others were wounded, causing massive destruction to the port and a number of the capital's neighborhoods.

The investigation raises a political division, with major forces, most notably Hezbollah, objecting to Al-Bitar's work, accusing him of "politicizing" the file.

The investigation into the explosion as a result of the lawsuits against Al-Bitar has been suspended since the end of December, which fuels the anger of the victims' families and human rights organizations. And they renewed, coinciding with Lebanon's commemoration Thursday of the second anniversary of the explosion, calling on the United Nations to send an independent fact-finding mission, in the face of the stumbling of the local investigation.

According to the authorities, the explosion resulted from the storage of large quantities of ammonium nitrate inside the port without precautionary measures, following the outbreak of a fire, the causes of which are unknown. It turned out later that officials at several levels were aware of the dangers of storing the substance and did not move a finger.