Masdar Diplomacy
:The Director General of General Security, Major General Abbas Ibrahim, issued the following statement
“Following the information reported by the media on 2/7/2021, about “the decision of the judicial investigator in the Beirut port explosion case, Judge Tarek Bitar, to request permission to prosecute me in this case…” and before the official administrative procedures took their way to implementation, and even before I was informed or informed of this decision and according to the legal procedures in force, a series of leaks and rumors spread on social media that targeted me directly, some of which indicated that “Judge Tarek Bitar discovered in the investigation my involvement in ammonium smuggling deals to Syria…”
Others also claimed that I keep money in a financial institution in the United Arab Emirates. In addition, “electronic flies” launched a campaign targeting me personally on various platforms.
Accordingly, it was necessary to take legal measures in order to clarify the matters that targeted me on one hand, and on the other hand, to prosecute those who tried to influence the course of the investigation and distort my image in front of Lebanese public opinion, especially the families of the martyrs and the public who sympathized with me and stood by revealing the truth and achieving justice.
The Lebanese public also refused to attack people’s dignities and images, and expressed their strongest condemnation of all attempts to affect the course of the investigation into the most heinous crime targeting people in our modern age, and refusing to offend the judiciary system by publishing false information attributed to the judicial investigator.
Based on this, I would like to thank everyone who called or issued supportive positions through the media outlets and social media platforms, or by raising banners and pictures in various regions, expressing love and sympathy. I assure that I, like every Lebanese, am under the roof of the law.
We must stand in solidarity and work far from narrow political calculations or political investment, to know the truth about what happened in the port of Beirut.
Consequently, I ask them, in honor of the fallen martyrs, civilians and soldiers, to remove all banners and pictures.
The path of truth will triumph if we are patient and insist on revealing the facts.
9/7/2021
Marlene Khalifeh
Marlene Khalifeh, a Lebanese journalist. She worked for a period of twelve years in An-Nahar” newspaper before moving to “As-Safir” were she spent ten years as a diplomatic reporter. Between these two periods, Mrs. Khalifeh published many articles in the Al Hayat” and “Al Riyad” newspapers, “Al Wassat” and “Newsweek Middle East” magazines.
She created her own website “Masdar diplomacy”,on the 11th of July 2016 focusing on diplomatic activities in Lebanon and the Middle East.
After attending many training courses in a number of European, American, and English institutions, she specialized in investigative journalism. Her hard work paid off when she was awarded, twice (in 2004 and 2005), with the “investigative journalist” prize by the Commonwealth (in Jordan) among four Arab participating countries. Afterwards, she focused her attention on the politic and diplomatic press training and research on fact checking.
