Legal experts agree that the evaluation of judges' performance should focus on reviewing the rulings they issue rather than on the personalities of individual judges or their ability to detach from controversial or significant cases. This perspective comes as we approach the end of the first month of Judge Jamal Al-Hajjar’s assignment as acting Attorney General (February 23, 2024), and following the reassurances he shared with well-wishers and the families of the victims of the port explosion, which link the resolution of legitimate core issues to the completion of the legal examination of their details, as reported in "Nidaa Al-Watan."
Legal circles reveal that litigants and those affected by the suspension of court operations do not rely on sweet talk as much as they depend on restoring the regular functioning of the judiciary, which is responsible for ensuring that every party receives their due rights. With the intersecting interests of those in power to suspend the public authority at the Court of Cassation, thereby halting investigations and curbing essential procedures to bring the involved parties in corruption cases and the misappropriation of public funds and depositors' money to trial, the prospect of liberating the investigation file regarding the port explosion weighs heavily on the appointed Attorney General.
This follows a recent submission by lawyer Pierre Gemayel and other anti-corruption lawyers to the Public Prosecution Office that detailed the legal discrepancies in Circular 19/S, issued by the former Attorney General Ghassan Oueidat on January 25, 2023, and requests Judge Al-Hajjar to realign the actions of the police and the public prosecution with judicial inquiries according to the relevant laws.
The request from the anti-corruption lawyers joins a series of similar appeals related to decisions previously made by Oueidat, including one filed by the Beirut Bar Association on the eighth of this month, representing the families of the port explosion victims. This situation places Judge Jamal Al-Hajjar in a position where he must rule on the legality of these requests, at which point he will issue the necessary circulars to address the issues arising from them unless he chooses to adopt his predecessor's approach and maintain the status quo.
Simultaneously, observers are concerned about the potential for Judge Al-Hajjar to adopt a time-exhausting approach. Under the pretext of caution, patience, and thorough examination of the files, maintaining circulars that violate the most basic legal principles could become a norm, obscuring the truth in the murky waters of political disputes, particularly in the case of the port explosion, and fostering doubts regarding the individuals connected to this case, allowing wrongdoers to escape punishment. To mitigate these concerns, legal circles underscore the importance of Judge Al-Hajjar's role at this stage and his capability to expedite the work of the investigating judge within a matter of weeks. This would pave the way for issuing the indictment in the port explosion case, according to "Nidaa Al-Watan."
