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A year after the murder of Lebanese intellectual and Hezbollah critic Lokman Slim, his family is still searching for accountability in a country where crimes often go unpunished.
“We really need justice for Lokman,” his widow Monika Borgmann told AFP from their home in the southern suburbs of the capital Beirut, days before the first anniversary of his killing.
If his murder goes unpunished, it would be like “giving the green light to the killers, whoever they are, to continue” their crimes, she said, amid stalled investigations into his murder.
A secular activist from a Shiite family, 58-year-old Slim was found dead in his car on February 4 last year, a day after his family reported him missing.
His body was found in southern Lebanon — a stronghold of the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement — but the culprits have yet to be identified.
An outspoken activist and a researcher passionate about documenting the civil war that raged from 1975-1990 in Lebanon, Slim was a divisive figure. His sway over foreign diplomats in Lebanon often sparked the ire of Hezbollah and its loyalists.
In several televised interviews, Slim accused the group of taking Lebanon hostage on behalf of its Iranian patrons.
In one of his last TV appearances, he accused the Syrian regime of having links to the ammonium nitrate shipment that caused the catastrophic explosion at Beirut’s port in August 2020.
Slim’s family has received no updates from the authorities since investigations into his murder started.
This is not unusual for a country where even investigations into the Beirut port blast have yet to identify a single culprit — a year and a half after the explosion destroyed swathes of the city.
‘Information-gathering’
The judiciary is still working on gathering evidence from security agencies over Slim’s murder, said a judicial source,…
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Source : france24
