BEIRUT: The Beirut Criminal Court sentenced suspects involved in the 2003 Cotonou air crash, which killed over 100 Lebanese, to 20 years imprisonment Tuesday.
The court, presided over by Judge Helena Iskandar, issued its verdict in the plane-crash investigation and found the aircraft’s pilot and owners guilty of deliberate murder.
The plane went down on December 24, 2003, and was a Boeing 727 carrying 150 passengers, most of them Lebanese nationals working in Benin and returning for the holidays. It clipped a building at the end of the runway upon take off, before plunging into the Atlantic Ocean.
Fewer than 30 passengers survived the crash and many were injured. An investigation was launched.
The plane belonged to the company Union des Transports Africains (UTA), a joint Guinean-Lebanese enterprise, and the aircraft was thought to be carrying almost five tons of overweight. It was also suspected to have illegally obtained approval for technical standards from the Rafik Hariri International Airport in Beirut.
Judge Iskandar sentenced the plane’s pilot Najib Suleiman and UTA partner Darwish Ahmad al-Khazem to 20 years of hard labor.
It also stripped them of their civic rights and confiscated their money and possessions for deliberate murder.
It also stripped them of their civic rights and confiscated their money and possessions for deliberate murder.
The court found UTA guilty of the same charge and fined it LL6 million. Khazem was sentenced to an additional one year and two months in prison for ignoring complaints about the overload and ordering the pilot to take off despite warnings.
Other convicted suspects in the case were Imad Yacoub Saba, who was sentenced to three years in prison, and Tony Sheiban Mikhael, who was fined LL1 million for neglect.
All the convicted suspects in the case were forced to collectively pay compensation to the families of the victims. A fine of LL500 million is to be given to the family of Khalil Jamal- whose body was never retrieved – LL400 million to the family of Abdo Maatouk, LL400 million to the family of Hussam Safa, and LL500 million to injured victim Bilal Ghazawi.
Other compensation payments were withdrawn after the victims and their families dropped the charges. –The Daily Star
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