Natour Interrogation Postponed to End of March
Beirut Examining Magistrate Ghassan Owaidat postponed on Monday the interrogation of Samih al-Natour, who is accused along with his brother of processing and selling spoiled meat and other food products, as well as the attempted murders of the consumers to whom they knowingly sold the food, reported the National News Agency.
The interrogation has been postponed to March 29 after Natour’s lawyer Malek Mneiemneh presented Owaidat with a memorandum.
Last week, the Ministry of Economy’s Consumer Protection Directorate raided the warehouse owned by the brothers in the Sabra area in Tarik el-Jadeedah where they confiscated 25 tons of expired meat.
Voice of Lebanon radio reported on Monday that the concerned authorities began to transfer the spoiled food from one of the brothers’ warehouses in Tarik al-Jadeedah to a laboratory to determine the extent of their contamination and to find out if they were spoiled when they were imported.
On Sunday, over a ton and a half of spoiled fish was found dumped in the town of Ansariyeh in the South and large quantities of expired sweets were found dumped on the road between al-Rawdah and Majdal Anjar in the Bekaa.
The sweets were set on fire in order to cover up the fact that they had been spoiled, but some that were salvaged were discovered to have been expired in 2006, reported VDL.
NNA later reported on Monday that some 25 kilograms of spoiled meat were found in garbage bags that were dumped in the outskirts of the town of Aalita in Jbeil.
It later said that the Tyre municipality seized large quantities of spoiled meat, poultry, and dairy products in stores throughout the city.
The cases stirred the “food safety” crisis as the Consumer Protection Directorate raided several other warehouses in al-Fanar, Beirut’s southern suburbs, Tyre, and Marjayoun that were selling spoiled meat and food products.
The seized products included poultry, meat, canned food, cheese and several other consumer products.
The Internal Security Forces detained at least eight other people for food safety violations in separate raids.
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