by AFP -- BEIRUT: Lebanon’s prosecutor general decided Tuesday not to charge fugitive ex-auto tycoon Carlos Ghosn for visiting Israel in 2008 because the statute of limitations has expired, a judicial source said. Three lawyers filed a motion in January calling for the 66-year-old businessman to be prosecuted over his trip to the Jewish state as Renault-Nissan chairman. Lebanon is technically still at war with Israel and forbids its citizens from traveling there. “Prosecutor general Ghassan Oueidat decided ... not to prosecute Ghosn for the crimes attributed to him of entering the enemy country and dealing with it economically,” the source told AFP. “A statute of limitations of ten years had passed since the alleged crime,” the source added.

Ghosn on Jan. 8 apologized to the Lebanese people for having visited Israel to sign a deal to produce electric vehicles, saying he traveled on business for Renault on a French passport. He also holds Lebanese and Brazilian nationalities. The ex-Nissan chief was arrested in Japan in November 2018 on financial misconduct charges and spent 130 days in detention, before he jumped bail and smuggled himself out of the country late last year. Ghosn appeared at a press conference in Lebanon on Jan. 8, denying all charges and claiming he was a victim of a plot by Nissan and Japanese officials.

by arabnews.com -- NAJIA HOUSSARI -- BEIRUT: Frustration mounted in Lebanon on Sunday amid continuing paralysis in the formation of a new government, with fingers pointed at the Iran-backed Hezbollah group and Free Patriotic Movement leader Gebran Bassil as the source of the blockage. Eleven days after former prime minister Saad Hariri was asked to resume office and assemble an administration of non-party technocrats, no date has even been set for a meeting with President Michel Aoun. “We do not know if the obstructing parties actually want to form a government. It is about party quotas again, regarding the number of ministers and the rotation of portfolios,” senior Hariri adviser Hussein Al-Wajh told Arab News. Dr. Mustafa Alloush, a leading figure in Hariri’s Future Movement, told Arab News: “The main obstacle to forming a government is Gebran Bassil, who has returned to his old demands.”

Hariri resigned as prime minister in October 2019 amid a wave of public protests over financial corruption, government ineptitude and a collapsing economy. Neither of his successors, Hassan Diab and Mustapha Adib, was able to restore stability, and Lebanon has been without a government since September. At the prompting of French President Emmanuel Macron, Hariri offered to lead a technocratic Cabinet in an initiative seen as opening the door to desperately needed international aid and a bailout from the International Monetary Fund. Former minister Ahmed Fatfat told Arab News: “Hariri’s project is a mini-government of specialists, which would not be against anyone or against the country, but Hezbollah stands behind the play of Gebran Bassil.”

“The political authority has killed its people economically, financially and in terms of living and development, and has thrown them into a …

by dailystar.com.lb — BEIRUT: Israeli jets and a warship crossed into Lebanese territory in the country’s south Sunday, days after the conclusion …