BEIRUT - Lebanon has opened an official investigation into the Christmas Day crash of a Boeing 727 plane in Benin in which 77 Lebanese were among the victims, public prosecutor Adnan Addum said Monday.
"The public prosecutor's office was quick to adopt the necessary measures by sending a letter on Friday ...to the Interpol in Benin, requesting results of the preliminary inquiries and all technical reports," Addum told reporters.
The Lebanese wanted "to know the causes of the crash, the load that the plane was carrying, the names of the passengers, the technical reasons for the accident, and we are awaiting the answers", he said.
Addum said: "If it is proven to us that errors, negligence, lack of caution, violation of laws and regulations have led to the death of those victims from Lebanon, the public prosecutor's office will then act and prosecute.
"The Lebanese justice will not forgive anyone ... whether those who own the plane, the airport ground authorities or those responsible for the load of the plane," he said.
"We will gather all the necessary information ... and we will listen to the accounts of the injured who were on the plane" and who have since been flown for treatment in Lebanon, he said.
He said: "The Chicago agreement stipulates that whenever there is an aviation accident, the parties that can take part in the investigation are the state where the airline is registered, the state where the accident occurred and the state to which the victims belong.
"So Lebanon has the complete right to be included in the investigation and the matter was discussed by Lebanese authorities who decided that Lebanon should have representatives in the investigation," he said.
Addum said the ill-fated Union des Transports Africains (UTA) plane was registered in Guinea, and the company had two main Lebanese shareholders.
French experts were Monday examining black boxes from the Boeing 727 that crashed in the tiny west African state of Benin last week as the government announced a new death toll of 135.
Late Sunday a French military plane repatriated the bodies of 77 Lebanese who died in the crash and they were buried Monday in towns and villages across the country.
Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy no more?