Destroyed port of Beirut: warnings remained without effect
Photo: Lorenzo Tugnoli / DER SPIEGELIn September 2013 eight Ukrainians and one Russian set out on a freighter from Georgia, allegedly for Mozambique. Your ship is already half a wreck when you leave the Black Sea area of Batumi. The "Rhosus" is leaking, its alarm system is defective, as is the rescue equipment.
But the cargo that the seafarers carry with them is tough: 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate in a highly concentrated variant, such as is used for the manufacture of explosives, with a nitrogen enrichment level of just under 35 percent. Seven years later, on August 4, 2020, it will devastate parts of the Lebanese capital Beirut, killing around 200 people and injuring thousands.
Since then, the world has been interested in the "Rhosus" and its history. Investigators are trying to reconstruct their last trip. Why did the "Rhosus" land in Beirut at all? And who really ordered the explosive chemicals?
So far it has been said that the ship belonged to Igor Gretschushkin, a Russian. The cargo, in turn, was destined for the company Fábrica de Explosivos de Moçambique, or FEM for short, a Mozambican explosives producer.
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