The France will request Monday, June 5, the lifting of the immunity of the Lebanese ambassador in Paris who is under investigation for rape and intentional violence, a diplomatic source said. Asked about the possibility of lifting the immunity of diplomat Rami Adwan, who disputes the facts of aggression, this source on condition of anonymity told AFP: "steps in this direction will be conducted during the day". As early as Friday, June 2, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had considered that "faced with the gravity of the facts mentioned", the lifting of immunity by the Lebanese authorities was "necessary to facilitate the work of the French justice".
The latter opened an investigation for rape and intentional violence after complaints from two former employees of the embassy, said Friday sources close to the investigation, confirming information from Mediapart. The first woman, aged 31, filed a complaint in June 2022 for a rape committed, according to her account, to the police, in May 2020 in the private apartment of Ambassador Rami Adwan, who has been in office since 2017. In her complaint seen by AFP, she said she refused sex, screamed and cried.
"Psychological and physical violence"
The young woman, employed as an editor, had already reported to the police in 2020 that Rami Adwan had hit her during an argument in his office, but without filing a complaint so as not to "break the life of this man", married and father. She had a "romantic relationship" with the ambassador who exercised on her "psychological and physical violence with daily humiliations". The second woman, aged 28, who had also formed an intimate relationship with the diplomat shortly after his arrival as an intern in 2018, filed a complaint last February to denounce a series of physical assaults often committed after refusing to have sex.
She claims that Rami Adwan tried to hit her with his car during a dispute on the sidelines of the Forum for Peace in Caen, west of the France, in September. She also accuses the ambassador of trying to asphyxiate her at home by sinking her face into her bed at the end of December. "My client denies any accusation of assault in any form: verbal, moral, sexual. He had with these two women between 2018 and 2022 romantic relationships punctuated by disputes and breakups, "responded to AFP the lawyer of Rami Adwan, Me Karim Beylouni.
Lebanon had announced Saturday to send a team of investigators to Paris. This "commission of inquiry chaired by the Secretary General of the Ministry (...) at the embassy in Paris" must question the ambassador and "collect testimonies from embassy staff". She must also meet with the French authorities "to clarify the information communicated to the media and which has not been transmitted to the Lebanese ministry through diplomatic channels," the Lebanese Foreign Ministry said in a statement.