On Friday evening, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicated in a comment to Agence France-Presse that “given the seriousness of the aforementioned incidents, we consider it necessary that the Lebanese authorities lift the immunity of the Lebanese ambassador to Paris in order to facilitate the work of French justice.
The first complainant is 31 years old, and in June 2022 she filed a complaint in which she says, according to the text of the police report, that she was raped in May 2020 in a private apartment belonging to Ambassador Rami Adwan, Ambassador of the Lebanon in Paris since 2017.
In the complaint, the content of which was seen by AFP, the complainant confirms that she refused to have sex and resorted to screaming and crying.
And the woman who was editor-in-chief had reported to the police in 2020 that Adwan had beaten her during a fight in her office, without pressing charges under the pretext of “not destroying the life of this man” whereas he is married and has a family.
She said she had an “affectionate affair” with the ambassador, who practiced “psychological and physical violence against her and insulted her daily”.
The second complainant is 28 years old and she had an intimate relationship with the ambassador shortly after she started working at the embassy as an intern in 2018. She filed the complaint last February because, according to her, she had suffered a series of physical assaults, which often resulted from his refusal to have sex.
The complainant claims Adwan tried to hit her with his car following an argument on the sidelines of a peace forum in Caen, western France, in September.
She also accuses the ambassador of trying to strangle her at home by pushing her face into bed in late December.
In a comment to AFP, the ambassador’s legal representative, Karim Belloni, said his client “denies any accusation of assault of any kind: whether verbal, moral or sexual”.
He added that his client “had romantic relationships with these two women between 2018 and 2022, punctuated by arguments and separations”.
Asked about this file and what she intends to do, especially since Adwan benefits from diplomatic immunity, the Paris public prosecutor declared that “it is not possible for him to answer at the time current”.
And the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs had indicated earlier on Friday that it had no information “concerning this case which is being dealt with by the courts and covered by the secrecy of the investigation”.
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