And the ministry said in a statement: “Following the circumstances surrounding the case of the Lebanese ambassador to France, and in light of the transfer of the commission of inquiry dispatched from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants to the embassy in Paris, it was decided to summon Ambassador Rami Adwan to the central administration.”
The ministry said it had informed the French Foreign Ministry that “Advisor Ziad Taan would assume the presidency of the mission as Chargé d’Affaires”.
On Tuesday, Lebanon sent a Foreign Ministry delegation to Paris to investigate Adwan and listen to testimony from embassy staff, including diplomats and administrators.
The French Foreign Ministry recently opened an investigation into suspected rape and violent practices by Adwan, who had held office since 2017, after two complaints were filed by two former embassy employees, according to sources close to the ministry. ‘investigation. reported Friday.
By summoning him to Beirut, it becomes difficult for Adwan to appear before the courts of Paris, because Lebanon does not extradite its citizens to foreign countries for trial.
Adwan’s summons came despite Paris’ request to the Lebanese authorities to waive his immunity “in order to facilitate the work of French justice”, according to what the French foreign ministry told AFP last week.
The first complainant (31), who was an editor at the embassy, filed a complaint in June 2022, confirming that she was raped in May 2020 in Adwan’s apartment.
The complainant confirmed that she refused to have sex and started screaming and crying.
In 2020, she reports to the police that Adwan beat her during a fight in his office, without filing a complaint on the pretext of “not destroying the life of this man” despite being married and the head of a family. .
She said she had a “loving relationship” with Adwan, who practiced “psychological and physical violence against her and insulted her daily”.
The second complainant (28), who struck up an intimate relationship with the ambassador soon after she started working at the embassy as an intern in 2018, filed a complaint last February because, according to her, she 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, last September. She also accuses him of trying to suffocate her at home by pressing her face against the bed in late December.
In a comment to Agence France-Presse, Adwan’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”.
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