The failures of CSI Beirut

byHabib Battah
Oct 19, 2012

We may never know who was behind today’s Ashrafieh bombing. That’s because investigations in Lebanon are almost never resolved.

I was on the scene during the last bomb blast to rock Beirut about four years ago. I noticed a lot of debris outside police lines. But when I notified officers of this, they actually laughed at me.

See pictures of that scene and read more about my experience with CSI Beirut here.

Habib Battah

Habib Battah is an investigative journalist and founder of the news site beirutreport.com. Battah has covered Lebanon and the Middle East for over 15 years and teaches journalism and media studies at the American University of Beirut. He is a contributor to Monocle, The Guardian, BBC World, Al Jazeera and others, a former fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University and two-time recipient of the Samir Kassir Press Freedom Award. Battah's investigative work was recently recognized for outstanding local reporting by the Columbia University Oakes Award for Environmental Reporting. Battah earned a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.A. in Near East Studies and Journalism from New York University.