Ammonium nitrate that caused explosion at the Lebanese port of Beirut, most likely arrived in Lebanon as a component for Hezbollah’s explosives.
Ammonium nitrate explosion at a warehouse in Beirut should be addressed through the lens of underlying reasons for how 2,750 tons of explosive cargo was brought to Beirut and why it has been stored at the port for several years.
Beirut’s port.
According to the WaPo artcile by one of the best experts on Middle East Joby Warrick (in cooperation with Sarah Dadouch, Loveday Morris and Suzan Haidamous) , Hezbollah has well-documented use of the port for smuggling rockets and other weapons.
According to a Treasury Department statement, the Trump administration in 2019 imposed sanctions against high-level Hezbollah officials, including Wafiq Safa, Hezbollah’s head of security, specifically accusing them of using Beirut’s port for smuggling contraband, including illegal drugs and weapons. Among the weapons entering the port have been precision-guided missiles intended for use against Israel, according to a report earlier this year by the IDF.
Ammonium nitrate.
Hezbollah’s overseas terror apparatus is known for using ammonium nitrate to build bombs. Notably, there were warnings about Hezbollah plans to detonate the bombs at Israeli targets abroad.
A report by Ben Riley-Smith of the Telegraph states that suspected Hezbollah militants were caught with three tons of ammonium nitrate, a material commonly used for homemade explosives, in Northwest London. The Lebanese based terror group reportedly possessed thousands of disposable ice packs with ammonium nitrate. The report states that the plot was uncovered by the MI5 in 2015, just months after the United Kingdom signed off on the Iran deal. Intelligence agencies in the United Kingdom were tipped off by a foreign government. On September 30th, 2015, four properties on the outskirts of North West London were raided.
In May 2015, Cypriot authorities arrested Hezbollah member and Lebanese-Canadian national Hussein Bassam Abdallah after finding 8.2 tons of liquid ammonium nitrate in the basement of a residence in Larnaca. Abdallah was charged by the Republic of Cyprus on five offenses, including participation in a terrorist organization and providing support to a terrorist organization. On June 29, 2015, Abdallah was sentenced to six years in prison.
Police in Cyprus believed a man had been planning to attack Israeli targets in Europe.
Cypriot authorities said they believed the ammonium nitrate had been stockpiled on the island since around 2011 but officials never actually speculated about a possible target on the island. According to information provided to the Israeli defense establishment, Cyprus believed the island was to serve as a “point of export” for a series of attacks in Europe, the ‘Haaretz’ newspaper reported. Targets were to include Jewish sites, including synagogues, as well as Western targets.
In August 2015, Kuwaiti authorities arrested three Hezbollah operatives who had stored 42,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate, 300 pounds of C4, dozens of small arms, and 204 grenades under a residential house.
Last year, a U.S. federal court in New York sentenced convicted Hezbollah operative Ali Kourani to a 40-year prison term for seeking to acquire hundreds of pounds of ammonium nitrate — in the form of chemical ice packs — from a Chinese manufacturer.
Ammonium nitrate was the explosive chosen for terrorist plots linked to Hezbollah in Britain, Cyprus, Germany, and Bulgaria.
In January 2012, Thailand Police found more than 4,300 kilograms of urea based fertilizer, 260 litres of ammonium nitrate and 400 electric fans and other materials used for making explosives in a building in Samut Sakhon’s Muang district after the arrest of a Lebanese man carrying a Swedish passport who has suspected links to the Hezbollah militant group.
Israeli media reported in May 2020 that the country’s intelligence agencies provided their German counterparts crucial information on Hezbollah’s activities in Germany where Hezbollah affiliates were stashing big volumes of ammonium nitrate in various warehouses in the south of Germany.
Cargo’s destination.
The Lebanese authorities claim the ammonium nitrate comes from the Rhosus, a vessel which sailed from Batumi, Georgia to Mozambique in 2013 under the Moldovan flag and made an unscheduled stop in Beirut. The cargo was produced by chemical plant in Rustavi (now “Rustavi Azot”).
Some reports said the vessel had experienced technical problems, so the vessel and its cargo were seized in Beirut. The owner abandoned both the crew and the cargo and announced his bankruptcy.
The cargo was inspected and detained after Lebanese port authorities said it was “lacking documents and conditions necessary for transportation.” The chemicals were taken off the ship and stored in a warehouse at the port, after Moldova revoked the ship’s license.
The cargo seizure may indicate that was a planned operation from the very beginning to deliver the cargo without the appropriate paperwork and legal buyer.
The cargo was declared to be delivered for Mozambique government to supply it to Fabrica de Explosivos company, with the International Bank of Mozambique as an acquirer.
“Igor Grechushkin received $ 1 million for the shipment, the captain of Rhosus says. However, the buyers did not make any claims the cargo had not been delivered and did not get in touch. “
The bill of lading listed the cargo as an explosive component, not a fertilizer. Thus, ammonium nitrate, stored in warehouse 12 at the port of Beirut, was sent from Batumi as a raw material to manufacture the explosives, and the customer did not make attempts to receive the cargo, though the delivery was paid.
Additional reports at the time said neither Mozambican authorities nor the managing company at the east African country’s port were aware of Rhosus carrying ammonium nitrate, which was described as a volatile chemical used in fertilizers.
Therefore, the fact that the cargo was originally intended to be sent to Mozambique is doubtful. We estimate the delivery was highly likely to have been planned and made to Beirut, and Mozambique was just the cover for this operation.
The ammonium nitrate could have been supplied for Hezbollah. There are indicators the delivery was made by Russian military intelligence. The delivery scheme, the company and the people involved speak for that.
Numerous facts flag Russia’s involvement in weapons supply to Hezbollah, operating in close coordination with the Russian troops and the army of Bashar Assad in Syria. Russia is equipping Hezbollah with small arms, ATGMs and using it as a proxy force in Syria.
According to Moldova’s Naval Agency, the Rhosus was owned by the Panama-based company Briarwood Corporation, and chartered by a Marshall Islands company, Teto Shipping Limited. The company was run by a Russian citizen Igor Grechushkin, who lives in Cyprus with his wife Irina. Their 20 years son Artyom studies computer science in Glasgow University since August 31, 2019. His social media profile indicates he used to live in Germany and has been in Cyprus since around 2012. The Russian diaspora in Limassol speaks of him as a modest person and did not know he was the shipowner.
Grechushkin does not have Cypriot citizenship according to the Republic’s interior ministry. Igor Grechushkin was born in 1977 in the Far East, in the working village of Vanino. He studied at the Far Eastern Academy of Civil Service (now the Far Eastern Institute of Management) in Khabarovsk. In the second half of the 1990s, he got a job at the local representative office of the Cypriot company Dartmont Shipping Limited. It belonged to Viktor Danilov, businessman from Vanino. Igor Grechushkin’s father, Valentin, is the head of Geosphere LLC, operating in land registry. The company works mainly with the village authorities, and its revenue amounted to 16 million rubles in 2019.
The captain Abakumov who received the cargo in Batumi was replaced during the voyage.
NTERFLEET SHIPMANAGEMENT has been the owner and manager of the vessel since 2008. A company with this name is registered in Cyprus and has not been reporting since 2010, like its parent company RIZOCOMA HOLDINGS LIMITED. However, the captain who served on the ship during the arrest claims that around 2012 the Cypriot company handed him over to Grechushkin. This information is not in the registers.
In Romania, a certain Igor Grechushkin is the owner of Unimar Shipmanagement SRL, according to the Equasis database, now this company does not have its own fleet. Grechushkin was also the director of two now liquidated Cypriot companies – LYNCOTT ENTERPRISES LIMITED (excluded from the register in 2016) and HOGLA TRADING LIMITED (excluded in 2018).
UNIMAR SHIPMANAGEMENT SRL (IMO: 5522641), located at Strada Ion Lahovari 53, 900675 Constanta, Romania, has no vessels currently.
The company used to own the ship Ant (IMO: 8407230).
The ship Ant changed owners and management several times.
For example, from May 2017 to December 2019, the Ant belonged to the Crimean company Uvas-Trans, operating in the closed port of Kerch. Its tugboats provide illegal access for the vessels to the port, supply of ships operating on transshipments in the Kerch Strait. The company’s vessels were used to block the Kerch-Yenikale Canal on November 25, 2018, as well. Uvas-trans was a participant in the LPG supply scheme from Kerch to the port of Banias (Syria). The company is also known for its gray fuel smuggling schemes, its tankers are bunkering in Black Sea waters, and some vessels operate in the Mediterranean.
The event of October 7, 2017, when the GOEAST tanker came into focus of the world community over its shelling by Libyan coast guard, accompanied by allegations of smuggling to serve LNA leader Khalifa Haftar’s interests, became widely known.
Briarwood Corporation was registered on May 11, 2012. However, a year after the cargo had been delivered to Beirut, in September 2014, its registration was canceled, probably over bankruptcy.
The Cyprus Shipping Council claimed they never heard of Grechushkin or his company.
Igor Grechushkin is mentioned in open sources just over the cargo seizure in 2013.
Consequently, his company, Teto Shipping Limited, bears all the marks of a shell one, and Grechushkin himself might be the person who provides cover for risky deliveries to serve the third parties’ interests. Shortly after the ammonium nitrate had been discharged at a warehouse in Beirut port, on December 27, 2013, there was a terrorist attack by Hezbollah. A fifty-kilogram vehicle-borne improvised explosive device detonated between Beirut’s Starco Centre and Phoenicia Hotel. The blast killed Mohamad Chatah—a former Lebanese finance minister and ambassador to the United States—his bodyguard, and four others in his convoy, which was en route to a meeting with then former prime minister Saad Hariri. Another seventy-one were wounded in the explosion, two of whom later died.
Reasons for storing the dangerous cargo in Beirut port.
It had long been known that the dangerous cargo was stored in the port of Beirut. According to this, several letters from the customs authority were sent to a competent court, demanding that the chemicals be transported to a safe place.
So, the ammonium nitrate could not have been taken away for fear of the Shiite terrorist militia.
According to two documents Lebanese Customs had asked the court every year from 2014 to 2017 to order the “concerned maritime agency” – which could be the port warehouse – to re-export the stored cargo or allow its sale to a local private company, Lebanese Explosives Co. SARL (Majid Shammas & Co) as recommended by the army.
This company is also a place of the Golan annexed by Israel. Only four kilometers away is the village of Khadar, on the Syrian side, where Hezbollah maintains “massive terrorist structures”.
Foreign media said as recently as six months ago, Lebanese officials inspected the cargo and warned that if it were not moved it would “blow up all of Beirut.”There is high probability, therefore, the warehouse in the port of Beirut was used by Hezbollah, seeking quick access to the cargo (explosives component). The authorities were likely to delay the cargo movement for this reason, as it could deny Hezbollah’s free access to it.
As recently as six months ago, Lebanese officials inspected the cargo and warned that if it was not moved it would ‘blow up all of Beirut’
But CNA reported that Abdallah had told Cypriot investigators the fertilizer would have been used to attack Jewish or Israeli interests in Cyprus.
