“When you called me, I don’t know why… but I thought you were going to tell me that you had found my brother still alive,” Habi began. Since August 4, 2020—the day the explosion shook the Port of Beirut—the image of Mahdi has never left the family’s memory. His body returned to their home in a poor village in Bangladesh about a month later, inside a glass coffin, where it has remained ever since. Habi, the sister of victim Mahdi Hassan, says: “I have been living with my brother’s coffin for five years. At first, I was afraid, but then it became part of the house… I got used to it.”
In neighborhoods near the port such as Karantina, Mar Mikhael, Gemmayzeh, Jeitawi, and parts of Ashrafieh, densely populated areas were damaged; areas that were home to migrant workers, refugees, and low-income families. Karantina, for instance, has historically been a haven for refugees and migrant workers, directly adjacent to the site of the explosion.
The blast killed at least 240 people and injured more than 7,000, including foreigners from 22 countries: six Bangladeshis (with about 160 injured), four Filipinos (and 42 injured), three Egyptians, and one Ethiopian among the dead, in addition to 43 Syrians included in the official death toll.
For five years, the families of the victims have continued to take to the streets regularly, organizing vigils and applying pressure at every occasion, despite the many obstacles facing the judicial investigation. They had been promised that the investigation would be completed in just five days, but more than five years have passed without justice. The path to accountability has instead turned into a long journey mired in paralysis, politicization, and delay, due to political interference that obstructed the proceedings. Families formed committees and groups to follow up on the case, carving out a visible presence in the public sphere, though the degree of involvement varies from one family to another.
In contrast, the voices of foreign victims are almost entirely absent, as they have no representation in public squares, no clear communication with their families abroad, and no mention of compensation allocated to them so far. After extensive searching, only two Bangladeshi families could be reached: the families of Mahdi Hassan and Rasel Mia. Their testimonies reveal another face of the crime.
In a poor village in Bangladesh, Mahdi’s family has been living for five years with his glass coffin, which they received a month after the Beirut explosion. Unlike the custom in their village—where coffins are usually left at the mosque—they kept it at home, fearing worshippers might place their shoes on it. Instead, his sister Habi placed the coffin in a room of the house and gradually transformed it into a glass display cabinet, arranging some of his personal belongings inside: his toothbrush, the clothes that remained, the bottle of perfume he used, a small shaving machine, and coins later sent to the family by his friends. Habi says: “I have been living with my brother’s coffin for five years. At first, I was afraid, but then it became part of the house… I got used to it.”
Mahdi Hassan, the eldest of four siblings, was the pillar of the household and the family’s backbone. He grew up amid harsh economic circumstances, with a father who spent his life doing exhausting manual labor. Debt piled up, and the old house they had inherited from their grandfather became a fragile shelter, barely fit for living.
In 2015, the family borrowed about 500,000 taka at high interest rates so that Mahdi could travel to Lebanon, where he was promised a salary of 40,000 taka a month. In reality, he never earned more than half that amount. Even so, he continued to send everything he made back to his family. He helped pay for his sister Habi’s wedding and supported her afterward when she married.
His dreams were modest but difficult to achieve: to repair the dilapidated family home, to buy a new bed for his ailing father, to pay off the family’s debts, then to marry, build his own family, and return home. In Beirut, he worked long hours at a Spinneys supermarket in Ashrafieh, carving out moments to check on his family. He often called them in tears, reassuring them that their financial struggles would not last forever and urging them to be patient. Habi recalls: “He would send money, but he was always anxious. He longed to come back one day to see our sick father and mother, and to sit with us in peace.”
On the morning of August 4, 2020, the family had their last phone call with him. He asked his mother to go to his sister Habi’s house, but she refused because of a misunderstanding with her in-laws. Frustrated, he expressed his anger at her refusal. Then, suddenly, the line went dead. Just minutes later, the explosion struck, and his voice was silenced forever.
“We didn’t know those words would be the last,” Habi says. “I spent the night praying he would be safe… that maybe he was only injured.” After long hours of worry and waiting, the news arrived: Mahdi had died in the blast. “I only wished he could have lived a little longer in peace,” she adds. “But he left carrying the weight of debts and worries.”
After his death, the family received no support; instead, the burden of losing their sole provider doubled. “We carried all the costs on our own, even though we were drowning in debt,” Habi says. She adds that even the embassy demanded that the family prepare documents and paperwork to pursue compensation, forcing them to pay additional fees to process and send these documents to the relevant authorities. To this day, they have received no response or results.
About a year later, the family received 300,000 taka (around $3,000) from the Bangladeshi government, but obtaining it required paying 50,000 taka in fees and administrative costs. Habi explains: “With that money, we managed to pay off part of the interest on the debt. But to this day, our father is still working while carrying the weight of debt on his shoulders.” Since then, her father’s health has further deteriorated, while their mother still cries every day, waking up to the memory of her eldest son, who was her entire life.
Rasel, The Man Who Forged His Age
In another village in Brahmanbaria District, the Mia family still feels the absence of their youngest son, Rasel, five years after the explosion. Born into a modest family with three brothers and three sisters, Rasel was the dearest to everyone’s heart.
His brother Laikat recalls: “Rasel was the youngest, and the most beloved of us all. Since childhood, he was gifted and deeply passionate about studying, but because of our financial situation, he couldn’t continue his education.”
At 19, Rasel decided to travel to Lebanon in search of work. To obtain a passport, he was forced to falsify his birth certificate, making himself appear 24 years old. There, he found employment at a gas station and soon became the family’s provider.
He called them regularly, sent home everything he earned, and reassured his parents that their financial crisis would not last long. He was not yet married. His dream was clear: to build a new brick house, then to marry. He loved planting trees, and he tended to a small garden next to his lodging in Lebanon, caring for it as if it were a piece of his home village.
But on August 4, everything came to a halt. After hearing the news of the Beirut explosion, his family desperately tried to contact him, but without success. After 48 agonizing hours of waiting, the devastating news reached them: Rasel was among the victims.
Laikat says: “The entire family was shattered. And to this day, we have not been able to overcome this tragedy.”
The calamity did not stop at Rasel’s absence. Sadiq, the eldest brother who was with him on the day of the explosion, sustained a severe head injury. Since then, he has suffered from psychological trauma that left him unable to work. Their mother’s health also collapsed; she trembles with fear every time she hears the word “Lebanon.” Laikat says: “After losing her son, my mother became very ill. Just hearing the word Lebanon makes her cry.” He adds that the Bangladeshi government offered financial support to the victims’ families only once. Weeks after the tragedy, the Lebanese embassy contacted them through Bangladesh’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, requesting documents and promising compensation. The family submitted everything required and waited, but five years have passed, and nothing has come through.
Compensation for the Victims?
On the official level, Law 196 of 2020 equated all civilian victims of the explosion with martyrs of the Lebanese army. This grants their families financial compensation and a pension, while the injured are entitled to healthcare benefits under the National Social Security Fund (NSSF). But implementation has been fraught with obstacles. Some of the injured were registered under the collapsing NSSF rather than the Ministry of Health, which drastically limited their coverage. The Higher Relief Commission also allocated 30 million Lebanese pounds to the heirs of each victim over the age of ten, and 15 million for those under ten. However, in practice, the execution excluded the heirs of foreign victims, despite the fact that the law did not stipulate nationality as a condition.
In June 2023, MP Georges Atallah submitted a draft law that explicitly excludes the families of foreign victims from compensation, on the assumption that they should be compensated through insurance companies or the institutions they worked for. The proposal remains under review.
Lawyer Ali Abbas explains that the sole authority to determine compensation is the Judicial Council, not the investigating judge: “Once the indictment is issued, the file is referred to the Judicial Council. When the accused individuals are convicted, the court rules on personal compensation claims submitted by victims’ families within the case.”
Bangladesh’s consul in Beirut, Mohammed Anwar, told Daraj Media that the embassy acted immediately after the explosion: “Our team reached the blast site within half an hour using our own cars. We transported the wounded ourselves and followed up on their cases in hospitals. We submitted victims’ files just like the Lebanese did, but we were never invited to any official meeting. We filed a complaint against an unknown perpetrator right after the explosion, but everything has been frozen since.” He added that families have not received any compensation from the Lebanese government or from international organizations: “We provided one-time financial support and arranged for some of the injured to be repatriated to Bangladesh, where the Bangladeshi government helped them. But afterward, no sustained financial support was offered.”
These realities also expose the fragility of Lebanon’s kafala (sponsorship) system, which ties a worker’s legal status to their employer, leaving their rights hostage. Wadih al-Asmar, from the Lebanese Center for Human Rights, notes that kafala made the plight of foreign victims even worse and delayed the registration of their cases. He stresses: “Not a single foreign worker has received compensation or assistance from the Lebanese state.”
One initiative to preserve memory emerged through the book and website The Living Ashes, produced by Ma‘an, a non-governmental organization. The project compiled the names and life stories of victims to ensure they are not forgotten. But for foreign victims, many pages remain blank due to the difficulty of reaching their families or the language barrier. Ahmad Mroue, who worked on the initiative, explains: “We tried to pressure governments that lost citizens in the blast to join the investigation, but the response was limited to a few European countries. Meanwhile, Arab embassies remained completely absent.”
