France will request, this Monday, June 5, the lifting of the immunity of Rami Adwan, the Lebanese ambassador in Paris, under investigation for rape and intentional violence. “Steps in this direction will be taken during the day,” AFP learned from a diplomatic source. “Given the seriousness of the facts mentioned”, the lifting of this immunity by the Lebanese authorities is “necessary to facilitate the work of French justice”, estimated the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Friday.
An investigation was opened after complaints from two former embassy employees, sources close to the investigation said on Friday, confirming information from French online media, Mediapart. Rami Adwan, for his part, contests the acts of aggression.
The first complaint, for rape, dates back to June 2022. The young woman, aged 31 and employed as an editor, explained that she was raped in May 2020 in the private apartment of the ambassador, in office since 2017. In her complaint, she declares having signified her refusal of a sexual relationship, having shouted and cried. In 2020, she had already reported to the police that she had been hit by this same Rami Adwan during an argument in his office. But she had not filed a complaint so as not to “break the life of this man”, married and father of a family. She explains that she had a “love relationship” with the ambassador who exercised “psychological and physical violence on her with daily humiliations”.
The second complaint dates from last February. This young woman, aged 28, had denounced a series of physical attacks often committed after a refusal to have sex. She too had also formed an intimate relationship with Rami Adwan shortly after his arrival as an intern in 2018. She claims in particular that Rami Adwan tried to hit her with his car during an argument on the sidelines of the Forum for Peace in Caen, in september. She also accuses the ambassador of having tried to asphyxiate her at home by burying her face on her bed at the end of December.
“My client disputes all allegations of assault in any form: verbal, moral, sexual. He had, with these two women between 2018 and 2022, romantic relationships interspersed with disputes and breakups, “reacted Me Karim Beylouni, Rami Adwan’s lawyer.
Lebanon announced on Saturday that it would dispatch a team of investigators to Paris. This “commission of inquiry, chaired by the secretary general of the ministry […] at the embassy in Paris”, must question the ambassador and collect the testimonies of the embassy staff. She must also meet with the French authorities “to clarify” the information communicated to the media and which was not transmitted to the Lebanese ministry “through diplomatic channels”, the Lebanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a press release.
