Justice Minister Adel Nassar said the seizure of a large quantity of explosives belonging to Hezbollah posed a serious threat to national security and fully justified referring the case to the country’s Judicial Council, stressing that no one should be above the law.

In an interview on Voice of Lebanon radio and VDL24, Nassar expressed confidence in the prosecutor general at the Court of Cassation and the military prosecutor general, praising them for handling the case with courage and professionalism.

He said he had no reservations about their work and urged the public to respect judicial independence and the confidentiality of the ongoing investigation.

“The judiciary is doing its job in this case,” Nassar said.

He stressed that transporting and storing explosives on such a scale endangered both the public and the Lebanese State. The mere fact that the explosives were held outside State control, he said, constituted a serious security risk.

There has been considerable speculation about what the explosives were intended for, Nassar said. One possibility is that they were meant for security operations, given the history of previous incidents and attacks. Another is that they were intended for military operations conducted outside the authority of the Lebanese state.

“Either possibility poses a threat to national security, society and the State,” he said.

Nassar also pointed to public statements by Hezbollah acknowledging ownership of the explosives, saying that this, along with the other available information, would form part of the investigation.

He argued that the danger posed by the explosives, the fact that they were transported and stored outside State control, and positions undermining government decisions all strengthened the case for referral to the Judicial Council. He singled out the principle that the state must retain exclusive control over the use of force.

Each of these factors, Nassar said, was independently serious enough to raise national security concerns and could justify transferring the case to the Judicial Council, Lebanon’s highest criminal court for cases of exceptional importance.

“The issue is not just the explosives themselves, but also the danger involved in moving and storing them and what the investigation may uncover about their intended use,” he said.

Nassar said the Cabinet had unanimously adopted a ministerial policy statement affirming that the use of force must remain exclusively in the hands of the Lebanese State. The government had also voted by a majority to prohibit weapons outside state control.

He said the explosives case touched directly on those commitments, as well as on the need to prevent unauthorized transfers and storage of explosives and keep Lebanon from being drawn into conflicts involving other countries.

The State must not allow Lebanon to become a battleground for other parties or provide justification for wars fought at the expense of the country and its people, particularly residents of southern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs, he added.

Nassar said he did not believe any minister would dispute the State’s responsibility to refer a case involving a potential threat to national security to the appropriate judicial authority.

“Our goal is to protect Lebanese society, safeguard the State and strengthen its institutions,” he said. “We are not acting against any particular community.”

He stressed that storing explosives in a densely populated area such as Beirut’s southern suburbs put the local population at immediate risk. Such concerns, he said, could not reasonably be dismissed as politically motivated or as an attempt to satisfy an outside party.

“No responsible official could accept a situation in which there is no investigation and no deterrent against a group that has put an entire area like the southern suburbs at risk,” Nassar said.

Nassar said the investigation was proceeding seriously and that nothing had obstructed its progress. The government’s consideration of referring the case to the Judicial Council did not reflect a lack of confidence in investigators or any belief that they had failed to do their job.

Rather, he said, the decision was being considered because of the scale of the case and the danger posed by activities carried out outside the state’s authority.

“There will be no leniency, and no one is above the law,” he said. “The investigation must go all the way, without hesitation, because the security of the country and its people is at stake.”

Nassar argued that the absence of effective state authority and the existence of parallel power structures could leave parts of Lebanese society exposed to danger. Storing explosives in residential neighborhoods, he said, was one example of how communities could pay the price when armed groups operate beyond state control.

He rejected the suggestion that strengthening state institutions would come at the expense of any particular group. Building a state capable of protecting all its citizens, he said, was in the interest of the entire country.

Turning to the conflict with Israel, Nassar said Lebanon should confront its adversary through the appropriate channel: diplomacy. But he stressed that the State first needed to establish its exclusive authority over weapons and the use of force.

He said calls to recover every inch of occupied Lebanese territory and rebuild areas devastated by the conflict were not directed against any segment of the population, particularly residents of the south and Beirut’s southern suburbs. Rather, those objectives were intended to protect all Lebanese.

“No one can deny that there is a struggle between the authority of the state and a parallel system that operates outside it,” Nassar said. “That conflict exists because there is a group that says it is not bound by the state’s decisions.”

The objective, he added, was to build a functioning State, bring illegal weapons under its control and rebuild the areas destroyed in the conflict.