Lebanon’s former Prime Minister Saad Hariri is facing a lawsuit filed by two private jet flight attendants who claim that they were sexually assaulted aboard his private plane.
CNN reported that the complaint was filed in the United States District Court on March 20, 2023 against Saad El-Din Rafik Al-Hariri and five co-defendants.
The female flight attendants, one from Australia, and the other from Wales, were only identified as Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2 in court documents.
The incidents occurred between 2006-2009 on the former Prime Minister’s private Boeing 737.
The plaintiffs were able to file a lawsuit after New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed the Adult Survivors Act, which empowers survivors of sexual offenses that occurred when they were over the age of 18 to file suit regardless of when the abuse occurred.
According to a report by the Australian Financial Review, Jane Doe 1, the Australian woman, alleges that she “experienced harassment and intimidation from many of the men onboard [Mr Hariri]’s flights”.
The lawsuit, according to CNN, also alleges that Saad subjected both plaintiffs “to an atmosphere permeated with inappropriate sexual contact, coercion, harassment, and demands for sexual favors”.
In a report by the Times of Israel, the plaintiffs alleged that the former Lebanese Prime Minister was regularly drunk and high on cocaine and prescription medications during private flights between 2006 and 2009. The plaintiffs alleged that during those flights, Saad would routinely grope them and raped one of them multiple times.
The two plaintiffs worked for Saudi Oger, the Saudi Arabia-based conglomerate owned by the Hariri family. Jane Doe 1 quit her job in 2009, and Jane Doe 2 was fired, according to court documents.
Hariri’s press office denied the accusations in a statement made to CNN, saying the lawsuit is, “full of completely false and unacceptable accusations, aimed at provocation and slander against Prime Minister Hariri”.
Hariri, 52, served as the prime minister of Lebanon from 2009 to 2011 and 2016 to 2020. He is the son of former Lebanese prime minister Rafic al-Hariri, and entered politics following his father’s assassination in February 2005.