When one-year-old Ethan Oehlers goes to bed, he says goodnight to his mum and dad. He also says goodnight to his older brother Isaac.
Ethan never met Isaac. But he recognises him from the photos that line the walls of his family home in Melbourne.
The boys' mum, Sarah Copland, says it's important to her and her husband that Ethan knows who Isaac is.
"You never stop being a parent. Isaac's just as much a part of our family now as when he was alive," she says.
A colossal tragedy in Beirut
Isaac was just two years old when he died in the Beirut port explosion of August 4, 2020.
A piece of glass pierced his heart as he sat in his high chair eating dinner that evening, in an apartment about 700 metres from the port.
He died in hospital several hours later from cardiac arrest and internal bleeding, making him the explosion's youngest victim.
The blast was the result of 2,750 tonnes of high-density ammonium nitrate — a chemical commonly used as fertiliser but with the potential to be used in high-grade explosives — igniting in a warehouse fire, sending a massive shock wave through the city and laying waste to nearby business and residential areas.
It was one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history, killing more than 200 people, injuring more than 7000, and leaving 300,000 people homeless.
Two years later, the exact cause of the fire is yet to be determined. What is known is that the ammonium nitrate was improperly stored in the poorly ventilated warehouse for years, the result of layers of bureaucracy and buck-passing between the government, security services and port officials.
A domestic inquiry into the explosion has been stalled since December, when it was suspended for the fourth time due to lawsuits filed against the investigating judge by two former government ministers implicated in its findings.
Charges of carelessness and negligence have been laid against a number of mostly low-level officials, but no convictions have yet been recorded, despite inquiries revealing those at the most senior levels of government knew about the chemicals being stored at the port, and had been repeatedly warned of the risk they posed.
The stalled process has left victims' families and survivors stuck in limbo as they wait for answers, the likelihood anyone will be held accountable seeming to diminish every day.
Fighting to keep up the pressure
A United Nations staffer, Ms Copland has taken it upon herself to fight for justice on behalf of Isaac and other victims of the explosion.
She's party to a lawsuit filed in Texas last month against a company which chartered the ship that originally brought the ammonium nitrate to Beirut in 2013. And she's pushing for the Australian government to lead the way in calling for an international investigation into the cause of the explosion.
She hopes international attention will at a minimum pressure the Lebanese government to allow the domestic investigation to resume, ideally with the help of an outside independent inquiry working alongside it to uncover the truth.
The previous Australian government gave little consideration to her calls for Australia to lead the way, she says, but she's hopeful the current government will be different.
When Labor was in opposition, Anthony Albanese and then-foreign affairs spokesperson Penny Wong issued a joint statement urging the government to "step up" to rally the international community on the issue, and Ms Copland says her local MP, Peter Khalil, has been supportive.
"I do think there is going to be more interest than I got from the previous government," she says.
"When Scott Morrison put out a statement last year he didn't even mention Isaac.
"But I'm not sure yet if more support will mean more behind-the-scenes manoeuvring or more overt support."
A Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesperson says Australia continues to support a full, credible and transparent investigation into the cause of the explosion.
"We strongly support those responsible being held to account and encourage the Lebanese government to resume the domestic investigation," the spokesperson says.
The Lebanese embassy in Australia has not responded to a request for comment.
Negligence a best-case scenario
Many serious questions remain unanswered about what took place in the lead-up to the explosion.
At minimum, the disaster was the result of years of negligence and stifling bureaucracy leading to the erosion of safety standards and unclear chains of responsibility.
Several different authorities with overlapping mandates share responsibility for administering the port, the result of power struggles as the government took control of the facility in 1990 following the Lebanese civil war.
It's a situation even the country's most senior politicians have admitted makes it a breeding ground for corruption.
The ammonium nitrate that ignited in 2020 was first brought to the port in November 2013, aboard a Moldovan-flagged ship called the Rhosus which had been told to make a last-minute stop in Beirut to pick up additional cargo on its way to Mozambique.
When the Rhosus proved physically unable to handle the additional cargo — heavy seismic survey equipment, including vehicles which required ramps the ship did not have — it docked in the port, where it was found to be unseaworthy and was impounded by Lebanese authorities due to outstanding debts.
The ship stayed in the port with the ammonium nitrate on board for almost a year, eventually being abandoned by the man listed as its owner. The company that originally ordered the ammonium nitrate made no attempt to claim it.
The ammonium nitrate was eventually offloaded in October 2014, following warnings from the ship's crew that it was not safe to be kept onboard. It then sat in a warehouse at the port for six years, with various government and port officials denying responsibility for it, and repeatedly petitioning a court to be allowed to sell or re-export it instead of properly securing it.
Separate investigations by international human rights organisation Human Rights Watch and investigative journalism consortium the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project have raised questions as to whether the Rhosus's explosive cargo was ever meant to be delivered to Mozambique, or whether Beirut, with its poor port security and the Syrian civil war raging next door, was in fact the intended destination.
Human Rights Watch cites possible links between the British shell company that owned the ammonium nitrate, Savaro Limited, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, as well as confusion surrounding the ownership of the Rhosus and the circumstances of its arrival in Beirut, as being particularly suggestive of there being more than negligence at play.
Taking the fight to Texas
It's the circumstances surrounding the chartering of the Rhosus which have led to the filing of a $US250 million court case in Houston against TGS ASA, an American-Norwegian geophysical services group which now owns Spectrum Geo, the British company which attempted to charter the Rhosus in 2013.
The lawsuit alleges Spectrum knew the Rhosus was overloaded with ammonium nitrate when it requested the ship come to Beirut to take on the seismic survey equipment, a task it also knew the ship was unfit to perform.
The case was filed on July 11 on behalf of nine American victims of the blast, and is being backed by Accountability Now, a Swiss foundation that aims to support Lebanese civil society.
Zena Wakim, a lawyer for Accountability Now, says the evidence shows Spectrum's dealings with the Lebanese Ministry of Energy and Water were "not a normal contractual relationship", and there were numerous anomalies pointing to potential corruption, bribes and illegal profit-sharing with the government.
"That the Rhosus, a suspicious and inadequate vessel, carrying a cargo of explosive-grade ammonium nitrate, that had been used in the Syrian civil war raging next door, found itself docked in the Port of Beirut in November 2013 was neither coincidence nor happenstance," she says.
TGS ASA says it denies each and every allegation raised in the lawsuit and intends to defend the matter in court.
"The allegations in the lawsuit attempt to draw a connection between the incident in Beirut in 2020 to a survey conducted in Lebanon in 2013 by a subcontractor on behalf of Spectrum, which was acquired by TGS in 2019," a spokesperson said.
"Following the incident in 2020, there were inquiries about the survey conducted in 2013. At that time a comprehensive investigation was conducted, which confirmed that Spectrum acted diligently in its conduct of the survey and had no responsibility for the Beirut incident.
"We are confident that we will prevail in this matter."
Solidarity among the victims
Isaac Oehlers was a US citizen, allowing Sarah Copland to be a party to the suit on his behalf.
She says she's hopeful the court case will bring to light information that could assist the domestic inquiry into the explosion, or strengthen the case for an international inquiry if the domestic one remains stalled.
She also says any damages that might result from the case will be shared amongst all the victims of the blast, not just the US parties to the case.
"[The Lebanese victims] are facing such a dire economic situation at the moment," she says.
"No dollar amount can ever fix things or bring people back or make things better, but it could provide some relief so they can focus on their grief instead of just their survival."
Two years on from the blast, much of the area surrounding Beirut's port remains in a devastated condition, with damage going unrepaired.
A large segment of the tall grain silos located at the port collapsed on Sunday, sending a large cloud of dust and debris into the air and reminding nearby residents of the trauma of August 2020.
Ms Copland keeps in touch with some Beirut residents, a loose network of survivors and victims' families, who she had never met before the explosion.
When an advertisement was recently plastered over a wall in Beirut displaying photos of the blast victims, including Isaac, they put new pictures over the top, eventually succeeding in restoring the wall to its previous state.
"There's a dedicated group of people who are regularly protesting and helping people find justice. They take Isaac's picture to protests ... they always try to include Isaac, which is amazing," Ms Copland says.
"I was at the International Criminal Court for six months, and I've been at the UN now for seven years, so I'd experienced it from that side of things. But when you experience it from the victims' side, it's a whole different ball game."
But the ongoing battle to hold governments and institutions to account has taken a toll, and she and her husband are approaching the second anniversary of Isaac's death with a great deal of grief still to process.
"In some ways the second anniversary is harder than the first. I guess the further on in time you go, you realise 'This is the reality'," she says.
"There was an initial period, the first month after Isaac died, with the lockdowns — we were able to just focus on our grief and our trauma, but as time goes on, we're back at work, we have responsibilities ... it's harder to manage both the grief and the trauma.
"They haven't gone away."
