Dr Food is out. The Lebanese food creator, whose real name is Georges Hanna Dib, was released from custody on October 15 after a court applied the country’s new general amnesty law to his case and dropped the drug charges against him. He had been serving a life sentence with hard labour, handed down in absentia in July while he was still a fugitive, over 820 kilograms of hashish concealed in confectionery. He was arrested on August 23. Fifty-three days later he went home.
A TikTok food influencer sentenced to life in prison was accused of hiding 820kg of hashish inside sweets and cake packaging Dr Food was released under Lebanon’s new amnesty law, which covers qualifying drug offences committed before March 1, 2026 https://t.co/BZ5AQNEsDs
— Interesting AF (@interesting_aIl) October 17, 2026
The sentence came while Dr Food was still at large
The Mount Lebanon Criminal Court convicted him on July 19, with Judge Elie al-Helou presiding, in a hearing he did not attend because nobody could find him. The sentence was life with hard labour, a fine of 120 million Lebanese pounds, about $1,341, and the loss of his civil rights. Several co-defendants, Lebanese and Syrian nationals, were sentenced alongside him.
He was picked up a month later at his home in Rahbeh, in the northern governorate of Akkar, after roughly four weeks of surveillance. Internal Security Forces described how he had stayed ahead of them. “The suspect would film his content and then deliberately leave his place of residence, frequently changing the vehicles and phone numbers he used in an attempt to evade surveillance,” the force said.
The 820 kilograms came out of Baalbek and went through Türkiye
The case rests on a seizure from 2024 of around 820 kilograms of hashish, and on what it was hidden inside. Investigators say the drug was concealed in cake and biscuit packaging produced in Baalbek and routed through Türkiye for export. Separately, sweets and food items from his own confectionery line were intercepted at Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport, bound for the Gulf.
He has never accepted any of it. Before his arrest, he posted on TikTok calling himself innocent and telling his followers not to listen to what was being said about him. His lawyer has denied the trafficking allegation and submitted location and phone records in his defence.
The amnesty is Lebanon’s first since 1991, and he is not the only one out
Parliament passed the law on August 12, and it came into force on October 15, the day he was released, once it was published in the Official Gazette and a constitutional challenge had failed. It covers drug offences committed before March 1 of this year, which captures his case, and excludes repeat offenders, terrorism, premeditated murder, rape, human trafficking and corruption. The driver is overcrowding: Lebanon holds around 8,500 prisoners in a system built for 4,500. The same court issued roughly 50 similar rulings on the same day.
“Decided to drop the charges against him in the drug case for which he was recently arrested, since he is covered by the general amnesty law,” a judicial source said of the ruling. As of the latest information, Dr Food has not been acquitted, and his conviction has not been overturned on its merits; the proceedings were ended, and the charges were dropped. A separate domestic violence case brought by his former wife remains open, and he was granted bail in it earlier this month. No named official has spoken publicly about the release.