A Lebanese court has sentenced the food influencer Georges Hanna Dib to life imprisonment with hard labour for manufacturing and smuggling drugs, Al Jazeera reported.
Dib, who posts as Dr Food and has more than five million followers on TikTok, was convicted under Lebanon's narcotics law of manufacturing, trafficking and smuggling drugs abroad. Judge Elie al-Helou delivered the sentence on Sunday, in a case brought before a Mount Lebanon investigative judge.
He was also fined 120 million Lebanese pounds, about $1,341 at current rates, and stripped of civil rights.
The case
The court found that 820 kilograms of hashish, around 1,800 pounds, was hidden inside cake packaging produced in Baalbek in eastern Lebanon, then moved to Turkey and shipped on from there.
The drugs were seized in 2024. Formal charges followed in February 2025, and sentencing came this weekend.
Tried in his absence
Dib was not present. He is believed to be outside Lebanon; his last Instagram story was posted on March 27 from Beirut's waterfront.
Neither he nor any lawyer acting for him has commented publicly on the conviction, and his social media accounts have made no reference to the case. That absence should be read for what it is. A conviction in absentia is a court's finding reached without the defendant putting a case, and it is not the same evidential position as a contested trial in which a defendant was heard and disbelieved.
Whether the judgment can be revisited, and whether Lebanon will seek his return, is not addressed in the reporting.
The scale of the fine
The financial penalty is the detail most likely to puzzle readers outside Lebanon. A fine of 120 million in the national currency converts to roughly $1,300.
That gap reflects the collapse in value of the Lebanese pound against the dollar during the country's financial crisis. Penalties denominated in pounds have been eroded in real terms to sums that no longer function as deterrents. The custodial sentence, not the fine, is the part of this judgment that carries weight.
Why the case drew attention
Dib's following is the reason this is a story rather than a routine narcotics conviction, and it is worth being precise about that. Nothing in the reporting suggests his food content was connected to the offences, or that his audience was involved in any way.
What the case does show is the route: production in Baalbek, in Lebanon's east, concealment inside a legitimate food product, and export through Turkey to buyers elsewhere. That is the shape of the trade the court found, and it is a more informative detail than the defendant's follower count.
