Libya: House of Representatives begins it work

The newly elected House of Representatives pressed ahead as planned and held its opening session on 4 August in Tobruk. Around 158 members of the 188 representatives who have been elected to the house so far attended the session with most of them from the liberal and federalist currents.

The Islamists’ efforts to hold the handover of power in Tripoli, rather than in the east, were a complete failure and, predictably, led to the session being boycotted by the Misratans and the Islamists, who insisted that it was unconstitutional. Even their attempts to hold a parallel meeting in the capital proved disastrous and their number was so small that no-one turned up.

Meanwhile, members of the outgoing GNC made an appeal to the Supreme Constitutional Court to rule on whether the sessions in Tobruk are legal because they should have been held in Benghazi. However, no decision will be forthcoming any time soon because the court is on holiday until September.

Despite the fuss they are making, however, the Islamists have been completely outmanoeuvred by their liberal rivals. On top of the fact that such a large number of MPs attended, the first session of the new ruling body was given international recognition through the attendance of representatives of Arab and other foreign governments, as well as from the Arab League, the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) and the Africa Union (AU). Further legitimacy was afforded to the house when representatives from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and the US - who held a meeting in Washington this week on the margins of the US-Africa Summit - gave their backing to the House of Representatives.

It, therefore, seems that Libya and the rest of the world is accepting the new house as a fait accompli despite the Islamists and Abu Sahmaine’s objections. This has left the Islamists in an extremely weak position and means that their winning the battle on the ground is more important than ever. As such, Libya might well end up having a political arena dominated by the liberals while the ground itself is in the hands of the Islamists.

For more news and expert analysis about Libya, please see Libya Focus and Libya Politics & Security.

© 2014 Menas Associates

Libya: Kidnapped Maltese oil worker released unharmed

A Maltese oil worker abducted by a Libyan militia on 17 July was released unharmed yesterday. According to a report, 42 year old Martin Galea has already flown back to Malta after eleven days in captivity.

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat welcomed the retired armed forces captain on the tarmac at Malta airport and thanked the diplomatic service, the army and the Muslim community in Malta for helping secure his release.

Galea is an employee of Arab Geophysical Exploration Services and was abducted from the suburbs of Tripoli while he was being driven to work.

The Maltese government said that no ransom was paid for Galea's release and that it was too early to say who had abducted him or why. Given the increased spate of kidnappings by criminal gangs, however, the motivations are just as likely to have been financial rather than ideological.

Although he did not elaborate, Galea said the Maltese consul in Tripoli, Marisa Farrugia, had saved his life. A Maltese government official stated "We will fill in the blanks only after the Security Service has spoken to him. So far what we know for a fact is that he has been released and that was our priority.”

For more news and expert analysis about Libya, please see Libya Focus and Libya Politics & Security.

© 2014 Menas Associates

IOCs evacuate staff from Libya

Italian energy giant, ENI, has responded to the escalating violence in the capital by moving fifteen members of its staff out of Tripoli. The employees were moved to the offshore Bouri oilfield before being whisked away to Malta and onto Italy.

French company Total has also moved its staff out of the capital, getting them out of the country by road to Tunisia. The United Nations has also pulled its remaining staff out of the country. 

Following the abduction and beheading of a Filipino construction worker on 15 July, the Philippines government ordered its estimated 13,000 nationals in Libya to leave the country, instructing them to contact the embassy in Tripoli for instructions on "mass evacuation."

Yet how such evacuations are going to take place while the airport is out of action and with little prospect of its restarting operations any time soon is unclear. 

Although the airport at Zawara is preparing to take both domestic and international flights, it is still going to take several days before it is in a position to do so. It also still requires the agreement and support of the Ministry of Transport and the Civil Aviation Authority. More importantly there are still question marks over safety and insurance issues.  

Meanwhile there are growing fears about evacuation by road given that the confrontation has now spilled beyond the airport area and out to Janzour. 

For more news and expert analysis about Libya, please see Libya Focus and Libya Politics & Security.

© 2014 Menas Associates

Libya pushes ahead with plan for parliamentary elections

Somewhat incredibly Libya is still pushing ahead with its plan to hold elections for a new parliament on 25 June. Despite the upheaval and chaos, some Libyans seem to believe that electing a new ruling body at this time will work as a sort of panacea and provide the country with the opportunity for a new start.

Even General Khalifa Haftar, who is battling it out against militants in the east, declared this week that he would halt all fighting for one day on 25 June so that the polls can go ahead.

Yet such optimism may well be misplaced. It is true that electing a new parliament will refresh the political scene. It is also likely to result in the Islamists losing some of their grip on power. This week the campaign poster of a Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Ali Bouzakok, was torn down by angry crowds in Benghazi.

While the Islamists will not disappear from the scene completely, it seems almost certain, given the ongoing hostility towards them, that they will not be able to dominate the parliament in the way they have been able to dominate the Congress.

However, with the country so polarised and with the central authorities still lacking in any real power or authority, it is difficult to see how these elections will really alter the status quo. Furthermore, some of the thornier issues, such as whether or not to elect a new President directly or indirectly, still have to be thrashed out, meaning that the potential for further deadlock is still a reality.

Added to all this the fact that the number of voters who have registered for these elections is still so low; it is difficult to see how this new parliament will have any real legitimacy.

For more news and expert analysis about Libya, please see Libya Focus and Libya Politics & Security.

© 2014 Menas Associates

Saadi Qadhafi extradited to Libya

Saadi Qadhafi, the third son of Libya’s deposed dictator Muammar Qadhafi, was extradited early today from neighbouring Niger back to Libya. According to a statement posted on the government’s official Facebook page, Saadi is currently being held in the high-security Hadaba Prison in Tripoli.

"The Libyan Government thanks the President of the Republic of Niger, Mahamadou Issoufou, we also thank the Niger Government and the people of Niger for their cooperation with the Libyan Government in pledging its commitment to the treatment of the accused on the principles of justice and international norms in dealing with prisoners. God save Libya.”

Unofficial pictures were also released by the government-backed militia holding the businessman and former professional footballer, allegedly showing Saadi dressed in a blue prison uniform having his head shaved. There is a high likelihood that he will face the death penalty.

Libya has been seeking his extradition since he fled to Niger in the wake of the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that ousted his father. Niamey had previously refused to hand over Saadi around the time of the first anniversary of the February uprising because they feared he would be executed if he returned to Libya. A government spokesperson for the Nigerien authorities, Marou Amadou, said that it would only extradite Saadi “to a government which has an independent and impartial justice system”.

Following this request from Tripoli, Niger’s President Mahamadou Issoufou said any extradition requests would be viewed on strict legal merits alone, without referring specifically to the Saadi case. He had originally been granted asylum in November 2011 on humanitarian grounds, shortly after Interpol issued a warrant for his arrest in connection with allegations of forcefully misappropriated property and armed intimidation when he was head of the Libyan Football Federation. As a member of the ICC, Niger was obliged to extradite Qadhafi.

Saadi’s extradition is a real coup for the Libyan authorities. He was one of the most hated figures in the Qadhafi regime and arguably the most disliked of all Qadhafi’s sons. He had a reputation for being exceptionally brutal and is remembered in Benghazi particularly for his bulldozing of the Al-Ahli SC (Benghazi) stadium in an act of revenge after his football team, Al-Ahli SC (Tripoli), lost to the opposing side.

There is likely to be ongoing jubilation in Libya at the news. Congress is congratulating the families of the martyrs and the revolutionaries and is thanking Niger. This will serve as a reminder to a deeply troubled country of why they launched the uprising in the first place. 

For more news and expert analysis about Libya, please see Libya Focus and Libya Politics & Security.

© 2014 Menas Associates

Libya: Violence in Benghazi continues

It has been another week of violence in Benghazi with state forces clearly no closer to curbing the campaign of assassinations and attacks that have blighted the city for months. As the spokesperson of the Joint Security Chamber in Benghazi, Ibrahim Al-Sharaf, described, “the security situation in Benghazi is still tense… The assassinations are continuing.”

On 7 February the imam of the Al-Ansari mosque in the Hadaiq area, Sheikh Atif Al-Madouli, was shot dead by gunmen as he was returning from Asr prayers. Al-Madouli is believed to have worked for the external intelligence services under the former regime.

Meanwhile, there have been a series of explosions targeting civilian locations. On 5 February, a gunman threw a grenade into the playground of a private primary school in Benghazi’s Tabalino district. The attack occurred at around 11.00 when the school playground was full. Six children were injured in the attack.

Then, on 9 February, two bombs exploded at dawn in the city. One exploded at the Arous Al-Bahr (Bride of the Sea) restaurant on the corniche. It appears that bags full of explosives had been planted all around the restaurant and destroyed it completely. The other blast occurred in Ghazir Street and was the result of a booby trapped car. It is unclear who was behind these attacks, and why these particular targets were selected, but restaurants are often associated in the minds of Islamist militants as places of vice and decadence.

It was also reported that a booby trapped car was found on the same day behind the headquarters of the Special Forces in Benghazi. Security forces are reported to have discovered 350 kilos of TNT at the site.

These attacks were followed by another explosion at dawn on 10 February in a house in the Al-Laithi district. It is currently being reported that two people were killed in the blast but this explosion actually appears to have been the result of badly stored weapons and ammunition.

For more news and expert analysis about Libya, please see Libya Focus and Libya Politics & Security.

© 2014 Menas Associates

Libya: Son of Benghazi's Special Forces head kidnapped

Ali Ouanis Bukhamada, the son of the head of Special Forces in Benghazi, Ouanis Bukhamada, was kidnapped last week from outside a restaurant behind Benghazi University. Two cars blocked the young man’s way and unknown men forced him inside one of the vehicles and drove him away.

It is not clear exactly who took the young Bukhamada but it is widely believed to be the work of an Islamist militia or group operating in the country’s second city. The Special Forces chief declared, “This is an attempt to blackmail me or to pressurise me so as to hinder us from imposing security and stability.”

According to some rumours, Ali Ouanis Bukhamada’s kidnappers demanded that Special Forces pull out of the Islamist-dominated Qawarsha neighbourhood in return for the young man’s release. Bukhamada denied these rumours and asserted, “I don’t have any forces in Qawarsha. I don’t know what they want. Let them tell us and I am quite open to them.” Other reports circulating on the internet and on social networking sites have claimed that the young man has already been killed by his abductors.

Ali Ouanis’s abduction was followed by a number of clashes between Special Forces and militant groups. One such clash occurred at a farm in Qawarsha, located on the western outskirts of Benghazi, where armed gunmen had holed themselves up and had opened fire on a helicopter engaged in a combing operation. Special Forces troops moved in on the farm, putting the area under siege and closing all the main roads that lead to it. The ensuing clashes left one soldier dead and four others injured.

In a show of support, Justice Minister Salah Al-Marghani flew to Benghazi after Ali Ouanis’s kidnap to meet his father. There is, however, little hope that the young man’s captors will be brought to justice. Going by what has happened to other kidnap victims in the city, there is limited hope too that Bukhamada will be found alive.

For more news and expert analysis about Libya, please see Libya Focus and Libya Politics & Security. 

© 2014 Menas Associates

Libya: Political Exclusion Law Committee finally gets going

 

The 77-member Committee of Applying the Standards of Taking Up Public Posts, the body tasked with implementing the political exclusion law, has begun its work in earnest. This week, the committee, comprising mainly those who were part of the old Integrity Committee, summoned 11 members of the Congress to inform them that the Political Exclusion Law applies to them.

Four of these 11 have already attended committee sessions and all demanded that they be given one week to prove that the law is not applicable to them. It appears that the committee granted them their request and that they will all have the chance to defend themselves. The remaining seven from this first batch are due to attend hearings with the committee this coming week.

 

This first group is clearly just the tip of the iceberg and represents the first set of cases that the committee had been able to work its way through. According to the committee, out of 200 Congress members, so far only 98 of them have actually completed and handed in the compulsory forms distributed by the committee that oblige members to provide details of their past. Implementation of the law is clearly going to be a long, drawn-out process.

 

For more news and expert analysis about Libya, please see Libya Focus and Libya Politics & Security.

© 2013 Menas Associates

Libyans fear armed confrontation

 

The situation remains tense throughout most of Libya, especially in Tripoli, as uncertainty, fear and widespread rumours of a possible coup and armed confrontation abound. Quite who might attempt a coup and which groups might be involved in armed confrontation is not at all clear, as the country totters on the brink of chaos.

 

A 20 August report in the London-based Guardian spoke of “growing fears of an Egypt-style standoff between the ruling Muslim Brotherhood and opposition forces, with rebels blockading key oil ports and the capital”.

 

The Brotherhood's Justice and Construction Party, which only won 10% of the vote and 17 of the 80 party list seats in the July 2012 election, might arguably now see itself as the main political power in the GNC, following last month's on-off decision of the largest coalition party, the National Forces Alliance, which won 48% of the vote and 39 of the seats last year, to boycott GNC sessions, at least temporarily.

 

But the real question at the moment is who, if anyone, can really claim to be governing the country, or to be the main political or military force in the land. With the government's authority crumbling, one diplomat in Tripoli was quoted this week as saying that “Congress has basically collapsed.”

 

In the present state of chaos, the word “opposition”, rather like “government”, conjures up all sorts of possibilities, some still vaguely real, others more fanciful, although the beleaguered government of Prime Minister Zidan is still nominally in charge. In fact, some analysts might argue that the mere fact that he is still the country's prime minister suggests that he might be in a slightly stronger position than he was a week or so ago, especially if Tripoli does not fall to “opposition forces” and if he is able to overcome the armed protesters who have been holding the country's oil terminals and production to ransom.

 

For more news and expert analysis about Libya, please see Libya Focusand Libya Politics & Security.

 

© 2013 Menas Associates

Libya: Western concern

 

Even if the explosion was an accident, the blast is yet another indication of the chaos and insecurity that is gripping the country. Libya seems to be gradually unravelling, as the extent of the government's lack of power is becoming increasingly apparent. Recent events have shown all the more clearly that the central authorities are almost completely impotent in the face of other localised powers that plainly have their own very different agendas.

The situation is certainly deemed serious enough for the US to prepare itself for the worst. Pentagon spokesman George Little announced this week that it had transferred 500 US marines from Spain to the NATO base at Sigonella in Sicily to be ready for rapid deployment if necessary.

Meanwhile, the US State Department announced this week that it had ordered the departure of a number of non-essential staff from Tripoli. State Department spokesperson, Patrick Ventrell, declared, “In light of the current unsettled conditions around major anti-government demonstrations in Tripoli, the under-secretary for management has approved the ordered departure of non-emergency personnel from Libya."

The British Embassy similarly pulled out a number of its staff on a temporary basis. The British Council also decided to close its office until the situation stabilised.

All this bodes very badly for Libya and its efforts to put the country back on a normal footing.

For more news and expert analysis about Libya, please see Libya Focusand Libya Politics & Security.

© 2013 Menas Associates

Libyan regime is planning to plant dead bodies at strategic sites

Today Menas Associates has heard from our sources in Tripoli that the regime is planning to trick the world into believing that that Allied aerial attacks against strategic targets has led to many civilian deaths.

In recent weeks the bodies of the numerous civilians who have been killed by the regime's forces in and around Tripoli and Zawiya have not been handed back to their relatives. Instead they have been taken away by the regime and have reportedly been stored in morgues.

Foreign minister Musa Kusa has now publicly called on volunteers to go to strategic sites that the Allied aircraft might strike and act as human shields. We have heard from very reliable sources in Tripoli, however, that the real plan is to plant the bodies of the already dead civilians at these sites and then claim that they have been killed by the Allies.

This will be done to discredit the Allies, sow doubt in the Arab street about the air-raids, and bolster support amongst the regime's own supporters.

Libya divided by pro and anti regime activists

The rebellion in Libya against Colonel Qadhafi has graduated into a small scale war fought between two groups; one with the strength in armour and aircraft and the other lightly armed with little or no armoured vehicles and no air support. The confrontation was entirely precipitated by a regime in Tripoli which is determined, as it always has been, to survive at whatever cost to the country and its people.

The eastern region and particularly Benghazi has chosen to challenge the regime of Colonel Qadhafi without benefit of planning, training or provision for a bloody conflict. In particular, it has so far ignored the lessons of the North Africa campaigns of the Second World War which demonstrated the key importance of logistics on a war front that runs for hundreds of km in a fine and discontinuous line parallel with the Mediterranean Sea coast.

The movement of troops, munitions and support facilities along this littoral corridor is vulnerable to disruption as supply lines become attenuated. The inability of rebel forces to support the uprising in Tripoli, Zawiya, Misurata and other centres west of the Gulf of Sirte is a testimony to this fact and possibly will be a principal obstacle to prosecution of a successful war by those opposed to the Qadhafis.

For more news and expert analysis about Libya, please see Libya Focus and Libya Politics & Security.

© 2011 Menas Associates

Libya releases details about Canadian citizen accused of industrial espionage

Details have been released regarding the repatriation of a Canadian citizen, Douglas O'Reilly, who had been prevented from leaving Libya after being accused of industrial espionage during a recent trip to Tripoli. There is no information on when he will actually leave Libya but the restrictions no longer apply. It is understood that O'Reilly was made to stay in his hotel room in Tripoli while investigations were carried out into the accusations.

The news will be of interest to those doing business in Libya because it highlights one of the concerns for foreign workers in the Jamahiriya. The vagaries of local security systems mean that there is always a chance, albeit small, of workers being hindered by overly zealous local authorities.

It was alleged that O'Reilly was working clandestinely for clients interested in disadvantaging BP's current offshore drilling campaign. It is alleged that they sought to highlight the numerous offshore archaeological sites that would be at risk if there was another oil spill similar to the one that BP has recently experienced in the Gulf of Mexico. O'Reilly had been placed under surveillance by Libyan authorities who didn't believe his claims that he was simply a touring archaeologist concerned about a new BP offshore rig.

It was also alleged in other reports that he was working with US intelligence “to gather information aiming to ensure the failure of the drilling project” and that he had been spotted meeting a US diplomat who is suspected of being a CIA spy.

Jim Delgado, of the Texas-based Institute of Nautical Archaeology, said that everyone wanted to avoid a repeat of the Gulf of Mexico spill but that his institute has been discussing the oil project with Libya, which he says is taking pains to ensure drilling doesn't adversely affect any future finds.

For more news and expert analysis about Libya, please see Libya Focus and Libya Politics & Security.

© 2010 Menas Associates