Libya Security Highlights (December 12 – 18, 2022)

NATIONAL SECURITY ISSUES

• UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said Thursday it evacuated 174 asylum-seekers out of Libya to safety in the Emergency Transit Mechanism in Rwanda.  UNHCR urged countries to provide more legal pathways to help vulnerable asylum-seekers find safety out of Libya.
• Libyan Parliament member Ali Tekbali revealed on Friday evening another kidnapping of a retired Libyan intelligence officer by American forces in the Wadi Kaam area, west of Zliten city. Tekbali tweeted: “The retired intelligence brigadier general, Mohamed Awad, was kidnapped and placed on an American plane in Wadi Kaam.”
• A number of civil society organizations in Libya called for the trial of the kidnappers of the Libyan citizen, Abu Agila Al-Marimi, and for their extradition to the United States of America. “The kidnapping, transfer, and extradition of Al-Marimi is a blatant violation of international humanitarian law, and all covenants, laws, and norms. The trial of Al-Marimi is illegal, and it is a crime that puts the Dbeibeh government, its participants, and all officials in this government under accusation,” Libyan NGOs said in a joint statement.
• Maltese police has intercepted a group of British mercenaries in the country, who were preparing to travel to Libya. The Malta Today quoted sources as saying that the men, who were understood to be former soldiers in the British army, were arrested on a private flight to Libya. However, the group was later released without any charges being brought against them and subsequently left Malta.

• Eighty eight members of the Libyan House of Representatives (HoR) have called on the presidency to hold an emergency session regarding the extradition of the intelligence official Abu-Agila Masud to U.S.A. “Handing over Masud and reopening Lockerbie file was a high treason,” said a statement by the members. “We called on the Public Prosecutor to investigate, and local and international measures must be taken to return Masud safe to his family,” it added.
• Abu Agila Masud, a Libyan intelligence official, will face federal charges in Washington over alleged involvement in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, the U.S. Justice Department said Sunday, December 11. This comes after Scottish authorities announced yesterday that Masud had arrived in U.S. custody. Last month it was reported that Masud had been kidnapped by a militia group in Libya, leading to speculation that he was going to be handed over to the American authorities to stand trial.

• The use by the EU’s border agency, Frontex, of aerial surveillance to enable the Libyan Coast Guard to intercept migrant boats, knowing that migrants and asylum seekers will face systematic and widespread abuse when forcibly returned to Libya, makes Frontex complicit in the abuse, Human Rights Watch and Border Forensics said in a multimedia research feature released today. Using data analysis and research testimony, Human Rights Watch and Border Forensics released an interactive web feature “Airborne Complicity: Frontex Aerial Surveillance Enables Abuse” which documents “the role that Frontex – chartered aircraft – several planes and a drone – play in detecting migrants’ boats in the central Mediterranean and their subsequent interception by Libyan forces,” according to a statement by Human Rights Watch.

NATIONAL POLITICS AND SOCIAL ISSUES

• UN envoy to Libya has told Security Council members that there is a need to apply pressure on the country’s political leaders on the urgency of finalizing the constitutional basis for elections. In his brief to the Security Council on Friday, Abdoulaye Bathily also said: “We need to think creatively about ways to ensure free, fair, transparent and simultaneous presidential and parliamentary elections are organized.” 
• The Prime Minister of the Government of National Unity, Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, will address the Libyan public in a speech tonight, Thursday, December 15, at 9 PM Libya time, announced the government. The government did not disclose any further details about Dbeibeh’s speech. It notably comes amid wide criticism against his government over alleged cooperation with the United States to extradite Abu Agila Masoud Al-Marimi, a former Libyan intelligence operative accused of preparing the bomb that brought down Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.

• The Libyan political analyst, Mohamed al-Jarh, confirmed that “the Dbeibehs (the family of Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh) and those supporting them had sold Libya and its resources,” indicating that “the process of selling the Libyans has now begun.” “The turn (of being sold) is to be taken by all, and the buying and selling process comes in different ways,” al-Jarh said in a statement on his official Facebook account.
• Forty four Libyan political parties denounced the kidnapping and extradition of the Libyan citizen Abu Agila Masud to the United States, calling on the Libyans to take collective action to denounce the crime and prosecute those responsible for it through a sit-in in front of the United Nations headquarters and the embassies of the United States at home and abroad to denounce what it described as a “heinous crime.” .
• The head of the interim unity government, Abdel-Hamid Dbeibeh, is ready to sacrifice half of the Libyan people in exchange for his remaining in power, political analyst, Abdel-Azim Al-Beshti said. Beshti’s remarks came as part of a campaign of popular discontent after the government of Dbeibeh handed over the Libyan citizen, Abu AgilaAl-Marimi, to the UnitedStates, who the US authorities accuse of involvement in the Lockerbie case at the end of the last century.

• Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, said that the Libyan citizen, Abu Agila Al-Marimi, will face American justice for his role in the Lockerbie case of 1988. “Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir al-Marimi is finally in U.S. custody to face justice for his alleged role in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103,” Blinken tweeted. “I want to thank the The Justice Dept for its tireless work to pursue him. We will always remember the victims of this heinous act.” He added.

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

• The Libyan Government of National Unity, led by Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, officially rejected Egypt’s unilateral decision to demarcate its western maritime borders, considering it as a violation of its territorial waters and the continental shelf of the Libyan state. “This demarcation is unjust because it was unilaterally announced,” reads a statement from the government’s foreign ministry. “It violates Libya’s territorial integrity and the principles of good faith and respect for sovereignty”.
• President of the Libyan Presidential Council (LPC), Mohamed al-Menfi, put forward the Council’s vision for a solution to the political and economic crisis to achieve stability in Libya, during his meeting Friday with US President Joe Biden, on the sidelines of the US-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington, according to LPC. The meeting was attended by Member of the US Congressional Armed Forces Committee, John Garamendi, and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi.
• The Senate of Pakistan and Libya’s House of Representatives on Wednesday agreed to constitute a coordination committee on both sides in order to fix modalities, ensure implementation of memorandums of understanding (MoUs) signed in different areas, and further cement parliamentary relations between the two countries. The delegation, led by Secretary General of the Parliament of Libya Abdualla Almasri Mussa, held a meeting in Islamabad at the Parliament House with Senate Secretary Qasim Samad Khan.
• German Special Envoy to Libya, Christian Buck, and Ambassador, Michael Ohnmacht, discussed in Tripoli with Foreign Minister, Najla al-Mangoush, “what Germany diplomacy can do to help Libya to resume the Berlin Process leading to inclusive elections, restoring unity and renewing legitimacy.”

  
• The U.N. Special Envoy to Libya, Abdoulaye Bathily, and Chairman of the Presidential Council, Mohamed Al-Menfi, spoke on the phone on Sunday to discuss Presidential Council’s proposal to meet with the leaders of the House of Representatives and the High Council of State. During the bilateral call, Bathily reiterated the UN’s support for “inclusive dialogue initiatives to agree on the way forward in Libya,” according to statement by the UN envoy via Twitter.