Libya Security Highlights (January 22-28, 2024)

NATIONAL SECURITY ISSUES

• The Libyan Red Crescent announced that it recovered a dead body on the seashore of Sabratah, located 70 km west of Tripoli. The Red Crescent said locals reported the body’s location, and the Libyan NGO coordinated with the police in Sabratha to retrieve the body and transfer it to the hospital to complete the legal procedures.

  

• Libya’s Drug Enforcement Agency branch in Derna announced the arrest of the city’s biggest drug dealer. The suspect was trafficking hashish, according to a statement on the agency’s Facebook page. Authorities seized large quantities of hashish weighing 5 kilograms and smaller amounts from the dealer’s possession. Legal procedures have been taken against the accused trafficker.

• The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said that 213 migrants were intercepted off the coast of Libya last week. “From 14 to 20 January 2024, 213 migrants were intercepted and returned to Libya,” IOM said in a statement. So far in 2024, 332 migrants were intercepted and returned to Libya, including 315 men, 8 women and 9 children, according to IOM.

• The 444 Brigade, an armed group affiliated with the Government of National Unity’s defense ministry, has announced an “unprecedented strike” on fuel smugglers and human traffickers in the desert. In a message via Facebook, the Turkish-trained armed group announced the seizure of “convoys of tank trucks in the desert carrying smuggled fuel out of the country” and “cars full of irregular migrants coming from abroad to cross the sea ”.

NATIONAL POLITICS AND SOCIAL ISSUES

• Libya’s deadly flash flood in September constituted a climate and environmental catastrophe that requires $1.8 billion in reconstruction and recovery, an international report said. Huge swathes of the city of Derna were destroyed in the flood, after heavy rainfall from Storm Daniel crashed through two aging dams, sweeping entire districts into the Mediterranean.
• UN Envoy and the President of the Libyan Presidential Council agreed to continue close cooperation towards reaching consensus for a unified government to lead Libya to elections, according to Envoy Abdoulaye Bathily.

  “Today, I met with President of the Presidential Council Mr. Mohammed Al Menfi. We discussed ways to advance the Libyan political process,” Bathily said on X. “I commended the constructive role and unwavering commitment of President Menfi, to fostering stability and peace in Libya,” he pointed out.

  
• The trial of Abdullah Al-Senussi, the former military intelligence chief under Libya’s old regime led by Muammar Gaddafi, has been postponed yet again, this time to January 29th. Al-Senussi’s defense lawyer, Ahmed Nashad, confirmed that the Court of Appeals in Tripoli postponed the trial session because his client was not brought from prison for the 12th consecutive time. Meanwhile, former regime official Mansour Dhao did appear via video conference at Monday’s session.

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

• Ambassador of Pakistan to Libya Anjum Enayat on Tuesday met with Culture Minister of the Government of National Unity (GNU) Mabrouka Toghi in Tripoli. During the meeting, they discussed cultural relations between the two friendly countries, and ways to develop areas of cooperation and bilateral exchange in the cultural and artistic field, according to GNU Culture Ministry.

• Walid Lafi, Minister of Communication of the Government of National Unity, held talks with the European Union’s Ambassador, Nicola Orlando. According to Orlando, they agreed greed on the need to continue supporting mediation of UN Envoy to Libya, Abdoulaye Bathily, to “bring the country to national elections asap on the basis of a fair and implementable framework.”

• Italy and Turkey will pen a new agreement to strength cooperation on the migration dossier in relation to Libya, according to multiple press reports. According to Italian news channel Sky TG24, the agreement will be signed “soon” by the foreign ministers of both countries. The reports emerged following a meeting in Ankara last Saturday between Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.