http://www.france24.com/en/20130525-niger-attackers-libya-president-Agadez
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/France+Libya+announce+security+moves+wake+terror+attacks/8430799/story.html
Niger President Mahamadou Issoufou told FRANCE 24 on Saturday that the suicide bombers behind twin attacks on a military base and a French-operated uranium mine in the country came from southern Libya.
The coordinated bombings, which occurred at dawn on Thursday, claimed the lives of at least 20 people at the base in Niger’s desert city of Agadez and Areva’s Somair mine in the remote town of Arlit, a key supplier of uranium for France’s nuclear power programme.
“The assailants, according to all the information that we’ve acquired, came from southern Libya,” Issoufou told FRANCE 24. “The fact is that Libya remains a destabilising force for the Saharan countries.”
Issoufou's comments came after his government announced that French special forces and Nigerien troops had fatally shot the last two Islamists involved in the bombings early on Friday at the military barracks in Agadez, where they had holed up.
The attacks have been claimed by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a one-eyed veteran of al Qaeda's North African operations, who issued a statement saying that his Mulathameen Brigade organised the raids with the help of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) in retaliation for Niger's role in a French-led war on Islamists in Mali.
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Niger has emerged as a firm ally of France and the United States in the fight against al Qaeda-linked groups in the Sahel. It has deployed 650 troops in neighbouring Mali and sought to shut its porous desert borders to Islamist groups that are thought to have shifted their bases to southern Libya.
Belmokhtar, signing his statement with his pseudonym Khalid Abu al-Abbas, said the raids were a response to Issoufou’s public claims that the Islamists had been defeated in Mali.
“We will have more operations by the strength and power of Allah and not only that, but we will move the battle to inside [Issoufou's] country if he doesn’t withdraw his mercenary army,” said the communiqué, the authenticity of which could not be verified.
Belmokhtar’s brigade has also claimed responsibility for January’s attack on the In Amenas gas plant in southeastern Algeria in which 37 foreigners were killed.
France: Libya to announce new security moves in wake of terror attacks in neighbouring Niger
http://www.libyaherald.com/2013/05/24/33664/
Truck carrying heat-seeking missiles seized in Benghazi
By Ashraf Abdul Wahab
The truck containing missiles pulled over in Gwarsha, Benghazi
Tripoli, 24 May, 2013:
Special forces in Benghazi today surrounded and stopped a truck carrying a quantity of heat-seeking missiles.
The vehicle was halted in the Gwarsha area of the city. When searched, it was found to contained shoulder-launched heat-seeking ground-to-air missiles. There has been no detail yet on the number seized nor of any other weaponry that was also in the truck.
There was speculation this evening that the missiles were SAM-7s, known to NATO as the SA-7b Grail, looted from Qaddafi’s arsenals at the end of the Revolution. The former regime ordered thousands of these from their Russian manufacturers.
http://www.libyaherald.com/2013/05/23/justice-minister-denounces-detention-of-public-prosector-and-congressman-khoms-militiamen-seize-power-station-in-protest/
Justice Minister denounces detention of public prosector and Congressman: Khoms militiamen seize power station in protest
By Areej Haddad.
Justice Minister Salah Al-Marghani addressing illegal detention of public prosecutor.
Tripoli, 23 May 2013:
At a press conference this evening, Justice Minister Salah Al-Marghani said a public prosecutor was being held illegally in Tripoli’s Mitiga jail and likened those detaining him to Abdallah Senussi and Qaddafi’s internal security henchmen.
The prosecutor, whom he did not name, is Taha Bara, former spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office. He has been held, along with Khoms Congressman Akram Al-Janin and the Investment Undersecretary at the Ministry of Oil, since 16 May, supposedly on suspicion of immoral activities including alcohol offences. Pictures of the three men in detention have circulated on Facebook.
Marghani’s statement contradicts earlier reports that Bara had been released after alcohol tests on him proved negative.
Marghani said that the aim of those holding him and the two others was to control and strike fear in the judiciary. He said that in Qaddaffi’s time people such as Abdullah Senusssi and his cohorts used their power in ways that caused the judiciary to fear them. It must not be allowed to happen again in the new Libya.
In a separate protest today against the detention of Janin, a group of Khoms thuwar stormed the local power station and seized five of the plant’s technicians, forcing them to cut off electricity supplies to the south of Libya, as well as separate the east and west network power supplies.
Khoms Local Council has already condemned the seizure of Janin, demanding his release and an explanation of the circumstances that led to his arrest.
The minister meanwhile this evening demanded that those responsible abide by the law and not repeat the past. They had exceeded their “accepted security duties, and interfered in the judiciary”, which they had no right to do.
The detention of the prosecutor at the Mitiga jail, not under his ministry’s control, was illegal, stated Marghani. Public prosecutors, he said, had special rights and their arrest required consent from the Supreme Judicial Council. Furthermore, all detentions over 48 hours required approval by the Supreme Judicial Council. In failing to request an arrest warrant, the group had taken the law into their own hands, thus casting aside state sovereignty and the will of the people. The ministry, he said, had requested the man’s release but this has been rejected.
The group was “breaking the law”, Marghani declared, claiming he had twice called on the Attorney General to take legal action against the individuals involved.
Marghani, said that the pictures of the three men being held, with their heads shaved and signs of possible beatings, indicated they were being treated badly. This amounted to human rights abuses punishable under law.
A post dated 17 May apparently on the Facebook page of the Tripoli branch of the Supreme Security Council (SSC), headed by Hashim Bishr, gives the positions of the detained but not their names.
“The involved officials were the GNC member for the Libyan town of Khoms, the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Oil for investment, who is also a founding member of Alassema TV Channel Board of Directors and at the same time the house owner, a public prosecutor and former spokesman of the former Attorney General’s Office.”
The statement describes the alleged chain of events leading up to detention of the officials, and says that a house located in the Tripoli’s Zenata district, where the incident occurred had “been under suspicion for a while for the possibility of being used as a den for prostitution because of the number of girls frequenting the place.”
According to the post, the story started after a vehicle leaving the house, driven by a female, crashed into a neighbour’s vehicle. Local residents gathered, some of whom were armed, demanding the house be vacated and the neighbour be compensate for damages to his car. “At that point, the official came out of the house and negotiated with some of the neighbours to have the damaged car repaired.”
Whilst negotiating, “neighbours noticed that the official was under the influence of alcohol and so was the man who was accompanying (him), believed to have been a GNC member. Thus verbal argument erupted between the two sides”, reads the post.
The statement goes on to explain: “A public prosecutor arrived at the scene claiming that he had been invited to dinner at the house by his GNC member friend, but in view of the tension and mayhem that was taking place at the time, the public prosecutor tried his best to calm down the situation and ease tension. Amidst chaos and mayhem, while warning gunshots were also fired in the air, the official’s house got stormed and officials were beaten up. Photos using mobile phones were also taken by some of the intruders.”
Security units, specifically “the first support battalion unit, the special deterrent unit and one of the disciplinary force units”, then intervened after learning that officials were involved in the altercation. A police report was filed, “samples” were taken from the accused to be analysed, and legal proceedings started with the “relevant authorities”.
The post does not cite the offences committed, does not specify where the men were transferred, nor does it say who the relevant authorities are. It ends by stating that further information about the case will be divulged in order to “cut out rumours . . . as well as to be fair and just to anyone whose reputation has been damaged publicly or privately”.
Grab from a video purporting to show the three men in detention
In Marghani’s view, the actions surrounding the detention of the “prosecutor and the member of Congress” challenge judicial powers, rule of law and Libya’s elected legislature.
Member resigns from “chaotic and disorganised” Benghazi Council
By Maha Ellawati
Benghazi council “unprofessional”: Abdu Allah Bu Oud
Benghazi, 24 May 2013:
A Benghazi councillor has resigned because of what he said is the chaotic and disorganised way in which the council operates.
Abdu Allah Bu Oud said in his resignation to chairman Abdel-Qader Amroun,i that Benghazi council lacked the professionalism necessary to administer itself.
“I strived hard to draw the attention to the deteriorating administrative system of the council,” Oud said after he quit, “but all my efforts ended up in failure. I even suggested the use of experts help to establish an administrative structure and mechanism for the management and running of the council’s affairs.”
Oud, a councillor for the city’s Eighth district - Al-Qish and Al-Fuwaihat, said he had tried repeatedly to highlight shortcomings. He maintained that the council needed a comprehensive overhaul. “Unless enough time and budget are made available, the end result will always be failure”.
Among the projects he had advanced, which he complained had been turned down by his fellow councillors was the creation of a “comprehensive database” on the city, which, he said, had never seen the light of day despite its importance.
“ In view of all all this and other issues, I have decided that my presence within such an institution is pointless, since this council has no administrative structure, no proper management and no internal rules by which it should be governed.”
Oud added that he had only reached his decision after long and careful thought.
He concluded: “I would like to add that I have never received, since the start of my duties at the council, any financial reward, salary or bonuses and I would gladly wave any entitlements due to me, if indeed such entitlements existed.”
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