Libya’s attorney general has ordered the pre-trial detention of eight officials as part of an investigation into the failure of the two dams which led to the deadly floods in Derna on September 10, his office announced on Monday.
Residents of Derna, in eastern Libya, whose entire neighborhoods had been swept away by the flood, protested on September 18 to demand that the authorities be held accountable.
They notably called for “a rapid investigation and legal action against those responsible for the disaster”.
Among the eight Libyans whose prosecutor ordered their placement in pre-trial detention, there are seven people occupying or having occupied positions of responsibility within the department of hydraulic resources or that of dam management in Libya.
The mayor of Derna, Abdulmonem al-Ghaithi, dismissed with the rest of the Municipal Council after the tragedy, is also among those affected.
Storm Daniel struck eastern Libya on the night of September 10 to 11, notably Derna, a town of 100,000 inhabitants bordering the Mediterranean, leading to the rupture of two dams upstream and causing a flood of the magnitude of a tsunami who took away everything in his path.
” Mismanagement “
According to the latest provisional official report, the floods have left at least 3,868 dead, while thousands of other people are missing.
The Libyan Attorney General al-Seddik al-Sour announced on September 15 that he had opened an investigation into the circumstances of the tragedy. According to him, the dam management in Libya had reported cracks on the two structures in 1998 but no work was done to remedy them.
According to the statement released by his office on Monday, a total of 16 people, all involved to varying degrees in the management of dams in Libya, are involved in the investigation.
The eight people targeted by a provisional detention order were heard on Sunday by a commission responsible for investigating the collapse of the two dams, according to the press release.
Seven of them, including the current head of the water resources department, his predecessor and the head of the local branch of Derna, as well as the director of the dam management department and his predecessor “were not in compliance”. able to refute their responsibility in the mismanagement of the administrative and financial missions incumbent upon them,” according to the press release.
“The mistakes they committed” and their “negligence in disaster prevention” “contributed” to the arrival of this disaster and its heavy human and economic toll, the text added.
“Amounts disproportionate”
As for the dismissed mayor of Derna, he is suspected in particular of “abuse of office and mismanagement of funds allocated to the development of the city”.
The investigation focused in particular on a contract concluded between the Libyan Water Department and a Turkish company for the maintenance of the two dams and the payment in 2014 to the latter of “disproportionate sums”, and this “although it violated the commitments stipulated in the contract,” according to the prosecutor’s press release.
Politicians and analysts say the chaos in Libya has pushed maintenance of vital infrastructure like the Derna dams to the back burner.
In a study in November 2022, Libyan engineer and academic Abdel-Wanis Ashour warned of a “catastrophe” threatening Derna if the authorities do not maintain the two dams.
But this warning has had no effect although Libya, which has the most abundant oil reserves in Africa, does not lack resources.
The authorities of eastern Libya announced on Friday that they planned to organize an “international” conference on October 10 in Derna for the reconstruction of the city.
Wracked by divisions since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, Libya is governed by two rival administrations: one in Tripoli (west) led by Abdelhamid Dbeibah, the other in the east, embodied by Parliament and affiliated with the camp of powerful Marshal Khalifa Haftar.