BENGHAZI: A Libyan court has jailed 12 officials in connection with the collapse of a series of dams in Darna last year that killed thousands of residents, Libya's attorney general said on Sunday.
These officials, who were responsible for the management of the country's dams, were sentenced to 9 to 27 years of imprisonment in the Derna Court of Appeal. Four officials were acquitted.
Derna, a coastal city of 125,000 people, was devastated by massive flooding from Hurricane Daniel last September.
As a result of the flood, which broke dams, destroyed buildings and destroyed entire neighborhoods, thousands of people were killed and thousands more went missing.
Tripoli's attorney general said three of the defendants had been ordered to return “money obtained from illegal interests,” according to a statement that did not name or name those on trial.
A judicial source in Derna told Reuters by phone: “The convicted officials have been charged with negligence, manslaughter and wasting public money, and they have the right to protest against these verdicts.”
A report in January by the World Bank, the United Nations and the European Union declared that the deadly floods in Derna are a climate and environmental disaster that will require 1.8 billion dollars for reconstruction and rehabilitation.
The collapse of the dams is partly due to their design based on outdated hydrological information and partly due to maintenance problems and poor management during more than a decade of conflict in Libya, the report said.
Since 2014, Libya has been divided between rival power centers in the east and west after Muammar Gaddafi was toppled in a NATO uprising in 2011.
