Libya’s chief prosecutor has ordered the detention of eight current and former officials pending a full inquiry into the collapse of two dams during torrential rain that left thousands dead in the port city of Derna this month.
There have been widespread claims that local officials knew the dams were too weak to withstand flooding but for various reasons no structural repairs were undertaken. The Libyan State Audit Bureau has submitted evidence that funds were made available for repair work that was never undertaken.
The floods occurred when rain from Storm Daniel poured over the dams, swelling a river that went through the centre of Derna, causing hundreds of houses to collapse and bodies to be washed out to sea. The death toll remains between 4,000 and 10,000 and may never be verified.
Sixteen people are facing criminal prosecution.
The detentions are focused on officials that either currently or previously worked in water resources and dam management, raising fears that the higher-level politicians who have shaped politics in eastern Libya since the western-backed fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 intend to avoid punishment. Western reporters have been expelled from Derna and protesting residents warned they risked being manipulated by extremists.
The announcement of the detentions was made by the office of the general prosecutor, Al-Siddiq Al-Sour, who said prosecutors had questioned seven former and current officials with the Water Resources Authority and the Dams Management Authority over allegations that mismanagement, negligence and mistakes led to the disaster. They were being detained pending further investigation, and seem to have left the prosecutors unimpressed with their explanations.
The Derna mayor, Abdel-Moneim al-Ghaithi, who has been sacked, was also arrested. He is related to eastern Libya’s chief power broker, Gen Khalifa Haftar.
One concern is whether the mayor, imposed on the city, ever issued clear instructions for local inhabitants to leave, and how he tried to enforce any order to evacuate.
It is clear from successive inspections that dams were initially insufficiently robustly built, using rocks and earth, and then poorly maintained, even when cracks started to appear in 1998. They were built by a now defunct Yugoslav construction firm in the 1970s to protect the city from flash floods, and a Turkish firm in 2007 was contracted by the then Gaddafi-run Libyan Water Authority to maintain them.
The relatively small Turkish firm, Arsel Construction Company, has said it completed its work in November 2012 but Libyans say the firm pulled out due to the toppling of Gaddafi and subsequent instability, including violent attacks on its construction sites. Claims for compensation have been made by the company’s directors in so far fruitless litigation in London.
A report by a state-run audit agency in 2021 said the two dams had not been maintained despite the allocation of more than $2m for that purpose in 2012 and 2013. The failure reflected the political divisions that emerged in Libya between east and west from 2014 as two rival governments came to be formed. Libya is oil-rich but plagued by corruption.
Those arrested include the current director of the Dams Administration and his predecessor, the head of the Dams Projects Implementation Department, the head of the Dams Department in the eastern region, and the head of the Derna Waters Resources Office. A committee attached to the public prosecutor’s office has been conducting investigations in Derna, Benghazi and Tripoli.
It is not clear if the supreme council of state, Libya’s leading body unifying east and west, has given binding undertakings to the UN special representative Abdoulaye Bathily to conduct an international investigation. He met the supreme council on Saturday in Tripoli and there was a petition calling for an international investigation that would not be constrained by Libyan politics.
The World Health Organization says more than 4,000 deaths have been registered, including foreigners, but a previous toll given by the head of Libya’s Red Crescent was 11,300. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says at least 9,000 people are still missing. In the past 72 hours a further 60 bodies have been recovered.
