Libya retrials officials over the collapse of the Derna dams during Hurricane Daniel

A judicial source and a lawyer for one of the defendants reported that a court in eastern Libya on Sunday retried 12 officials over the collapse of the Derna Valley dams in the floods of Hurricane Daniel in 2023.

 

The two sources explained that this came against the backdrop of the Supreme Court’s acceptance of the appeal against the rulings issued by the Derna Court of Appeal last year.

The lawyer, who preferred Anonymous told Reuters that the retrial of the defendants in the case of the collapse of the Derna dams was based on the decision of the Supreme Court, which accepted the appeal of the previous rulings because they were “in violation of the law.” The ruling was overturned and the trial was repeated again.”

A judicial source said that the trial sessions were repeated on Sunday in the Court of Appeal of Benghazi, the second largest city in Libya. He added that at the end of the first retrial session, the court decided to postpone it until November 30 “with the continued detention of the accused.”

According to a statement issued by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, in July last year, the Derna Court of Appeal issued prison sentences ranging from nine to 27 years against those responsible for managing the country’s dam facilities, while acquitting four officials. Others.

The court charged the officials with “negligence, premeditated murder, and wasting public money.”

In September of 2023, the coastal city of Derna in the east of the country, with a population of 125,000 people, witnessed devastating floods as a result of Hurricane Daniel, which caused the deaths of thousands of people and the loss of thousands more as a result of the floods that led to The collapse of the two dams and many buildings, destroying entire neighborhoods.

Abdulaziz Al-Jaafari, Director of the Information Office of the General Authority for Search and Identification of Missing Persons, said that the Authority received 3,297 reports from the families of missing persons in the city of Derna, while 3,970 DNA samples were collected and 113 samples matched so far, two of which were for citizens of Egypt and the third for a citizen. Syrian.

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