Libya says ex-deputy PM suspect in general’s killing as clerics call for disarmament

Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC) said on Monday a former NTC deputy prime minister was suspected of involvement in the killing of one of the rebel movement’s most senior military commanders as Libyan religious leaders urged authorities to disarm former rebels and form a national army.

General Abdul Fattah Younes was killed by his own side in July, an incident that caused deep rifts inside the rebellion against Muammar Qaddafi’s rule. The naming of the suspects risks reviving those divisions.

At a news conference broadcast on Libyan television, NTC chief military prosecutor Yussef al-Aseifr named Ali al-Essawi as chief suspect. Essawi served as the NTC’s interim deputy prime minister until he stepped down earlier this year.

“The number one suspect in the investigation is the former deputy head of (the NTC) executive office Ali Abdelaziz Saad al-Essawi,” Aseifr said.

“There are seven people suspected of involvement in Abdel Fattah Younes’s killing. Three have been arrested and security forces are looking for the others,” said Aseifr, who was standing alongside NTC chief Mustafa Abdel Jalil, Reuters reported.

Essawi denied involvement in a phone call to the local Libya Awalen television station. “I never signed any decision relating to Abdul Fattah Younes,” he said. “Everybody in Libya wants the truth.”

Before he was made deputy prime minister, Essawi had acted as the NTC’s de facto foreign minister and toured foreign capitals rallying support for the rebellion before Gaddafi was forced from power in August.

Younes was for years part of Qaddafi’s inner circle. He defected at the start of the uprising against Qaddafi’s rule in February and became the military chief of the rebellion.

The circumstances of his killing remain murky, but it is known that he was killed after NTC leaders summoned him back from the front line to Benghazi, the eastern city where at the time the council had its headquarters.

His death exposed splits within the anti-Qaddafi movement, especially between Islamists and secularists, with different factions accusing each other of involvement.

Calls to disarm former rebels

Meanwhile, dozens of Libyan religious leaders on Monday urged authorities to disarm former rebels and form a national army, backing the transitional government’s struggle to exert control over the militias that overthrew Qaddafi.

The clerics’ statement reflected concern over the militias’ refusal to submit to the central authority. Dozens of militias have held on to arsenals of heavy weapons and sometimes clash among themselves.

“We advise speeding up the process of establishing a national army and the collection of arms,” said a statement from the 250 imams and other clerics gathered for a conference in Tripoli, the first of its kind after the fall of the Qaddafi regime. It was organized by Libya’s Ministry of Islamic Affairs.

The clerics expressed fears that tribal and regional tensions could lead to a deterioration of security. “We need to focus especially on reconciliation and ... on building the new state of Libya,” said Salim Jabar, an imam from the eastern city of Benghazi.

Participants complained about young men who they said carried weapons on the street and fired into the air for fun, sometimes killing people.

Libya’s NTC says it is working on forging a national army, integrating some of the militias and disarming the rest. Officials acknowledge that process could take months, and they said they could not force the militias to go along.

7,000 prisoners still held

In a report that highlighted one of the consequences of lack of militia accountability, the U.N. said that former Libyan revolutionaries still hold about 7,000 prisoners from the civil war, some of whom were subjected to torture and ill treatment.

The report by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, made public before a Security Council briefing, said that many of the inmates have no access to due process in the absence of a functioning police and judiciary.

“The most important point is that all friends and supporters of new Libya need to come together in support of the authority of the new Libyan government and to channel all of our support and assistance consistent with their needs and desires,” U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice said, according to an Al Arabiya correspondent.

The 250 clerics also demanded that the country’s planned constitution be based on Shariah (Islamic law), and that anything that violates Islam - including the consumption of alcohol - be declared illegal.

Most political forces in this conservative and overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim country expect that religion will guide the future shape of the state, although it is still unclear how the precepts of Islamic law will be implemented.

The clerics also said they were concerned with what they said were “rumors” circulating in Libya’s newly freed press. One advocated a law that would allow journalists to be charged with murder for publishing false information that incites tribal or other tensions.

After the conference, female reporters who tried to interview a leading cleric were told they could not do so, because he did not speak to women.