BENGHAZI: A Libyan court has jailed 12 officials in connection with the collapse of a series of dams in Derna last year that killed thousands of the city's residents, the attorney general said on Sunday.
The Court of Appeal in Derna sentenced officials who managed the country's dams to imprisonment for 9 to 27 years. Four officials were acquitted.
Derna, a coastal town of 125,000 people, was devastated last September by massive flooding caused by Storm Daniel.
Thousands died and thousands more went missing in floods that breached levees, toppled buildings and destroyed entire neighborhoods.
The prosecutor general in Tripoli said three of the defendants had been ordered to “return money obtained from illegal profits,” according to the statement, which did not name or position those on trial.
“The convicted officials face charges of negligence, willful killing and embezzlement of public money,” a judicial source in Derne told Reuters by telephone, adding that they have the right to appeal the sentences.
A January report by the World Bank, the United Nations and the European Union said the deadly flash flood in Derne was a climate and environmental disaster requiring $1.8 billion in reconstruction and recovery funding.
The report said the collapse of the dams was partly due to their design, based on outdated hydrological information, and partly the result of poor maintenance and management problems during more than a decade of conflict in Libya.
Since 2014, Libya has been divided between rival power centers that rule in the east and west after Muammar Gaddafi was ousted by a NATO-backed uprising in 2011.
