BENGHAZI: A Libyan court has jailed 12 officials in connection with the collapse of a series of dams in Derna last year, which killed thousands of the city's residents, the attorney general said on Sunday.
The officials responsible for managing the country's dams were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 9 to 27 years by the Derna Court of Appeal. Four officials were acquitted.
Derna, a coastal city of 125,000 people, was devastated last September by massive floods caused by Storm Daniel.
Thousands of people died and thousands more were missing as floods collapsed dams, swept away buildings and destroyed entire neighborhoods.
Tripoli's prosecutor general said three of the defendants had been ordered to “return money obtained from illicit gains,” according to a statement that did not provide the names or locations of those facing trial.
“The convicted officials were charged with negligence, premeditated murder and waste of public money,” a judicial source in Derna told Reuters by telephone, adding that they had the right to appeal the verdicts.
A January report by the World Bank, the United Nations and the European Union said the deadly flash floods in Derna constituted a climate and environmental catastrophe that required $1.8 billion to finance reconstruction and recovery.
The report says the dam failures are partly due to their design, which was based on outdated hydrological information, and partly to poor maintenance and governance problems that have occurred during more than a decade of conflict in Libya.
Since 2014, Libya has been divided between rival power centers ruling in the east and the west, following the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in a NATO-backed uprising in 2011.
