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 officials, who were responsible for managing the country’s dams, were sentenced to between 9 and 27 years in prison by the Court of Appeal in Derna. Four officials were acquitted.
Derna, a coastal city with a population of 125,000, was devastated last September by massive floods caused by Storm Daniel.
Thousands were killed and thousands more were missing as a result of the floods that burst dams, swept away buildings and destroyed entire neighbourhoods.
The Attorney-General in Tripoli said three of the defendants were ordered to “return money obtained from illicit gains”, according to a statement, which did not give the names or positions of those on trial.
“The convicted officials have been charged with negligence, premeditated murder and waste of public money,” a judicial source in Derna told Reuters by phone, adding that they had the right to appeal against the verdicts.
A report in January by the World Bank, United Nations and European Union said deadly flash flooding in Derna constituted a climate and environmental catastrophe that required $1.8 billion to fund reconstruction and recovery.
The report said the dams’ collapse was partly due to their design, based on outdated hydrological information, and partly a result of poor maintenance and governance problems during more than a decade of conflict in Libya.
Libya has been split since 2014 between rival power centres ruling in east and west following the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi in a Nato-backed uprising in 2011.