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, prosecutors said on Sunday.
The officials, who were responsible for the management of 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 town of 125,000, was devastated last September by massive flooding caused by Storm Daniel.
Thousands were killed and thousands more missing as a result of the floods that burst dams, swept away buildings and destroyed entire neighborhoods.
The Attorney General in Tripoli said three of the defendants were ordered to “return money obtained from illegal profits,” according to a statement, which did not name or position those on trial.
“The convicted officials have been accused of negligence, premeditated murder and waste of public money,” a Derna judicial source told Reuters by phone, adding that they had the right to appeal the verdicts.
A report in January by the World Bank, the United Nations and the European Union said deadly floods in Derna constituted a climate and environmental disaster that required $1.8 billion to finance 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The report said the dams' collapse was partly due to their design, based on outdated hydrological information, and partly a result of poor maintenance and management problems during more than a decade of conflict in Libya.
Libya has been divided since 2014 between rival power centers that ruled in the east and west after Muammar Gaddafi was toppled in a NATO-backed uprising in 2011.
