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.
Officials tasked with managing the country's dams were sentenced to 9 to 27 years in prison by Derna's appeals court. Four officials have been acquitted.
Derna, a coastal city of 125,000 people, was devastated by massive flooding caused by Hurricane Daniel last September.
Thousands were killed and thousands more disappeared as the flood burst dams, washed away buildings and destroyed entire neighborhoods.
Tripoli's attorney general said the three defendants were ordered to “return money obtained from illegal income,” according to a statement, which did not name or rank those on trial.
“The convicted officials are accused of negligence, premeditated murder and waste of public money,” a judicial source in Derna told Reuters by phone, adding that they have the right to appeal against the verdict.
A report in January by the World Bank, the United Nations and the European Union said the deadly flash floods in Derna constituted a climate and environmental disaster that required $1.8 billion for reconstruction and rehabilitation.
The report says the collapse of the dams is partly due to their design based on outdated hydrological information, and partly the result of poor maintenance and governance problems during more than a decade of conflict in Libya.
Libya has been divided since 2014 between rival power centers in the east and west, following the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in a NATO-backed coup in 2011.
