Rida Faraj Fraitis, chief of staff of one of Libya's two deputy prime ministers, was kidnapped last week in the capital Tripoli by armed men, the UN reported on Tuesday evening, saying she was
"deeply concerned"
by this kidnapping.
"Unidentified armed men kidnapped Rida Faraj Fraitis and one of his colleagues on August 2, after he visited the premises of the Government of National Unity (GNU) in Tripoli,"
the United
Nations
Support Mission reported. United Nations in Libya (Manul).
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"The fate and location of Rida Faraj Fraisis and her colleague remain unknown and Manul fears for their safety,"
added the UN mission in a statement.
Expressing itself
"concerned"
by the fact
"that individuals who have assumed roles in support of the democratic transition in Libya and state institutions are being targeted in this way"
, Manul is concerned about the
"serious consequences"
of this kidnapping on
“the ongoing peace and reconciliation process”
.
The transitional government installed in Tripoli did not react to this kidnapping, which had so far not been reported by the local press. Libya is trying to extricate itself from a decade of violence since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi's regime in 2011, a chaos marked in recent years by the existence of rival powers in the East and the West. After the end of the fighting in the summer of 2020, a unified and transitional government was formed at the beginning of the year under the aegis of the UN, to lead the country to legislative and presidential elections scheduled for December.
But despite the progress made at the political level, the security situation remains very precarious. In its press release on Tuesday, Manul declared that it had
"documented a number of cases of illegal arrests and detentions, enforced disappearances, torture and extrajudicial executions"
, calling on the Libyan authorities to
"thoroughly investigate on all allegations of violations of international human rights law ”
.