By Ahmed Elumami.
Tripoli, 17 August 2013:
The 18 members of Congress of the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Justice and Construction Party (J&C) are suing . . .[restrict]three other members – Hajer El-Gaid, Jumaa Sayah and Tuati Al-Aidha – for defamation.
“We are suing Al-Gaid, Sayah and Aidha because they said on one of the local [TV] channels that J&C members of Congress received large sums of money from Qatar for the ideas of the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya and that’s not true at all,” Sorman Congresswoman and J&C Party member Amina Mahjoub told the Libya Herald today.
In the interview, broadcast during Ramadan, the J&C members were accused of being traitors and being in the pay of Qatar.
The day after it was aired on Libya Awalan TV, Mahjoub said documents were found purporting to state that J&C Congress members had received $250,000 from Qatar. The documents, headed “Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs of Qatar” and stamped “Secret” were fake, Amina said.
Libya was in crisis, she stressed, and decision-makers should concentrate on legislation and not get involved in gossiping. As a result of the allegations, she had had to defend herself in the media after some of her constituents accused her of being an agent for Qatar.
“I am not a Muslim Brotherhood member. I am a Sufi and proud, but I respect the MB because they are a very well organised movement” Mahjoub said.
Another J&C member, Congressman Abdurrahman Addibani, said that the party had asked the Attorney General to take judicial proceedings, saying they were looking for moral and material compensation.
For her part, Congresswoman Hajer El-Gaid, a National Forces Alliance member, told the Libya Herald that she has not yet been officially informed about the proceedings and could say anything until she had talked with her lawyer. [/restrict]