By Hadi Fornaji.
Tripoli, March 25: Tripoli International Airport was supposed to have been formally handed over to the Ministry of Transport . . .[restrict]by the Zintan brigade today, Sunday. There was meant to have been a small handover ceremony at 3.00pm, local time.
However, no one turned up at the appointed hour, apart from a few reporters. It was then said that the handover was being delayed till 6.00pm. But this too passed without effect. It was then reported that Mukhtar Al-Akhdar had told a local journalist that nothing would be happening today.
Meanwhile, sources close to the Interior Ministry said that there were last minute hitches and that Al-Akhdar was looking for further assurances before handing the airport over. They did not specify the nature of the assurances.
The airport has been in the brigade’s hand since the liberation of Tripoli last August.
Since then, there has been growing friction over its presence there. In December, fighting between Zintan and Tripoli brigades outside the airport left four men dead. At the beginning of the month there were a number of protests in Tripoli calling for the brigade to leave the airport.
At the Misrata national conference on the brigades on March 6-8, the Zintan brigade said it would abide by the agreement that all militias hand over ports, airports, border crossings and other places held by them. However, it did not specify when it would do so.
It was reported at the time that the Zintanis were unhappy about leaving the airport but had been ordered to comply by Zintan local council. Even so there were fears at the time that this would not happen. At the beginning of the month, the deputy leader of the brigade, Ali Koba, was reported saying that it was unhappy about the plan for members of brigades to join the army or the police. He indicated at the time that that it would not be moving.
However, on Sunday, March 10, Al-Akhdar said that the airport would be handed over “within a week”.
That was now more than two weeks ago, and so far it still has not happened.
The Minister of Transport, Yousef Wahashi, has appointed Nagmeddine Ibrahim Al-Rais as director of the airport.
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