Tripoli, May 13:
Members of Tebu armed units from Kufra are to join public institutions once they have been interviewed and then . . .[restrict]approved by the Veterans’ Board for Development and Rehabilitation.
An officer from the town’s Martyr Idris Taher battalion said that it was planning to interview all its members so as to offer them opportunities to choose whether to join the security forces of the interior ministry or the army or other state institutions. One of the options he mentioned was border security. Those with educational qualifications would be awarded scholarships for further study and training, he added.
He also said that all the revolutionaries in the battalion, wherever they were in Libya, would have the opportunity to be interviewed. Interviews will begin May 18th so that those outside Kufra can register.
Ever since February’s violence between Tebus and member of the Kufra’s majority Zway tribe in which over 130 people died, the town’s Tebu community has operated as a state within a state, guarded in its areas by well-armed Tebu militiamen. The uneasy standoff between the latter and the Libya Shield Battalion sent by the army to pacify Kufra has resulted in continued low-level violence. Last month a number of people were killed in renewed clashes.