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By Tom Little.
Tripoli, 18 December:
Libya’s professional soldiers must dedicate themselves to serving their country “without an agenda”, the commander of one . . .[restrict]of the National Army’s most prominent brigades told his men at a graduation ceremony in Tripoli yesterday.
Emad Trabelsi, commander of the Ministry of Defence’s Sawa’iq (Lightning) Brigade, encouraged his troops to do their duty selflessly and without personal motives.
Trabelsi was addressing 200 new graduates to his unit at a ceremony at its headquarters in the Da’wa Islamia college in the capital.
His message chimed clearly with the government’s stated objective of establishing a professional armed forces not beholden to the leaders of semi-autonomous militias or other external forces.
High profile figures from the General National Congress and army attended, with several foreign military attaches present for the parade.
Key figures, including former Minister of Defence Osama Al-Juwaili, delivered speeches as the troops paraded and mounted displays of the training they had received.
Members of the unit’s personal protection team gave a demonstration of how they guard high-profile figures in the government, taking an “attacker” to the ground to applause from the podium.
The battalion’s armoured personnel carriers and machine-gun mounted pick-up trucks also joined the parade, and parachutists dropped onto the parade ground from a helicopter, before the event closed with a fireworks display.
Trabelsi’s brigade was originally formed in Zintan early in the uprising against Qaddafi, but was expanded and incorporated into the army during the tenure of Osama Al-Juwaili.
It is made up of some 2,000 men, one of its trainers told the Libya Herald, including a special forces section, APCs and a team trained in protecting VIPs. [/restrict]
