By Sami Zaptia.
Tripoli, 11 November 2013:
In a rare and fleeting reference to Libya’s new intelligence agency, Prime Minister Ali Zeidan said . . .[restrict]that the agency was up and running.
Speaking at yesterday’s press conference Zeidan was conducting a review of the state security forces, including the army and the police.
The Prime Minister said that the government was progressing in the development of its security forces, including the intelligence agency.
However, after making the brief comment, Zeidan quickly said that he was not going to reveal any more details on this subject.
It will be recalled that at a press conference in August this year, Zeidan had anticipated that up to 50,000 would be needed to work in Libya’s new intelligence agency.
Equally, at a press conference two weeks earlier Zeidan had stressed the need for an intelligence gathering agency in order to help counter the wide criminal and terrorist activity that had been experienced in Libya post-revolution.
Zeidan had also sought to assure the Libyan public, General National Congress (GNC) and the thuwar – who he said still had a “complex” from the Qaddafi-era security agencies – that these would be information-gathering agencies run under the supervision of the democratically-elected state. [/restrict]
