By Ahmed Elumami.
Tripoli, 3 November 2013:
Substantial compensation is at last set to be paid to an initial 5,000 of the Qaddafi . . .[restrict]regime’s prisoners of conscience, following approval by the Zeidan government.
However Head of Political Prisoners Association Ali Akremi , himself jailed for three decades, told the Libya Herald:””I personally lost thirty years of my life and the money will not be enough to return the most beautiful days of my life”.
A compensation fund totalling LD 2.4 billion has been set aside, but this first tranche will be for LD 300 million. The programme has attracted some criticism, to which Akremi responded angrily:
“I want to send a message to those who say that the political prisoners don’t have the right to be compensated; we lost most of our lives in one meter by two meters cells just because we wanted to express ourselves freely”.
The principal of compensation was established by the National Transitional Council with law 50/2012, which charged the government with drawing up an executive list of those entitled to payments.
Each prisoner will be paid LD 8,000 for every month spent in prison, said Akremi. A single year’s incarceration would entitle a prisoner to LD 96,000. Akremi added that if a prisoner spent thirty years in jail, he would receive LD 3 million for each decade.
The compensation is to be disbursed by the Ministry of Justice committee set up by the prime minister, which includes officials from the Finance Ministry.
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