By Ahmed Elumami.
Tripoli, 26 March 2014:
Attorney General Abdulqader Radwan today ordered an investigation into the circumstances of a video showing the . . .[restrict]head of the General National Congress (GNC), Nuri Abu Sahmain, which was leaked yesterday.
In the footage, which has been widely-circulated on social media networks, Abu Sahmain discusses the reasons behind his attempted arrest in January.
A member of the Attorney General’s office, Khaled Tourgeman, told the Libya Herald that the decision to investigate was because the incident affected the whole country.
Tourgeman said the Attorney General had not received a request from Congress to start investigations.
The footage circulated yesterday clearly showed that Abu Sahmain was filmed without his knowledge. He looked nervous, at times, telling the other person, whom he called Haithem, that he would tell him everything.
On 3 January, a group of gunmen apparently found Abu Sahmain with two girls in his house in Tripoli. At the time, GNC spokesperson Omar Hemeidan denied to the Libya Herald that Abu Sahmain had been arrested and said he was in his office. However, a video was released shortly after the incident that suggested otherwise. It showed Abu Sahmain talking to the gunmen who broke his house.
“I had received a call from my former office manager saying that a lady from the GNC media office would give me a secret paper showing that a sleeper cell from Algeria would assassinate me and another congressman,” Abu Sahmain explained in this latest video. “After 15 minutes a group of gunmen broke into the house. I did not know what to do but I asked them stop filming me. Afterwards I went with them to an unknown place”.
Abu Sahmain is currently in Kuwait, where he has been participating in the 25th Arab Summit.
No comments on the video have yet been made by Congress. [/restrict]
