By Libya Herald reporters.
Tunis, 16 October 2015:
Sabratha’s mayor has been released after being arrested last week at Tunis Airport on suspicion . . .[restrict]of being a terrorist. His detention triggered the wholesale kidnapping of scores of Tunisian citizens travelling past the coastal town, en route from the border to Tripoli.
This afternoon the Tunisian Court of First Instance announced that Hassen Dhawadi has been freed after being interrogated. Spokesman Kamal Barboush told the news agency TAP that the mayor has been picked up on suspicion of being linked to a terrorist group in Sabratha that calls itself Jund al-Islam – the Soldiers of Islam.
It is unclear if Dhawadi has already left Tunisia, where, according to the town’s information centre, he ha gone on “UN business”. He put out the message this evening “”Thank God, I’m out of the court and my innocence is proven. First of all I thank God and then I thank you all who prayed for me.”
It is unclear if all Tunisians seized by the local militiamen have now been freed.
Meanwhile the Ministry of Interior in Tunis has “categorically denied” that the two Tunisian journalists, two Tunisian journalists, Sofiane Chourabi and Nadhir Gtari, abducted over a year ago, near Ajdabiya, have been freed. The rumours which had been running in some local media, were, said the ministry spokesman, “completely false” [/restrict]
