By Libya Herald reporters.
Tripoli, 24 February 2016:
The Pentagon is continuing to disclaim responsibility for the deaths of two kidnapped Serb diplomats . . .[restrict]during its Sabratha airstrike against IS terrorist positions six days ago.
Though not issuing an outright denial, the Defense Department said today that it had examined the operation but found no evidence that communications officer Sladjana Stankovic and a colleague Jovica Stepic from the Serbian embassy in Tripoli, were killed in the raid.
Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Jeff Davis said at a Washington press briefing: “So far we have not seen any credible information that would indicate that these people were killed in the strike that we conducted”.
Details of the raid, he said, including pictures of the two dead diplomats posted on social media, had been checked carefully.
“Our forces watched this training camp for weeks leading up to the operation” added Davis, repeating the Pentagon’s original response to news that the Serbs had died “and never had any indication that civilians were present”.
He also again expressed the American government’s condolences to Serbia and promised to share with Belgrade any further evidence that might emerge.
If the US analysis is correct, it throws open the question of where the two Serbian diplomats did die. The pictures of their bodies showed blast injuries along with dust and fragments of building material that indicated they had been killed in an explosion.
The photographs first appeared a day after the attack. Until then most images posted on social media had been of cratered ruins and the tattered remnants of bomb-making literature.
The Serbian government has launched its own investigation into the deaths of the two diplomats. The embassy in Tripoli had been kept open even though virtually all other missions evacuated to Tunis in 2014.
Last November, Stankovic and Stepic were seized near Sabratha when they were driving back to Tunisia from the embassy. The Ghwell administration in Tripoli said that the diplomats should not have been travelling because they had not requested official permission. [/restrict]
