By Hadi Fornaji.
Tunis, 8 November 2016:
Beida-based prime minister Abdullah Al-Thinni has called on Mohamed Al-Dayri to return to his job as foreign minister.
Dayri, widely respected aboard, was suspended over six months ago when the House of Representatives’ foreign affairs committee decided to investigate him amid accusations of mismanagement. According to the Beida government spokesman Abdul Hakim Matouq, nothing has happened in the meantime so Thinni, feeling that Dayri’s expertise and experience was vitally needed at this time, decided to bring him back into his cabinet.
There has been so far no statement from Dayri as to whether he will return. It is known that he was sympathetic to the Presidency Council when it first arrived in Tripoli, and there have been suspicions that this was the real reason from his removal.
This is the second time in exactly a year that he has been reinstated. He was suspended in in September 2015, following a decision by House of Representatives’ Administrative Control Committee to investigate him over what it called “administrative irregularities”. The investigation similarly fizzled out and he was reinstated on 7 November 2015.
The announcement of his reinstatement comes just a day after Thinni announced the appointment of Brigadier General Hussein Elabbar as his acting interior minister. It follows the definitive sacking of Al-Madani Al-Fakhri from the post just over a week ago.
The appointment of Elabbar was widely expected although it is likely to cause anger among radicals because of his links to the Qaddafi regime. Under the Political Isolation Law, he is ineligible for the post. In 2o06, he was head of Benghazi Security Directorate and prior to that, head of the city’s criminal investigation department. Earlier he head of training with the police in Benghazi’s Hawari district. His son Mohamed was killed more than two years ago fighting in Sabri with Operation Dignity.
