By Sami Zaptia.
London, 6 October 2020:
The Tripoli Minister of Finance Faraj Bumtari denounced the arrest of the Chairman of the Permanent Committee for the Rationalization of Salaries yesterday, which was carried out by order of the Prosecutor at the Office of the Military Prosecutor General, the Finance Ministry said.
The statement he issued by the Finance Ministry regarding the arrest incident yesterday said that there is no link or functional relationship between the Committee and the Office of the Military Prosecutor General.
The Minister clarified that the head of the committee is a public employee who does not hold any military rank, and the incident that is being investigated is not considered a crime to which the military law applies, stressing that the law has drawn up and defined the mechanisms for investigating the public employee according to the facts, and if there is a suspicion of misdemeanour or felony, then the matter is held by the Public Prosecution Authority and the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Boumtari indicated that the subject under investigation is an administrative procedure related to the salaries of the Military Prosecutor’s Office, and these issues are dealt with according to the administrative hierarchy in effect in this regard, and that the delay in completing the procedure was caused by the delay on the part of the Ministry of Defence in providing the Committee with the supporting documents.
The Minister of Finance also expressed his surprise and disapproval at the same time at the way the Special Deterrence Force dealt with the Head of the Permanent Committee for Rationalizing Salaries, Amin Bou Abdullah, during his suspension (shaving the head).
He said that this matter had a very bad psychological impact on the aforementioned, especially that he did not assume his duties of chairmanship of the Committee until a few days ago, and this also affected all his colleagues in the Committee and the Ministry as soon as they heard about the incident.
The Minister’s statement stressed that the administrative work is under the control of the competent regulatory bodies and that these actions are considered provocative to government institutions and abort efforts seeking to build the civil state, the state of institutions and law.
In his statement, the Finance Minister called on the judicial authorities concerned to investigate the incident and affirmed his adherence to resorting to legal methods that preserve the right and protection of their employees. Minister Bumtari said that the Ministry of Finance respects the civil and military judiciary alike, that are upholding justice and the rule of law.
