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Libya Logs Highest Daily Rise in Coronavirus Cases

Members of Red Crescent spray disinfectants, as part of precautionary measures against coronavirus disease (COVID-19) at government offices in Misrata, Libya March 21, 2020. REUTERS/Ayman Al-Sahili
Members of Red Crescent spray disinfectants, as part of precautionary measures against coronavirus disease (COVID-19) at government offices in Misrata, Libya March 21, 2020. REUTERS/Ayman Al-Sahili
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Libya Logs Highest Daily Rise in Coronavirus Cases

Members of Red Crescent spray disinfectants, as part of precautionary measures against coronavirus disease (COVID-19) at government offices in Misrata, Libya March 21, 2020. REUTERS/Ayman Al-Sahili
Members of Red Crescent spray disinfectants, as part of precautionary measures against coronavirus disease (COVID-19) at government offices in Misrata, Libya March 21, 2020. REUTERS/Ayman Al-Sahili

Throughout the past days, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Libya steadily increased as medical bodies warned of the pandemic possibly getting out of control. Libyan Health Minister Saad Agoub considered the epidemiological situation related to the COVID-19 pandemic to be absolutely unstable.

The Presidential Council of Libya announced that it would impose a full lockdown in the parts of the country that it controls following a spike in coronavirus cases. The five-day lockdown will begin on Friday, restricting all outside movement except to purchase necessary items.

Libya’s National Center for Disease Control said that the outbreaks were mostly centered in Tripoli with up to 80 cases out of the highest log of confirmed cases that is 205. Tripoli was followed by Misrata that recorded 61 cases.

Agoub called for the need to remain calm, and not give in to panic, “because most of the countries in the world dealt with this pandemic, and Libya is part of this world.”

He revealed that a total of 14,000 samples were taken to detect the virus in the area from Imsaed to Sirte, and Kufra. This resulted in 189 positive cases, including 73 active cases, and 12 deaths. 117 recoveries were also recorded, since the beginning of the pandemic in Libya, this March.

The minister noted that most of the cases appeared in Benghazi (92 cases), followed by Ajdabiya (24 cases) and then Bin Jawad, al-Bayda, al-Bayyar, Tobruk, Ahrawa, Kufra, and Sirte.

In this context, the General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Endowments (GAIAE) of the GNA decided to ban Eid al-Adha prayers at mosques and public squares, as COVID-19 cases spike. The GAIAE authority said that the decision was based on the recommendations of the Anti-Coronavirus Supreme Consultative Committee, which ratcheted up the worry that COVID-19 metrics are trending the wrong way.

"The failure to adhere to the precautionary guidelines, in addition to some customs and traditions that Libyans practice during Eid, including exchanging greetings by handshakes and hugs could increases the risk of transmission of the disease," the GAIAE stated.

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Shining Light on Austin Tice who Went Missing in Syria

A banner for journalist Austin Tice, who disappeared while reporting in Syria in 2012, hangs outside the National Press Club building in Washington, US, May 2, 2023. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File phot
A banner for journalist Austin Tice, who disappeared while reporting in Syria in 2012, hangs outside the National Press Club building in Washington, US, May 2, 2023. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File phot
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Shining Light on Austin Tice who Went Missing in Syria

A banner for journalist Austin Tice, who disappeared while reporting in Syria in 2012, hangs outside the National Press Club building in Washington, US, May 2, 2023. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File phot
A banner for journalist Austin Tice, who disappeared while reporting in Syria in 2012, hangs outside the National Press Club building in Washington, US, May 2, 2023. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File phot

In recent months, American officials have raised the fate of Austin Tice in talks with Syria’s new leadership, led by its interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa.

The American citizen vanished in 2012 in a Damascus suburb.

According to Britain’s The Economist, the American side still insists that Tice may be alive and says there is no evidence of his death.

The magazine has spoken with an Assad-regime insider and gained one of the first authoritative public accounts of the abduction and an insight into one of the former Syrian regime’s darkest secrets.

The source is Safwan Bahloul, a high-ranking general in then Syrian president Bashar Assad’s security state. He has chosen to speak out and share details of Tice’s ordeal. He confirms that Tice was held not by opposition groups, but rather by the Syrian state, with Assad’s full knowledge, and was held for some time in a compound of the former president’s most trusted aide. The general also reveals his own culpability.

In the summer of 2012, Bassam al-Hassan, a shadowy adviser in Assad’s inner circle, learned that Tice was in the suburbs of Damascus. He set in motion a plan to seize him, according to General Bahloul. A freelance journalist contributing to the Washington Post, Tice was preparing to take a break in Lebanon after a grueling period reporting in opposition-held Syria. He sought a fixer to try to cross the border, and it turned out the fixer was working for Hassan, the general claims.

After he was captured, Tice was held in a garage inside Hassan’s compound, not far from the presidential palace, says the general. The site lay outside the regime’s formal prison system—off the books and under direct control of Assad loyalists. Was Assad aware of the abduction? “He knew, absolutely, he was happy with the capture,” the general says.

Bahloul was ordered to interrogate Tice. The journalist “had a satellite communications device...an iPhone and another small phone. I started going through his phone book, you know, trying to have a clue who he is.”

Bahloul confirms that Tice managed to escape his cell for 24 hours (this was originally reported by Reuters). The general himself was suspected of aiding the escape attempt (something he denies), though he was later cleared.

“He rubbed his body with the soap in order to lubricate his chest when getting through the window, and he used the towel...There was broken glass, cemented broken glass on top of a fence. So, he put it upon it, and then he climbed it and threw himself to the other side,” said the general. Tice was recaptured.

Bahloul has settled his affairs with Syria’s new rulers and is one of a handful of senior officers not to have fled the country. He says he did not see Tice again after his fourth and final interrogation. The last confirmed information on the reporter was a video uploaded to YouTube in September 2012 in which he is seen blindfolded and surrounded by masked men shouting “Allahu Akbar.”

American officials believe the video was staged to make it look like Tice had been captured by militants and not the regime. The video was masterminded by Hassan and shot in the countryside north of Damascus, says Bahloul.

In December, as the Assad regime crumbled, thousands of desperate prisoners were broken out of Syria’s sprawling torture-and-detention network after Assad fled to Moscow, raising hopes that Tice might be among them. He was not.

Today the Trump administration and Tice’s family continue to ask questions. One possibility is that he is alive and still in Syria, perhaps hidden somewhere in the remote farmland of the country’s Alawite coastal heartland, parts of which remain outside the control of Sharaa’s security forces. Another is that he was spirited out of the country to Iran, or Hezbollah-controlled parts of Lebanon. Or he may have been abandoned in a hidden prison, or killed amid the chaos of the revolution, another victim of Assad’s reign of terror. One man may have the answer: Hassan, the shadowy adviser, who is believed to have fled to Iran and may now be in Beirut.