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New Libya Govt Will Not Include Muslim Brotherhood Loyalists

Prime Minister-designate Abdulhamid Dbeibeh meets with Libyans in Tripoli. (AFP)
Prime Minister-designate Abdulhamid Dbeibeh meets with Libyans in Tripoli. (AFP)
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New Libya Govt Will Not Include Muslim Brotherhood Loyalists

Prime Minister-designate Abdulhamid Dbeibeh meets with Libyans in Tripoli. (AFP)
Prime Minister-designate Abdulhamid Dbeibeh meets with Libyans in Tripoli. (AFP)

Political pressure on Libyan Prime Minister-designate Abdulhamid Dbeibeh has forced him to come up with two cabinet lineups.

The first will be comprised of 24 to 26 ministers. Should it be rejected, he will propose a government of technocrats that will be limited to 15 portfolios.

Informed sources, including some of his aides, told Asharq Al-Awsat that women will make up a third of the new government. It will also not include any loyalists to the Muslim Brotherhood or its political branch, the Justice and Construction Party, or any lawmakers or members of the Government of National Accord (GNA).

This means that GNA Interior Minister Fathi Bashagha will not retain his position in the new cabinet. Dbeibeh is likely to name himself defense minister, following the lead of GNA chief, Fayez al-Sarraj, who also holds that portfolio.

Lamia Abusedra is highly tipped to be named foreign minister. Abusedra is a former official in the al-Watan party led by Abdelhakim Belhaj, the ex-commander of the now defunct militant Islamic Fighting Group.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, an aide to Dbeibeh told Asharq Al-Awsat that the delay in unveiling the cabinet is due to “significant” pressure he is coming under from some MPs. He revealed that the lawmakers are seeking to obtain government portfolios or administrative positions for themselves or their relatives and acquaintances.

Meanwhile, High Council of State head, Khalid al-Mishri said on Monday that Dbeibeh had informed the body that he needed two and a half years to complete the government roadmap, which would force him to delay the December elections.

To avoid such a fate, he has demanded that the roadmap be amended or that the elections be held on time.

Mishri added that some 11 or 13 lawmakers have demanded that Dbeibeh grant them sovereign ministries in cabinet, including the defense and interior portfolios and the position of head of intelligence.

Meanwhile, allegations that members of the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum had received bribes to elect Dbeibeh continued to reverberate in the country. At least three participants in UN-led Libya peace talks were bribed for votes, experts from the world body found in a report for the Security Council.

Speaker of the east-based parliament Aguila Saleh said Tuesday that the session to grant confidence to the cabinet should be postponed while officials study the report.

The session is set for Monday.

Saleh said vote-buying is a “crime that cannot be ignored.”

He joined 24 lawmakers who have called for the postponement of the parliament session.

Commenting on the UN expert panel report, the UN Support Mission in Libya said the Panel of Experts (PoE) is a separate entity, completely independent from UNSMIL.

“The PoE provides its report to the Security Council Sanctions Committee. The Mission further stresses that it does not receive the reports of the PoE including its latest report, and it is therefore not in a position to comment on it. Any questions in this regard should be addressed to the Sanctions Committee,” it said in a statement on Tuesday.

The UNSMIL and its partners “strongly encourage” the parliament to meet as scheduled On March 8 to discuss and consider the vote of confidence to the cabinet to be proposed by Dbeibeh, it added.

They encourage the PM-designate to present the lineup “without further delay”.

“This call comes in line with the increasing public demand for the urgent need to form a unified government to address the most pressing needs and facilitate the holding of national elections in December 2021,” it added.

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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.