Derna’s Court of Appeal has postponed a trial hearing for a number of officials accused of negligence and corruption that allegedly led to the collapse of the city’s dams, which unleashed massive floods that killed at least 4,000 people on September 10.
The Court of Appeal announced today that the hearing will be postponed to April 21. The trial began at Derna’s Court of First Instance on December 28 after the Public Prosecution charged 16 former officials with negligence and corruption. Few weeks later, the court judge decided to refer the case to the Court of Appeal on January 11 while denying bail to the defendants.
Huge swathes of the city of Derna were destroyed in the flood, after heavy rainfall from Storm Daniel crashed through two aging dams, sweeping entire districts into the Mediterranean. The disaster was unprecedented in Libya’s modern history.
Pressured by public outrage and demands for accountability, the Attorney-General Al-Saddiq Al-Sour announced that his office is investigating the deadly disaster, and few days later, charges were pressed against over dozen officials.
Al-Sour sealed the names of the defendants, but revealed that the list includes members of Derna’s Municipal Council and Reconstruction Fund. Multiple press organizations reported that Ali Al-Habri, former governor of the east branch of the Central Bank of Libya who also chaired the Derna Reconstruction Fund, is among those charged. Al-Habri is reportedly being tried in absentia as he fled the country few days before the charges were made.
A report by the World Bank, United Nations and European Union said the disaster affected about 1.5 million people or 22% of Libya’s population, and cited figures from the U.N. humanitarian agency OCHA of 4,352 confirmed deaths with 8,000 still missing. The report said the dams’ collapse was partly due to their design, based on outdated hydrological information, and partly a result of poor maintenance and governance problems during Libya’s conflict.
It said the “limited accountability and capacity” of Libyan institutions posed “a key challenge to recovery processes” while weak coordination between rival authorities was expected to hit the government’s ability to “channel, manage, disburse and monitor” recovery funds.