Post by Focus on Apr 1, 2013 15:17:44 GMT
An adviser to the Libyan Prime Minister was grabbed from his car by unknown assailants on the outskirts of Tripoli last night, it has been claimed.
Mohammad Ali Gatous, in his 50s, was seized after passing a checkpoint into the eastern Tripoli suburb of Tajoura.
The government source said: 'Nobody knows where he is. They left his car behind, probably they thought it could be traced.'
Gatous had last spoken to his family by mobile phone from his car before he was taken. An investigation is under way.
The disappearance comes less than a week after Prime Minister Ali Zeidan was besieged in his office by militiamen who demanded his ouster over remarks he made threatening to summon outside help to confront the armed groups who enjoy near impunity in many parts of the country.
The officials spoke anonymously in line with regulations.
The same day as Ghatous disappeared, militiamen surrounded the Justice Ministry, angry over remarks by the minister saying illegal militias would be punished.
Since the end of the 2011 uprising that toppled Muammar Gaddafi, Libya’s new rulers have struggled to control myriad armed groups who refuse to lay down their weapons and often take the law into their own hands.
Last week, five British nationals who were part of an aid convoy passing through Libya on the way to Gaza were briefly kidnapped by an armed group.
Two women were sexually assaulted in the eastern city of Benghazi in front of their father, security officials said.
Awadh al-Barassi said on his Facebook page that the women - part of a humanitarian convoy destined for Gaza, the Palestinian coastal enclave under an Israeli blockade - were 'brutally raped' in front of him. Barassi called the crime a 'horrible act'.
He said he had been to see the two victims in Benghazi on Thursday, and that the family was 'in a very bad psychological state'.
The AFP news agency said the two women, accompanied by their father, were with the Gaza convoy when it was blocked from leaving Libya and entering Egypt.
The three decided to return to Benghazi accompanied by two more Britons, with the aim of getting a flight home.
But when they arrived in Libya's second city they were abducted by five unidentified men -- Fx