Twelve civil servants responsible for managing dams in Libya have been sentenced to serve prison terms of 9 to 27 years in the context of the investigation into the deadly floods, especially in Derna (east), last September, a prosecutor announced yesterday, Sunday.

After completing the investigation into the attribution of responsibility for the devastating floods, “a criminal court in Derna issued a verdict yesterday Sunday convicting 12 persons”, in particular public officials “in charge of managing dams” in the north African state, the prosecution services explained.

Five of the defendants were sentenced to serve sentences ranging from 19 to 27 years in prison and the remaining seven to 9 years in prison, while they were also ordered to pay fines corresponding to the “blood tax,” according to the same source.

The three of them are also obliged to return to the Libyan public funds that they had “illegally” in their possession, added the announcement of the prosecutor, made public through Facebook.

Eight of the persons convicted, among them the former mayor of Derna, had already been remanded in custody since September 25 in the context of the case.

On the night of September 10-11, 2023, Storm Daniel, which hit the eastern coast of Libya, caused widespread flooding, which was made exponentially worse by the collapse of two dams. Thousands of people died or were declared missing, while over 40,000 were forced to flee their homes.

Corruption-plagued Libya has been wracked by violence since the fall of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in 2011 and has two governments, one in its western part under UN-recognised Prime Minister Abdelhamid Dbayba, the other in eastern part of the country, adjacent to Marshal Khalifa Haftar’s camp, which controls, beyond Cyrenaica, sectors of the south.

In January, a report assessing the damage and needs of Libya estimated that the cost of rebuilding the city and its surroundings after the disaster would reach $1.8 billion.

According to the text, 20 cities suffered damage due to storm Daniel, some in the governorates of Benghazi, Al Marz, Sahel al Jabal and Al Akhtar.

The disaster “affected about 1.5 million people—or 22 percent of the Libyan population—living in the hardest-hit cities, coastal and inland,” according to the report, which was co-authored by the World Bank, the UN and the EU.