Fake identities in Libya raise concerns about hindering elections – Details
A new case, which was opened by the Libyan Attorney General, Al Siddiq Al Sour, concerns wide falsification of the national numbers of citizens, raising fears of a new obstruction to the holding of the elections. Meanwhile, the 6+6 joint committee between the Libyan House of Representatives and the High Council of State, which is responsible for preparing electoral laws, continues to meet with the concerned authorities to prepare for the electoral process.
Al Sour added: “There is evidence of fraud in the civil registry system, and this has affected other systems whose data rely on the civil registry, such as the Ministry of Finance, Social Security, passport systems, and family grants at the Central Bank.”
Al Sour explained: “The Public Prosecution oversaw the removal of tens of thousands of national numbers, which resulted in significant financial losses for the state, as it used to pay them salaries, grants, and passports. These violations caused serious damage to public funds and caused a serious breach of public confidence because of the presence of forged passports”.
The Libyan Attorney General has decided to form committees, headed by 160 prosecutors, to examine the civil registry system, noting that the committees include officers from the Civil Status Authority and the Criminal Investigation Agency, to examine the civil registry system and compare it with official documents.
According to the Public Prosecution, there is a shipment of documents that do not accept forgery. The first shipment will arrive next week, after which the formed committees will begin their work to examine and review the national number system.
The Public Prosecutor said that thousands of citizens, out of a total of 2,14,908 citizens who receive salaries without any restriction to the civil status system, receive their salaries from the Libyan state, noting that the number of incorrect national figures reached 88,819, benefiting around 208 million dinars.
The decision comes after the Libyan Criminal Investigation Agency’s Benghazi branch arrested several successive operations against Egyptian, Sudanese, and South African expatriates who had impersonated the Libyan identity card by falsifying national numbers and family status, according to the official Facebook page of the Criminal Investigation Department in Libya.
Former Interior Minister and presidential candidate Ashour Shuwail described the issue of foreigners owning Libyan national IDs as a “time bomb” that could explode in the face of the state at any moment, noting that the matter “threatens the riches of Libya, most of which are concentrated in the south, such as gold and groundwater, as well as oil wealth and the fertility of agricultural land”.
“The recent attempt by the Italian organization Aragachi, which is linked in cooperation with the International Center for Advanced Agricultural Studies in the Mediterranean (ICRAF), to integrate illegal migrants in the south of Libya, is the greatest proof of the importance of the south, which is buffeted by the winds of demographic changes coming from Western countries,” Shuwail said.
