The Council of Greater Tripoli Elders and Dignitaries has rejected the Presidential Council’s decision to include the killed fighters of Khalifa Haftar’s Operation Dignity forces in martyred, injured and missing persons families’ care program, adding in a statement that the Presidential Council should form a new care program for Haftar forces’deaths if “he wants to become close to Haftar and HoR Speaker Aqila Saleh.”
The Head of the Presidential Council, Mohammed Menfi, issued a decision in his capacity as the Chief Commander of the Libyan Army, including the deaths and injured persons of Khalifa Haftar’s Operation Dignity in the General Authority for the Care of the Families of Martyrs, Missing and Amputees in the Government of National Unity.
Protesters expressed their rejection to the decision on Sunday in front of the Presidential Council’s headquarters in Tripoli. They called on the Presidential Council to cancel the decision.
The Greater Tripoli Council said it was quite bizarre that the Presidential Council made the victim and perpetrator equal in its decision to include Haftar forces’ deaths in the care program, citing the fact that Haftar’s forces didn’t abide by any Libyan laws and were acting illegitimately.
The Council also denounced what it called “the silence of the Chief Commander of the Libyan Army” (Presidential Council) regarding the movements of Haftar’s forces and their provocative maneuvers on the borders of the western region, saying that if Haftar’s forces didn’t obey the orders of the Chief Commander, then why include their deaths in the care program.
The Greater Tripoli Council has explained that the care program is part of the authority that is affiliated with the Prime Minister of the Government of National Unity and the Presidential Council has no right to address it except through the Prime Minister. It indicated that the eastern region “was not affiliated with the internationally recognized Government of National Unity, but rather it had a parallel government that carried out its work by force using Haftar’s rebellion against the legitimate authority.”
