Libya : A no lie zone

[Magda Hassan]

More information here from AJ

Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan has been kidnapped from a hotel in Tripoli by an armed group and taken to an unknown location, the government has said.A former Libyan rebel group said on Thursday it had seized Zeidan after government allowed the United States to capture a top al-Qaeda suspect in Tripoli last weekend.
"The head of the transitional government, Ali Zeidan, was taken to an unknown destination for unknown reasons by a group" of former rebels, the government said in a brief statement on its website on Thursday.
Al Jazeera's Mahmoud AbdalWahid, reporting from Tripoli, said Zeidan was kidnapped by men belonging to a group called the Libyan Revolutionary Operations Chamber, which in principle falls under the defence and interior ministries.
The government said it believed the Chamber was involved but also accused another group, the brigade for the fight against crime, of being behind the kidnapping.
The cabinet and the General National Congress, Libya's top political authority, were dealing with the situation the statement said, while calling on citizens to remain calm.
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[TD="class: caption"]A video still circulating on social media allegedly showing Prime Minster Ali Zeidan at the time he was taken from his hotel [Facebook][/TD]
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Amel Jerary, the director of communications to the prime minister, told Al Jazeera that the raid happened in the middle of the night.
"I'm afraid at this point, nothing is very clear. How it is done, I really don't have any information on this. I'm sure that the people who have done this were very well prepared," Jerary said.
Jerary denied rumours that Libya's finance minister was also kidnapped. "This is not true," she said.
Zeidan was taken by force by gunmen from the Corinthia Hotel in the capital where he resides, security guards at the hotel said.
The circumstances were unclear but one guard described it as an "arrest".
Government officials could not immediately be reached to confirm his whereabouts.
Two years after a revolution toppled Muammar Gaddafi, Libya's central government has been struggling to contain rival tribal groups and fighters who control parts of the country.
Last weekend, the US military captured a top al-Qaeda suspect in Tripoli in a raid that angered armed groups, including one blamed for the 2012 attack on the US consulate, in Benghazi.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/201...77468.html