Photographer freed in east Libya after 3 years in jail

BENGHAZI, Libya — A photographer arrested in eastern Libya in 2018 and jailed by a military tribunal has been released under an amnesty ordered by forces loyal to strongman Khalifa Haftar, official sources said on Sunday.

“Ismail Abuzreiba Al Zway, sentenced to 15 years in prison, was released after benefiting from a special amnesty from the general command of the armed forces” under Haftar’s control, a source in the military prosecutor’s office in the city of Benghazi said.

Zway was released late Saturday, the source told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Hanan Salah, a researcher on Libya for Human Rights Watch (HRW), in a tweet wrote that his release was “overdue” and came “after 3yrs of arbitrary detention”.

Zway was arrested in Ajdabiya in December 2018, a town in the east under Haftar’s control.

A military tribunal in Benghazi gave him a 15-year sentence in May 2020 “for communicating with a television channel that supports terrorism”, a reference to the privately run station Al Nabaa, according to HRW’s report for 2020.

“A #Benghazi military court in May 2020 had sentenced Zway in a secret trial to 15 yrs in prison on trumped up ‘terrorism’ charges,” Salah tweeted.

Zway’s conviction sparked “dismay” from the United Nations support mission in the North African country.

“The detention and trial appear to violate Libya’s laws as well as its international obligations on the right to a fair trial” and freedom of expression, UNSMIL said in a tweet in August last year.

Libya is trying to extricate itself from a decade of turmoil following the 2011 toppling of dictator Muammar Qadhafi.

In March, an interim government was sworn in to lead Libya towards December 24 parliamentary and presidential polls under a UN-brokered peace process.

Libya ranks 165 out of 180 countries on Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index.