The libyan prime minister's secret trip to Rome to convince minister Juma to stay silent

A few minutes after 4 p.m. last Saturday, the Libyan prime minister Abdelhamid Dabaiba’s embraer legacy 600 landed at Ciampino airport for a secret visit. Two sources confirmed to Il Foglio that the prime minister went to the European Hospital, a private clinic on Via Portuense. There, for the past five days, Adel Juma, the Libyan minister who survived an attack in Tripoli on February 12, had been hospitalized. Today, he is just the latest in a long list of concerns for the Libyan head of government. To understand the significance of Dabaiba’s three-hour trip, one must go back to february 10.

Khalil Elhassi is a journalist and writer living in Switzerland, widely followed on social media for often sharing documents that reveal the rather murky dealings of various Libyan leaders. On february 10, Elhassi posted on X (formerly Twitter) documents proving the secret collaboration between the Tripoli government and Russian mercenaries from Wagner, which began in 2022. The documents show trips to Belarus, meetings between ambassadors, and talks with Evgeny Prigozhin. These documents accuse Dabaiba and his family, particularly his influential nephew, Ibrahim Dabaiba, who serves as his advisor. The accusation is that the prime minister allowed the russians to fly over western libyan airspace and use certain bases for logistical stopovers, facilitating Wagner’s advance into the Sahel. Dabaiba’s fascination with the russians was already known. However, negotiations with Prigozhin didn’t lead to anything concrete and didn’t cement the alliance that instead strengthened Moscow’s ties with the eastern part of Libya, led by Haftar.

The “non-story” of Dabaiba’s flirtations with Wagner, however, becomes a propaganda tool for Saddam Haftar, the son of the Cyrenaica general, Khalifa. Blogger Elhassi received the material from Saddam, who is eager to show the world that he is not the only one in Libya doing business with the Russians. According to many observers, the person who handed the documents to Saddam was none other than Adel Juma, the Minister of the Interior for Tripoli. Until a few weeks prior, his name was minor, but now these leaks have brought him to the forefront of Dabaiba’s problems. For some time, Juma had positioned himself as a mediator between east and west, until, in january, Farhat Bengdara resigned as Ceo of the National Oil Company, which manages the country’s vast oil wealth. Juma wanted to take his place, but despite his efforts to lobby for his candidacy, neither Haftar nor Dabaiba supported him. Rejected by both, Juma decided to take revenge by proving he knew dangerous secrets. This is when he came up with the idea of leaking documents about Wagner.

Two days after the leaks, on february 12, Juma was attacked by a group of men armed with AK-47s. The exact details are unclear. While the libyan government claims it was an ambush on the car Juma was traveling in on a road in Palm City, the district of ministries and embassies in Tripoli, another version suggests the commandos stormed his office. A burst of gunfire hit him in the leg. Juma survived and was initially hospitalized in Tripoli before being transported to Rome on february 19. The Italian government has shown some attention to the case. On the same day as the attack, the Undersecretary to the presidency of the Council, Alfredo Mantovano, spontaneously spoke to reporters about the issue while addressing questions about the Paragon and Almasri cases: “It is striking that today, we are chasing after things that lie halfway between fiction and slander, yet there is little interest in, for example, the serious injury of a libyan government minister, Adel Juma, in Tripoli, which describes a truly difficult and complex situation.”

Suspicion about who was behind the attack has centered on Ibrahim Dabaiba, the prime minister’s nephew, who is considered impulsive. According to sources speaking to Il Foglio, in the days following his multiple surgeries in the clinic in Rome, Juma considered requesting political asylum in Italy. He wanted to escape the death sentence hanging over him in Tripoli but feared for the fate of his family still in Libya. In an unorthodox move, the day after Juma’s arrival in Italy, U.S. Ambassador to Libya Richard Norland visited the minister’s wife and children. The photo of the meeting, along with the diplomatic message of solidarity posted on X, seemed like a warning to the Dabaibas to lay down their arms.

The prime minister, who had already been facing the disastrous consequences of the potential arrest of Osama Njeem, known as Almasri, the commander of the Mitiga prison police, now faces the defection of a minister. “Juma knows many of Dabaiba’s secrets and his dealings. He is also afraid for his life,” a Libyan source explained to Il Foglio. For this reason, the prime minister flew to Rome to persuade Juma to remain silent, return to Tripoli, and not join the opposition. Two hostile forces to Dabaiba may tempt the minister: one is Saddam Haftar, and the other is Abdel Ghani el Kikli, known as Gnewa. He is the commander of the Stability Support Apparatus and, according to accusations from NGOs and international organizations, competes with Dabaiba for control over several traffics along the western coast of the country, including that of migrants. By the end of the week, Juma is expected to return to Libya, and it will be seen whether Dabaiba’s persuasion efforts will spare him further embarrassments.

This article is translated by artificial intelligence. If you want to report errors you can write to [email protected]

• 

• Luca Gambardella

• Sono nato a Latina nel 1985. Sangue siciliano. Per dimenticare Littoria sono fuggito a Venezia per giocare a fare il marinaio alla scuola militare "Morosini". Laurea in Scienze internazionali e diplomatiche a Gorizia. Ho vissuto a Damasco per studiare arabo. Nel 2012 sono andato in Egitto e ho iniziato a scrivere di Medio Oriente e immigrazione come freelance. Dal 2014 lavoro al Foglio.