A court in eastern Libya has reopened the trial of 12 officials accused in connection with the collapse of the Derna dams during the deadly floods caused by Storm Daniel in 2023, according to a judicial source and one of the defendants’ lawyers who spoke to Reuters.
Both sources confirmed that the retrial follows a decision by Libya’s Supreme Court to accept appeals against the sentences previously issued by the Derna Court of Appeal last year. The lawyer, speaking anonymously by phone, said the court accepted the appeal because the previous verdicts were “legally flawed,” leading to the annulment of the earlier ruling and the launch of a new trial.
The judicial source added that the first retrial session took place on Sunday at the Benghazi Court of Appeal, Libya’s second-largest city. At the end of the session, the court decided to adjourn the hearings until 30 November, with the defendants remaining in custody.
Last year, the Derna Court of Appeal had sentenced several officials overseeing the country’s dam facilities to prison terms ranging from nine to 27 years, while acquitting four others. The charges included negligence, manslaughter, and misappropriation of public funds.
The catastrophic floods of September 2023 devastated the coastal city of Derna, home to around 125,000 residents. Storm Daniel caused the collapse of the city’s two dams, sweeping entire neighbourhoods into the sea and leaving thousands dead or missing.
According to Abdelaziz Al-Jaafari, head of the media office at the General Authority for the Search and Identification of Missing Persons, the authority has received 3,297 reports from families of the missing and collected 3,970 DNA samples. So far, 113 matches have been confirmed, including two Egyptians and one Syrian.
