(Reuters) – An adviser to Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan was grabbed from his car by unknown assailants on the outskirts of Tripoli on Sunday evening, a government source said.
Mohamed Ali Ghatous, in his 50s, was seized after passing a checkpoint into the eastern Tripoli suburb of Tajoura. A source at Zeidan’s office said Ghatous was a senior adviser to the prime minister.
“Nobody knows where he is. They left his car behind, probably they thought it could be traced,” he said.
Ghatous had last spoken to his family by mobile phone from his car before he was taken. An investigation is under way.
Since the end of the 2011 uprising that toppled Muammar Gaddafi, Libya’s new rulers have struggled to control myriad armed groups who refuse to lay down their weapons and often take the law into their own hands.
Last week, five British nationals who were part of an aid convoy passing through Libya on the way to Gaza were briefly kidnapped by an armed group, and one was sexually assaulted in the eastern city of Benghazi, security officials said.
(Reporting by Ali Shuaib and Marie-Louise Gumuchian; Editing by Angus MacSwan)