A Libyan court jailed 12 people involved in managing dams in the country’s east after devastating floods last year that killed thousands of people, Bloomberg reports.
The unidentified officials received prison sentences ranging from nine years to 27 years, the North African nation’s attorney general said Sunday in a short statement. Three of those convicted were also ordered to return money obtained from illicit gains, it said.
The judgment marks the first significant judicial punishments in connection with September’s events, when Storm Daniel battered the eastern city of Derna and two large dams collapsed under the strain. The flooding left at least 4,000 people dead and many more missing, according to the United Nations, in Libya’s worst natural disaster in decades.
Political instability, a decade of civil war, crumbling infrastructure and weak emergency systems all likely played a role in the tragedy. Like much of Libya’s infrastructure, the dams on Wadi Derna had been neglected and lacked maintenance or upgrades for decades.
