The Libyan Journalists Syndicate denounced the seizure of a headquarters belonging to the Libyan News Agency in Tripoli by Libyan security authorities.
The union’s statement stated that the building housing the agency’s administrative and financial departments was arbitrarily seized, preventing workers from accessing their offices.
The syndicate expressed its deep concern about this flagrant violation of the basic rights of the media institution, considering it an attack on one of the pillars of the national press and media in Libya.
The syndicate called on the legislative, judicial, and executive bodies to intervene urgently to restore the situation to normal, stressing the need to ensure the continuity and independence of the Libyan News Agency, and to protect its employees from any interference.
The director general of the Libyan News Agency, Ibrahim Hadiya al-Majbri, directed a request for the intervention of the attorney general to return the agency’s historic headquarters in the capital, Tripoli, which was waxed by officers of the Libyan intelligence service.
Al-Majbri’s statement explained that at three in the afternoon on Sunday, a number of officers of the agency came to the official historical headquarters of the Libyan News Agency in the Zawiya Al-Dahmani area on the Shatt road in Tripoli, where they “requested his forcible extradition without a legal basis.”
The incident comes as the Libyan News Agency celebrates its sixtieth anniversary, and on the eve of International Workers’ Day and World Press Freedom Day.
The Libyan News Agency is the only media institution established by law in 1964.
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