The General National Congress (GNC), Libya's highest sovereign authority, began to examine documents pertaining to the seven candidates for the country's next interim prime minister last weekend. The current interim prime minister, Abdullah Al-Thinni, had earlier announced his decision to step down after having received threats from anonymous parties to the safety of his home and family. According to Libyan political sources, the threats were prompted by differences over his choices for his cabinet team. The Bawabat Al-Wasat Website cited GNC rapporteur Abdel-Hamid Hamid Al-Ruwaymi as saying that last Sunday's session was to be devoted to hearing the views of the seven candidates for the post of interim prime minister. He listed these as Al-Senousi Mohamed Al-Sifat, Ali Idris Al-Tariki, Jumaa Afhima, Ahmed Ameitiq, Omar Suleiman Al-Hassi, current head of the Libyan civil affairs authority Mohamed Boukar, and Bashir Mousa Al-Fiqhi. Al-Ruwaymi said that these candidates had applied to the prime minister's office in person or had come via a recommendation from a civil society institution. Speaking to Al-Ahram Weekly by telephone from Tripoli on condition of anonymity, Libyan sources explained the background to the threats that had compelled Al-Thinni to tender his resignation last week. The former interim prime minister had come under diverse and heavy pressures related to the formation of the new government, the sources said, with which the GNC had tasked him the previous week. The sources said that the extremist Islamist Loyalty to the Blood of the Martyrs bloc, which counts among its members Abdel-Wahab Qayed, brother to the Libyan Al-Qaeda leader Abu Yahya Al-Libi, had been pushing to have National Party chief Abdel-Hakim Belhajj appointed minister of interior and Khaled Al-Sherif appointed minister of defence. When Al-Thinni rejected these names, the Islamist bloc demanded that the ministers of justice, culture and communications be removed from their posts. According to the sources, people connected to the Loyalty to the Blood of the Martyrs bloc had also been pressing Al-Thinni to hand the finance and petroleum portfolios to individuals from Misrata. The sources said that the gunfights that had erupted in front of the interim prime minister's house last week had been intended as a direct threat to his security. They said that many other ministers had been the victims of threats in the past intended to compel them to resign. They noted that some militias based in the capital that support the continuation of the GNC beyond its stipulated term have called for reinforcements from eastern Libya to be moved to the capital in anticipation of impending political and security problems. In another development, Jordan's Ambassador to Libya, Fawwaz Al-Eidan, was abducted by Islamist gunmen reportedly close to the family of Mohamed Said Al-Darsi, a Libyan who has been sentenced to life imprisonment in Jordan for his involvement in planning a terrorist attack against the Queen Alia Airport some years ago. Several days later, a Tunisian diplomat was kidnapped in Tripoli, becoming the second of the country's diplomats to suffer this fate in a single month. The other diplomat, Mohamed Al-Sheikh, had been abducted a few days previously and has not yet been released. The Tunisian Foreign Ministry said the kidnappers of the diplomats belonged to the same group and that this group was demanding the release of Libyans who had been sentenced to prison in Tunisia for having taken part in the terrorist acts against Tunisian security forces during the violence that swept Tunisia in 2013 at the hands of the Ansar Al-Sharia group and other Islamist extremists. The Jordanian authorities have announced that they are engaged in negotiations with Libyan tribesmen to act as intermediaries in order to secure the release of the kidnapped Jordanian ambassador. The Egyptian diplomatic mission in Libya was also the victim of a kidnapping operation by a group calling itself the Operations Room of the Revolutionaries of Libya. The operation came in response to the arrest in Alexandria of their leader Abu Obeida Al-Zawi, who has since been released by the Egyptian authorities. The Libyan authorities seem to be as weak as ever in the face of the various militias that have proliferated in the country due to the breakdown in security and the spread of weapons since the fall of the former Gaddafi regime. Following the kidnapping of the Jordanian ambassador, the German embassy closed its doors in Tripoli on 16 April. The Iraqi ambassador to Libya also relocated himself to Tunisia for fear of meeting the same fate as other diplomats working in Libya. One Libyan female guard at the US embassy in Tripoli succeeded in fleeing from gunmen who had attempted to abduct her. She was shot in the course of the escape, but rushed to hospital in the capital. Another guard was shot during an attack on the Portuguese embassy in Tripoli on Friday morning. The guard, originally from the Ivory Coast, exchanged fire with four gunmen who had planned to rob a safe in the embassy's visa office. Libyan security sources reported that the gunmen had fled, abandoning their car, and that nothing had been stolen from the embassy. Against this backdrop, the Constituent Assembly charged with drafting Libya's new constitution held its first meeting on Monday in the eastern Libyan city of Baida. The assembly, also called the Committee of 60, had been originally scheduled to meet earlier this month, but this had been deferred pending the arrival of members from the west and south of the country. US Ambassador to Libya Deborah Jones made a previously announced visit to Baida in order to attend the Assembly's inaugural session. The tight secrecy surrounding the visit was necessitated by the uncertain security conditions in the country, especially in the east where Islamist extremists abound.
