TRIPOLI
Libyan Attorney General Ibrahim Anis Beshia of the Tripoli-based government on Sunday refuted reports that he had been kidnapped while exiting the Tripoli court complex on Saturday.
"I was not kidnapped," Beshia told The Anadolu Agency briefly over the phone.
Noureddine Karkoub, the head of Beshia's office, for his part, said that the attorney general is fine and that he is currently at his office.
The denial came one day after sources with Libya's High Court told AA that a group of armed men took the attorney general to an unknown location immediately after he finished his work at the complex.
Libya has remained in a state of turmoil since a bloody uprising ended the decades-long rule of strongman Muammar Gaddafi in late 2011.
Since then, the country's stark political divisions have yielded two rival seats of government, each with its own institutions and military capacities.
Vying for legislative authority are the Tobruk-based parliament and an Islamist-led parliament, the latter of which – even though its mandate ended last year – continues to convene in capital Tripoli.
The two assemblies support two rival governments respectively headquartered in the two cities.
