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Two Lebanese arrive home from Libya, many more remain

26 February 2011

BEIRUT: Two Lebanese nationals living in Libya returned home Friday but many more remain stranded in crisis-stricken Libya as authorities there rejected a Lebanese request to send an aircraft to evacuate its citizens.

In a bid to speed up the evacuation process, caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri has asked Turkish Ambassador Inan Ozyildiz for his country’s help in evacuating Lebanese nationals from Libya, a statement from Hariri’s office said Friday. Libyan airport authorities refused to grant a Middle East Airlines Airbus A321 permission to land in Tripoli, as caretaker Foreign Minister Ali Shami had requested Thursday.

“Thank God I’m home,” Lebanon Feghali, 33, told The Daily Star Friday. Feghali, a media production manager from Baabda, said he spent five days at Tripoli’s airport before finally being allowed a board a Royal Jordanian Airlines flight late Thursday.

“My friend and I managed to get on the plane,” said Feghali, referring to George Azzi, the second Lebanese to make it back home, who was not available for comment.

The two had tried to purchase tickets from Syrian and Jordanian national carriers, whose aircraft have been authorized to land on Libyan territory.

“It’s impossible to get a plane ticket,” Feghali said, adding he was told by the airlines’ staff that they had only been authorized to evacuate their own nationals. Feghali said he had originally booked and confirmed a ticket with Jordanian airlines for last Sunday, but wasn’t allowed on the plane.

He said the airport was crowded with people waiting to fly home, adding that he knew of some 80 friends and colleague who had been trying to purchase plane tickets. “They are trying to leave but they can’t,” he said, adding some friends decided to stay at the airport while others preferred to return home and wait for the situation to improve.

Some 2,000 Lebanese are believed to be living in Libya and Beirut airport sources told The Daily Star Thursday that around 200 people had showed up at Tripoli’s airport in an attempt to flee the country.

An adviser to Hariri discussed the situation with the Foreign Ministry and the charge d’affaires at the Lebanese Embassy in Tripoli, Nazih Ashour, in a bid to speed up the evacuation process, with the help of the Turkish Embassy in Tripoli.

The Lebanese Embassy has released an emergency contact number for his nationals but Feghali said it was “not even worth calling them,” accusing the embassy of “not doing anything” to help and inform its citizens.

Feghali said he decided to leave Libya because his parents “were so scared.” “My mum was dying every day,” he said, adding that he never feared for his safety.

He depicted the situation in Libya as “really bad,” but said he believed the picture painted by the media was not necessarily accurate. “It’s not like what you see on Al-Jazeera. It’s dangerous, but if you’re careful, nothing will happen to you,” he said.

Cooperation between Lebanese and Libyan authorities has been scant since Libya shut down its embassy in 2003 after Lebanon accused Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi of being involved in the 1978 disappearance of influential Shiite cleric Imam Musa Sadr while the cleric was on a visit to Tripoli. In 2008, Lebanon officially indicted Gadhafi for his alleged role in Sadr’s disappearance.

© Copyright The Daily Star 2011.