Benghazi’s top cop kidnapped

BENGHAZI: The acting head of the criminal investigations department in Libya’s second city Benghazi has been kidnapped at gunpoint, officials told AFP yesterday.
“Abdelsalam Al-Mahdawi was kidnapped late Wednesday when traveling from his farm to the criminal investigations department,” a security official told AFP.
“Bearded men stopped him at a traffic light on Venezia Street and kidnapped him at gunpoint,” the official said on condition of anonymity, recalling that the police chief had been abducted before.
Another colleague said that Mahdawi “had many enemies since he had files on everyone — Qaddafi loyalists, hard-liners and common criminals.”
A small number of demonstrators — most of them fellow officers in civilian clothes — gathered in front of the city’s landmark Tibesti Hotel overnight calling for his release, an AFP photographer reported.
Yesterday, Interior Minister Ashour Shwayel expressed his regret over the kidnapping and promised to “search for the officer and determine the identity of the perpetrators.”