CIA director travels to Libya following surrender of Lockerbie suspect

• William Burns makes a rare trip to Libya where he meets Haftar.
• The gathering was held at Haftar’s administrative centre in Benghazi.
• The CIA declined to comment because it does not often advertise such visits.

William Burns makes a rare trip to Libya where he meets Haftar, the military strongman stationed in the east, and temporary Prime Minister Dbeibah.

William Burns, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, has made a rare journey to Libya where he met with the interim prime minister a few weeks after the country’s officials gave the United States a suspect in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, according to the Tripoli-based administration.

The CIA director’s Thursday meeting in Tripoli, which was also covered by Libyan media, was part of his first trip to the nation since the 2012 attack on a US mission in Benghazi, which left the ambassador and three other people dead.

His Government of National Unity made announcements regarding the trip and meeting with Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah.

Along with Foreign Minister Najla al-Mangoush and Libyan intelligence chief Hussein al-Ayeb, Prime Minister Abdelhamid Dbeibeh hosted the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, William Burns, at the cabinet office in Tripoli, according to the post from Dbeibeh’s administration.

According to the statement, Burns “underlined the need to strengthen bilateral economic and security cooperation.”

According to Libyan media, Burns also had a meeting with Khalifa Haftar, the military strongman headquartered in eastern Libya who has made previous attempts to march on Tripoli and topple the Government of National Unity.

The gathering was held at Haftar’s administrative centre in Benghazi.

The CIA declined to comment because it does not often advertise such visits.

Since a NATO-backed uprising in 2011 that resulted in the death of dictator Muammar Gaddafi and sparked division and violence in the country, Libya has been in an unstable condition.

Since 2014, warring factions centred in the west and east of the country have effectively partitioned the nation.
Dbeibah’s government was established in 2021 as part of a peace agreement with support from the UN, but the major political parties in the east no longer recognise it.

In his capacity as undersecretary of state for the Middle East in 2014, Burns—CIA director as of March 2021—visited Libya.

When Washington started mending relations with the Gaddafi dictatorship, he was the first representative of the US to visit the nation.

After being extradited by Dbeibah’s administration, a Libyan man suspected of creating the bomb that brought down a Pan Am aircraft over Scotland in 1988 made an appearance in a US court last month.

If found guilty of “destruction of an aircraft resulting in death” and two other related charges related to the attack, which killed 270 people and was the deadliest-ever terror attack in Britain, alleged former intelligence officer Abu Agila Mohammad Masud Kheir al-Marimi could be sentenced to life in prison.

A public backlash against the Tripoli-based administration resulted from the action, with Dbeibah receiving harsh criticism from political adversaries, rights organisations, and the family of Libyan captives who fear being handed over themselves. Libya and the US do not have an extradition agreement.

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