A Libyan court will deliver on 20 February its final verdict on the case of the arrested secret cell of the Palestinian Hamas movement in Libya, judicial sources told 218TV on Tuesday.
A series of hearings were held over the past months to prosecute the cell members.
The Public Prosecution accused four arrested persons who allegedly belong to Hamas of “spying on Libya, threatening its security through having access to information related to national security, disclosing military secrets and smuggling large quantities of weapons.”
Members of the cell are Marwan al-Ashqar, Bara’a al-Ashqar, Mu’ayyad Abid and Naseeb Bashir.
The case was announced in September 2017 by al-Sadiq al-Sour, the head of the Attorney-General’s Office Investigation Bureau.
The Attorney-General said the four had been in the city of Benghazi before moving to the capital of Tripoli where they were arrested.
According to the prosecution, the defendants confessed they planned to access classified information related to the national security of the country. They also sought to trade and smuggle weapons from the Libyan territories to the Gaza Strip. Firearms were seized in their possession at the time of their arrest in summer 2017, the prosecution claims.
On 1 October 2017, Hamas Spokesperson Fawzi Barhoum denied the claims of the Libyan government officials, saying such cell did not exist in the first place.
“The consistent policy of Hamas is not to interfere in the internal matters of any country, Arab or otherwise,” said Barhom.
