Assalamu Alaikum - Education Minister Held in Custody Over Textbook Case
Assalamu alaikum. TRIPOLI: Prosecutors in Libya have said they have placed the country’s acting education minister, Ali Al-Abed, in preventative detention over alleged negligence connected to a school textbook scandal. He had taken the role after Moussa Al-Megarief, who earlier received a three-and-a-half year sentence in March over a related textbook shortage case.
The prosecutor general’s office said on Saturday night that both Al-Abed and the head of the ministry’s school programs department are being held “pending an investigation into harm to the public interest and violation of the right to education.” The cases of the current minister and his predecessor have both drawn strong public attention across Libya.
According to the prosecutors, the probe into Al-Abed’s actions involves the awarding of contracts to print books for the current school year and found “irregularities in the administrative and financial procedures.” They also reported a “failure to deliver textbooks to two million students on time.”
The 2025–2026 school year started more than a month late, leaving parents of nearly 2.6 million students to pay for photocopies of textbooks. In Libya’s public schools, textbooks are normally provided free through the end of secondary school, funded by a special item in the education ministry’s budget.
May Allah make things easy for the students and families affected and grant those responsible justice and the chance to set things right.
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