The Islamic State militants who kidnapped nine employees of a Qormi-based oil company last week let one man free but it was not clear whether reports of mass beheadings were true, Foreign Affairs Minister George Vella said yesterday.
“The information we have at the moment is very sketchy. All we know for a fact is that one of the workers was a Libyan and the militants told him ‘you just run off and don’t come back’ but they took the others,” he said.
Dr Vella was commenting on news reports that nine employees of a Maltese-registered oil services firm had been kidnapped by Libyan militants allied to IS.
The workers, from Austria, the Czech Republic, the Philippines, Bangladesh and an unspecified African country, were abducted on Friday from the al-Ghani oilfield near the town of Zalla, 750 kilometres southeast of the capital, Tripoli. Dr Vella said “nothing much” was known about the nine employees, other than they were not Maltese and that he had been in touch with the Austrian Embassy to discuss developments.
He referred to reports that eight guards at the oil field had been beheaded on site.
All we know for a fact is that one of the workers was a Libyan and the militants told him ‘you just run off and don’t come back’ but they took the others
A spokesman for the armed forces associated with the internationally-recognised government of Tobruk said on Monday one employee had died of a heart attack shortly after witnessing the brutal beheadings. Dr Vella said that though he had heard of the claims he could not verify them. He was speaking to Times of Malta on the sidelines of a meeting with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, who was in Malta to sign an agreement for diplomatic studies exchanges between the two countries.
During the meeting, Mr Cavusoglu denied claims that Istanbul had supplied weapons to Libyan militias and that this was possibly done via Malta.
“These allegations are completely false. Turkey is for a ceasefire in Libya, why would we supply weapons if we are supporting an end to violence in Libya?” he asked.
He was reacting to media reports last month that Libya’s internationally-recognised Prime Minister, Abdullah al-Thinni, would stop dealing with Turkey as it was sending weapons to a rival group in Tripoli so “the Libyan people could kill each other”.
Mr Cavusoglu described the claims as “libellous” and said they originated from Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, both of which, he noted, had their own reasons for propounding such falsehoods.