Nine men had been planning to blow up Tripoli power grid on New Year's Eve, militia chief says
A Libyan militia has captured nine Gaddafi loyalists who had been plotting to blow up Tripoli's power grid on New Year's Eve, its leader has said.
"We captured explosives with them that they bought from the black market and now we're interrogating them," the commander of Tripoli's Revolutionist Council, Abdullah Naker, said.
Militia groups who helped overthrow Muammar Gaddafi last year still hold considerable power in Libya, and have taken the law into their hands in several areas, setting up road blocks and arresting suspects, despite the presence of an official police force.
Naker said the men had been funded by a group of businessmen affiliated to the former leader who was killed in October after militias overran his home town of Sirte.
He also accused them of trying to relaunch Gaddafi's official television station Al Jamahiriya.
State media, quoting Libya's electricity and renewable energy authority, reported that the men had been planning to set off a number of explosions in Tripoli.
Libya's interim government is trying to persuade thousands of militia fighters to join the military, police and civil service and to break up the forces controlled by rival commanders with regional allegiances. It set a deadline of 20 December for militias to leave Tripoli and most withdrew their fighters and dismantled checkpoints last week.
Naker said some returned to the capital on Saturday in a show of strength to Gaddafi supporters that he said were still at large, threatening the country.
He and other militia chiefs have said they want guarantees that their fighters will be paid well by the government before letting them go.