Mob rule

Libyan protesters stormed the offices of their transitional government in the eastern city of Benghazi on Saturday, venting frustration with the pace of reform more than three months after the overthrow and death of Colonel Moammar Gadhafi.

The protesters used grenades to breach the premises and threw bottles at the chief of the governing National Transitional Council (NTC), Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, when he tried to address the crowd from a second-story window.

"They set fire to the front (of the office), broke windows and damaged one of the armored cars that was there," NTC political affairs chief Fathi Baja told the news agency AFP.

Controversial election laws

Demonstrators have been camped out in front of the NTC's Benghazi offices for weeks in order to protest new electoral laws that they say were drafted without public participation. The NTC accepted public suggestions for the laws through an online survey. The laws will govern elections for the transitional government.

"The election laws have not been approved by thousands of Libyans and do not honor those who died for our freedom," Tamer al-Jahani, a lawyer taking part in the protests, told the Associated Press.

Last week, NTC deputy head Abdel Hafiz Ghoga was mobbed by university students. He escaped unharmed but was manhandled by the crowd, which accused him of opportunism for his belated defection from the Gadhafi regime.

The NTC condemned the Ghoga incident, saying that "every attack or aggression against the National Transitional Council represents an attack on the sovereignty of the Libyan people and its glorious revolution."

Author: Spencer Kimball (AP, AFP)
Editor: Andy Valvur