Libya says 14,000 prisoners still on the run

TRIPOLI :Some 14,000 prisoners who escaped from various Libyan detention centres after the 2011 uprising against Muammar Gaddafi are still on the run, the interior minister said.

Speaking less than three weeks after more than 1,200 detainees escaped during riots from a prison in the eastern city of Benghazi, Mr Mohamed al-Cheikh told ministry officials on Monday that the interior and justice ministries were "working together to get them back to prison so they can serve out their sentences".

UAE embassy compound attacked in Libyan capital

TRIPOLI: Unidentified assailants fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the United Arab Emirates embassy compound in the Libyan capital Tripoli on Thursday, the latest in a series of attacks on foreign targets in the North African country.

Security sources said the attackers drove up to the compound, which houses both the embassy and ambassador's residence, in the Siahia neighbourhood in Western Tripoli before fleeing immediately.

Libyan mufti criticizes UN document on women

TRIPOLI : Libya's supreme religious cleric is calling on Muslim nations to reject a United Nations document on women's rights, saying that it counters Islamic law.

Mufti al-Sadiq al-Ghiryani issued a fatwa, or religious edict, against the document set to be signed by nations at the 57th session of the Commission on the Status of Women this month.

While Islamic jurisprudence prefers witnesses for a divorce, the mufti says the U.N. document insists on judicial interference.

The edict issued Monday criticizes the document's references to inheritance and its equating of men and women. Al-Ghiryani says this puts full burden on women to share equally in terms of domestic spending.

The mufti also condemns the document's wording on sexual freedoms and the rights of children born out of wedlock.