Libya Suspects Insider in Plant Fire, Reports Arrests

Libya has detained several people in connection with a fire at a suspected poison gas factory and will execute on the site of the blaze anyone found responsible for it, Libya’s ambassador to Italy said Monday.

Ambassador Rahman Shalgam said sabotage designed to look like an accident was responsible for the fire last Wednesday at the chemical plant at Rabta, 60 miles southwest of Tripoli, the Libyan capital.

“Several people under suspicion have been detained,” Shalgam told a news conference in Rome. He did not specify nationality.

He said an investigation so far indicates that “a member of the plant’s technical staff” had started the fire, which he said caused “damages of great proportion.”

He said that although Libya “is against the death penalty,” the person responsible for the incident “will be executed at the spot where the fire happened.”

Libya denies that the plant was making chemical weapons, as charged by the United States, and says it manufactured medicines.

Shalgam said Libya suspects that West Germany played a “technical” part in starting the blaze since it had a large role in building the plant.

But in Paris on Monday, operators of a satellite that took pictures of the plant said there appeared to be little damage.

Gerard Brachet, president of French satellite operator Spot-Images, which photographed the plant, said: “The images do not indicate any trace of a fire in the main factory. The roofs are intact.”

However, the French satellite is not believed to be as capable of defining damage as are American satellites.