Phew: last of Libya’s chemical weapons components destroyed

Germany said it has completed the destruction of components from the chemicals weapons programme of deposed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

The international community had feared that the 500 tons of chemicals could fall into the hands of extremist groups or rogue states after Gaddafi was deposed in 2011 and the country fell into chaos.

Germany’s Foreign and Defence Ministries said on Friday that the chemicals had been destroyed “successfully and in an environmentally sustainable manner” by a state-owned specialist firm, GEKA, which is based in Munster, south of Hamburg.

Last year, Libya made a formal request to the UNbacked Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for international assistance to have the chemical weapons removed.

The cost of destroying the chemicals was shared by Germany and the United States.

In 2004, Libya joined the Chemical Weapons Convention which required chemical weapons be destroyed in the country. When it began destroying its chemical weapons stocks at the time, Libya declared that it had 24.7 tons of mustard gas, 1,390 tons of precursor chemicals and over 3,000 bombs containing chemical weapons.

The destruction of chemical weapons was interrupted by the 2011 overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, leaving some 850 tons of precursor chemicals stored at a facility monitored by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in Ruwagha, southern Libya, the former site of Gaddafi’s chemical weapons farm.