Libya NTC Key figures

30 October 2011

Six leading National Transitional Council officials redefining Tripoli’s government: Abdel Rahim al-Keib, Naji Barakat, Ahmed al-Jehani, Suliman el-Sahli, Ahmed al-Abbar and Rafik el-Nayed

Abdel Rahim al-Keib

Position: Interim Prime Minister

Biography: Elected as prime minister in late October, after predecessor Mahmoud Jibril followed through on his promise to step down, Abdel Rahim al-Keib won more than half the 51 votes in the National Transitional Council (NTC) to take up the position. He saw off competition from three other candidates and has said he would make respect for human rights a priority. Al-Keib must also try to quickly disarm a nation now awash with weapons. During the civil war, he helped to fund the NTC. Al-Keib’s firm, International Company for Energy & Technology was founded in Libya in 2005. Born in Tripoli in 1950, he is a US-trained electrical engineer. Al-Keib taught at the University of Alabama in the US during the 1980s and later moved to the UAE, where he was director of electrical, electronics and computer engineering at the American University of Sharjah.

Contact Email: info@nctlibya.org

Naji Barakat

Position: Health Minister

Biography: Until 2011, Naji Barakat was a London-based consultant paediatrician. During the early days of the civil war, he documented human rights violations committed by the Gaddafi regime, before being appointed as the NTC’s new health minister in May 2011. Barakat was born in the Libyan town of Gharrian in 1958 and completed his primary and secondary education there before moving to Benghazi to study medicine. He graduated from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Garryounis in 1984. Following this, Barakat worked for three years at a Gharrian hospital. In 1987, he moved to Zurich to work as a paediatrician and in 1989, he moved to the UK. Barakat has been on general leave from London’s Hillingdon Hospital since early 2011 and is expected to return in early 2012. He is also an honorary consultant for the neurology department at the Great Ormond Street hospital in London.

Contact Email: info@nctlibya.org

Ahmed al-Jehani

Position: Reconstruction and Infrastructure Minister

Biography: Ahmed al-Jehani is a Harvard-educated lawyer who has held technical positions at oil companies. In May, he was appointed as the NTC’s Reconstruction and Infrastructure Minister. Al-Jehani was born in Benghazi in 1946 and until 2011, was the managing director of his own international trade, investment, finance and arbitration consultancy called Jehan Integration. Between 2007 and 2008, he was the associate director general of the Libyan Economic Development Board, a position he took up after more than three decades of working at the World Bank, where he was senior adviser to the board of directors between 2005 and 2007. At the World Bank, Al-Jehani was a negotiator and policy adviser for energy and mining, for the group designing the bank’s work in the financial sectors of member countries.

Contact Email: info@nctlibya.org

Suliman el-Sahli

Position: Education Minister

Biography: Suliman el-Sahli was appointed the NTC’s Education Minister in March and retained the position during the reshuffle in August. Little is known about El-Sahli who, prior to the civil war, was a Benghazi-based businessman and member of the city council. He pushed for the country’s schools and universities to be reopened in September, so as not to disrupt students’ education. This was despite the lack of teaching materials and the need to retrain teachers who, under the deposed regime, had to follow a curriculum that was based on the teachings of Muammar Gaddafi’s Green Book. El-Sahli said that the rebels would not embark upon a wholesale purge of people in the Gaddafi administration unless they were very close to the ex-leader. Prior to the appointment of Abdel Rahim al-Keib as Prime Minister, many said that he could be a candidate.

Contact Email: info@nctlibya.org

Ahmed al-Abbar

Position: Economics Minister

Biography: Ahmed al-Abbar was appointed to the post of Economics Minister in August. This was in addition to his role as a representative for the city of Benghazi. Al-Abbar comes from a family that is noted for its ties to the influential Sanussi tribe, which ruled Libya until the Muammar Gaddafi-led revolution in 1969. Before the civil war in Libya started, he was the chairman of a Benghazi-based agricultural imports company. During the civil war, Al-Abbar’s role within the NTC was largely focused on restoring the country’s banking system to working order. He went about doing this by administering funds and opening lines of credit with other countries to help boost trade. Al-Abbar also made the import of foreign goods easier and enabled salaries or food subsidies to be paid. His priority was to gain access to funds that had been frozen by foreign governments.

Contact Email: info@nctlibya.org

Rafik el-Nayed

Position: Acting chief executive, Libyan Investment Authority

Biography: Rafik el-Nayed was appointed as acting chief executive at the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA) in August and tasked with auditing the fund’s many assets, which could be worth more than $65bn. He is one of a number of executives who worked for the Libyan government under Gaddafi, but was retained by the NTC as it attempts to avoid mistakes made after civil wars in countries such as Iraq, where knowledgeable senior personnel associated with the previous regime were dismissed. In El-Nayed’s role as head of Libya’s sovereign wealth fund, which was set up in 2006, he has put in place an independent review of the LIA’s dealings. The NTC wants to ascertain whether any past investments were corrupt. He arrived at the LIA in late 2010 from Qatari investment bank Amwal, where he was director of utilities and infrastructure.

Contact Email: info@nctlibya.org

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