Libya's National Congress is drafting an emergency law to tackle the country's security problems, its spokesman said Wednesday, in response to a wave of attacks that have recently struck the north African country, DPA reported.
The draft law "will allow the executive to take control of the security vacuum ... and will provide the right climate to tackle it," spokesman Omar Humaidan told reporters in the capital Tripoli.
Humaidan said that under the law the National Congress could implement emergency provisions "on the basis of specific circumstances in any given area and the level of its security situation."
No details were given on what the specific emergency measures would be or what the next steps were for the legislation in the assembly.
The legal move comes as the Libyan army began taking action against militia groups that have ignored a 48-hour deadline, announced at the weekend, to vacate public buildings or be forcibly removed.
Humaidan said that a decision by the assembly to dissolve all illegal militias would be enforced without exception.
The attempted crackdown comes two weeks after a deadly attack on the US consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi, in which Islamist militias were suspected of involvement.
The US ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the September 11 assault.
Libya's new rulers have been struggling to establish security in the country, a task proving elusive with the proliferation of weapons and the presence of rival militias. The security forces under the state's direct control are very limited.
Meanwhile, the National Congress, which is currently Libya's highest authority, vowed to track down the killers of a man who was said to be instrumental in capturing Moamer Gaddafi nearly a year ago, one day after he died of injuries inflicted by the late dictator's supporters.
Omran Shaaban's body was flown late Tuesday to his western hometown of Misrata from Paris, where he had died of a gunshot wound inflicted months earlier in Libya, the official Libyan News Agency reported.
"This is a punishable crime for which the perpetrators must be found and prosecuted," National Congress President Mohammed al-Magariaf said, charging the ministries of defence and interior with the task.
The assembly also declared Shaaban a martyr and granted him a posthumous decoration.
Shaaban, 22, is said to have provided information on the hiding place of Gaddafi, who was seized in October in a drainage pipe near his hometown of Sirte.
He was tortured and shot in the spine after being captured in July by alleged loyalists of Gaddafi in Bani Walid, located some 400 kilometres south-east of the capital Tripoli, local media reported.
He was released two months later, following mediation by al-Magariaf, and sent to France for medical treatment.