Libyan Government Holds 4 U.S. Military Personnel

By MICHAEL R. GORDON and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

Published: December 27, 2013

WASHINGTON — Four American military personnel have been detained in Libya and were in the Libyan government’s custody, an American official said on Friday.

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The circumstances of their detention were not clear.

Photographs of two American passports and embassy identity cards were later disseminated on Twitter. The State Department had no immediate comment.

The episode appears to have taken place in a town just southwest of the historic Roman ruins at Sabratha and about an hour’s drive from Tripoli, the capital. The area is not known for anti-Western extremists or other obvious threats. In part because it is a tourist area, the district around Sabratha skews relatively liberal and friendly to Westerners.

Since the attack on the United States Mission in Benghazi that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens on Sept. 11, 2012, employees of the American Embassy have operated with extraordinary caution. Rigorous security rules preclude any movements outside the heavily fortified embassy compound without advance planning and an armed guard. The compound is locked at night, and no one is permitted to enter or exit. Counterterrorism has become a central focus of the work there, and the compound brims with well-armed security officers.

But two years after the toppling of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, security remains tenuous even in and around Tripoli. Libya’s transitional government has not yet managed to assemble a credible national army or police force. Many families or clans around the country keep heavy weapons, as do autonomous local militias formed during and after the Libyan uprising.