Fears are growing for a fashion influencer who vanished from her home in Libya and has been missing for more than a week, with fans unsure if police or an armed militia gang are to blame.
Iraqi national Dalya Farhoud disappeared from her home in Janzour, west of the Libyan capital Tripoli, on 1st February and has not been heard from since.
Farhoud – who has more than 600,000 followers on Instagram – was believed to have been snatched by one of the heavily armed militias active in the country.
But now it is emerging that she might have been seized by the Libyan authorities for breaching local laws with her social media posts.
Iraq’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs is said to be putting pressure on the Libyan authorities to reveal what has happened to her.
Ministry spokesman Ahmed Al-Sahaf said Iraq is pressing the Libyan authorities for answers.
Some media outlets – like the New Arab newspaper – claim the influencer was seized by police, not crooks or militia.
Ahmed Salem – spokesman for a ‘Deterrence Agency for Combating Terrorism and Organised Crime’ – is quoted in the newspaper as saying that she “was not kidnapped as some claim, but arrested in an official manner with the knowledge of the public prosecution”.
The New Arab’s Arabic-language sister site Al-Araby Al-Jadeed quoted Salem as saying that Dalya was arrested because her online content was not appropriate and that she was being investigated.
But it is currently unclear if Salem is a spokesperson for one of Libya’s two competing governments, with one based in Tripoli and the other in Tobruk, or if he is affiliated with one of the many militias operating in the country.
Farhoud reportedly works in the fashion industry and is also a social media influencer.
She has reportedly lived in Libya with her family since 1998.
The security situation in Libya is still highly unstable, with many militias still active in various parts of the country.
After the Arab Spring in 2011 and the death of Muammar Gaddafi, Libya was engulfed in a civil war from 2014 to 2020 that resulted in a ceasefire, with the promise of elections to reunite the country. Elections that have yet to materialise and have been repeatedly delayed.
