Libya detains education minister over textbook scandal

Libyan prosecutors have announced they are detaining the country's education minister for negligence over a scandal involving school textbooks.

The minister, Ali al-Abed, is serving in an interim capacity after taking over from Moussa al-Megarief, who was himself sentenced in March to three-and-a-half years in prison over a similar case involving a textbook shortage.

The prosecutor general's office said in a statement on Saturday night that it had ordered the preventative detention of Abed and the head of the ministry's school programmes department "pending an investigation into harm to the public interest and violation of the right to education."

Both Abed's case and that of his predecessor have drawn intense public attention in Libya.

Irregularities

The prosecutors said the investigation into Abed concerned the granting of contracts to print books for the current school year, and had found "irregularities in the administrative and financial procedures" surrounding such contracts.

It also revealed a "lapse in the duty to provide the textbooks to two million students on time," they added.

The 2025-2026 school year began over a month late in Libya, with the parents of nearly 2.6 million students who lacked books forced to shell out for photocopies.

In Libyan public schools, textbooks are provided free of charge through the end of secondary school, paid for through a special allocation in the education ministry budget.