Libya's new leaders have called on fighters from elsewhere in the country to leave the capital and go home, interim interior minister Ahmed Darrad told AFP on Friday. "Tripoli is free and everyone should leave this town and go back to their own towns," he said. "Starting Saturday there will be a large number of security personnel and policemen who will go back to work," said Darrad.
"Now the revolutionaries of Tripoli are able to protect their own city." The demand represents a first effort to defuse possible tensions between Tripoli's freshly-emerged revolutionaries and the scores of hardened fighters who poured in from other surrounding towns to topple Moamer Kadhafi's regime. Across the capital, brigades from the Berber-dominated mountains to the south of Tripoli and from Misrata to the east form multiple checkpoints and often parade the city's main square.
"The responsibility for securing Tripoli should be in the hands of the sons of Tripoli," Abdullah Naqir, head of the newly formed military council of Tripoli also told AFP on Friday. "We are grateful for the work of brigades from Misrata, Zintan and elsewhere, but as soon as we finish organising our own ranks they should go and rest."
Naqir's armed group, which has yet to come under the umbrella of the National Transitional Council (NTC), has raised concerns over the proliferation of unsanctioned paramilitary groups in the capital. "Anybody who is willing to help keep the peace in town and in Libya is welcome " Abdurraham al-Keib, who represents Tripoli at the NTC and is a member of the capital's crisis team, told reporters. But the NTC is not accepting of "a body that builds itself on its own... It has to go through a process that filters issues and makes sure that, whatever that body is, is part of the planning for a peaceful Libya."