You're reading: Foreign Ministry: Libyan court refuses to pass Ukrainian detainees to Ukrainian embassy

Ukraine has asked a Libyan court to allow to transfer Ukrainian detainees to Ukraine's embassy to be held under its responsibility, but the military tribunal of Tripoli rejected the petition.

"We petitioned for a transfer of the Ukrainians to the embassy under our guarantees on the first day of the court hearings. Unfortunately, these petitions were rejected," the spokesman for the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine, Oleksandr Dykusarov, said at a briefing on Tuesday.

He added that the Ukrainian side is ready to take the Ukrainian detainees to its embassy in Tripoli at any moment.It was reported earlier that the Libyan insurgent brigade Al Qa’qaa captured Russian citizens Vladimir Dolgov and Alexander Shadrov, along with several Ukrainian and Belarusian citizens (25 people in total) on August 27, 2011. All of these people have been accused of restoring military hardware the Gaddafi regime used "to exterminate the Libyan people."

These people were liberated due to efforts taken by the Russian Embassy in Tripoli on September 3, but they were apprehended once again on September 6 to investigate their possible involvement in the maintenance and modernization of tanks for Gaddafi forces.