Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh

He was born in the western city of Misrata. The English article gives his birth as "around 1959" and the Arabic article's lead gives 1959, while the Urdu article gives 13 February 1958 and the English article's own short description files 1958; the year is therefore recorded as debated in his data record. ^{1 2 3 4}

Dbeibeh has claimed a master's degree in civil engineering from the University of Toronto in 1992; the university has denied that he holds any degree from it, a denial reported in the run-up to the planned December 2021 elections, for which Libyan electoral law required an accredited university degree. The claim and the denial are both reported here as the sources give them. ¹

He returned to Misrata during a construction boom and gained the trust of Muammar Gaddafi, who appointed him head of the Libyan Investment and Development Company (LIDCO), the state construction firm behind some of the country's largest public works, including 1,000 housing units in Gaddafi's hometown of Sirte. After Gaddafi's fall in 2011 he was sanctioned for corruption by Libya's transitional authorities. He also headed the Al-Ittihad football club of Tripoli. ¹

In 2020 he founded the Libya al-Mustakbal (Libya Future) movement. On 5 February 2021 the UN-led Libyan Political Dialogue Forum selected his list to lead a unified interim executive, with Mohamed al-Menfi as head of the Presidential Council; the list won 39 votes, five more than the rival list of Aguila Saleh Issa and Fathi Bashagha. Dbeibeh took office on 15 March 2021, succeeding Fayez al-Sarraj, and also took the defence portfolio himself. His government was the first unified Libyan government since 2014, and the elections scheduled for 24 December 2021 were indefinitely postponed; as of October 2026 they have still not been held. ^{1 2}

His position has been contested since 10 February 2022, when the House of Representatives selected Fathi Bashagha as a rival prime minister; Dbeibeh refused to hand over power except to an elected government, and the United Nations continued to recognise him as interim prime minister. He survived an assassination attempt the same day, when gunmen fired into his car. A rival Government of National Stability under Osama Hammad has contested his authority since May 2023. In January 2024 he called for the restoration of the Libyan monarchy under Mohammed El Senussi as a solution to the country's instability. ¹

The sources report accusations against him of attempted bribery of Dialogue Forum delegates through his cousin, the businessman Ali al-Dbeibeh — his cousin and brother-in-law, formerly mayor of Misrata and head of LIDCO, who was sanctioned in 2012 and was estimated to have embezzled as much as $7 billion from LIDCO contracts. A former Austrian diplomat based in Libya, Wolfgang Pusztai, described Dbeibeh's reputation as contentious for the premiership, citing allegations of "corruption, money laundering, financing of the Muslim Brotherhood, vote buying", while noting that perceptions mattered more than their truth in the politics of 2021. These are reported positions, not findings of this museum. ¹

No article text states a religion or a school for Dbeibeh personally. The Arabic article's infobox gives Islam in general, and Wikidata gives Islam in general — one source family, with no school named anywhere. The museum therefore records his faith as unknown. ^{2 4}

• The defined source entities cited above, recorded in data/source/.
• Revisions of this article must be dated, and must name the source that changed each fact.