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EXCLUSIVE: American arms dealer Marc Turi, in his first television interview since criminal charges against him were dropped, told Fox News that the Obama administration -- with the cooperation of Hillary Clintons State Department -- tried and failed to make him the scapegoat for a 2011 covert weapons program to arm Libyan rebels that spun out of control.

I would say, 100 percent, I was victimizedto somehow discredit me, to throw me under the bus, to do whatever it took to protect their next presidential candidate, he told Fox News chief intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge.

The 48-year-old Arizona resident has been at the epicenter of a failed federal investigation led by the Justice Department spanning five years and costing the government an estimated $10 million or more, Turi says.

Turi says the Justice Department abruptly dropped the case to avoid public disclosure of the weapons program, that was designed to force the ouster of Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi during the 2011 Arab Spring.

"Those transcripts from current as well as former CIA officers were classified," Turi said of the evidence. "If any of these relationships [had] been revealed it would have opened up a can of worms. There wouldn't have been any good answer for the U.S. government especially in this election year." The Justice Department faced a deadline last week to produce records to the defense.

Turi says he was specifically targeted by the Obama administration and lost everything--my family, my friends, my business, my reputation.

As Fox News has reported extensively, in 2011, the Obama administration with support from some Republican and Democratic lawmakers explored options to arm the so-called Libyan rebels during the chaotic Arab Spring but United Nations sanctions prohibited direct sales.

Turi's plan was to have the U.S. government supply conventional weapons to the Gulf nations Qatar and UAE, which would then in turn supply them to Libya. But Turi says he never sold any weapons, and he was cut out of the plan. Working with CIA, Turi said Clinton's State Department had the lead and used its own people, with weapons flowing to Libya and Syria.

"Some (weapons) may have went out under control that we had with our personnel over there and the others went to these militia. That's how they lost control over it," Turi said. "I can assure you that these operations did take place and those weapons did go in different directions."

Asked by Fox News who got the weapons -- Al Qaeda, Ansar al-Sharia, or ISIS -- Turi said: "All of them, all of them, all of them."

Turi exchanged emails in 2011 with then U.S. envoy to the Libyan opposition Chris Stevens. A day after the exchange about Turi's State Department application to sell weapons, Clinton wrote on April 8, 2011 to aide Jake Sullivan, "fyi. the idea of using private security experts to arm the opposition should be considered."

Asked if the email exchanges are connected or a coincidence, Turi said, "When you look at this timeline, none of it was a coincidence. It was all strategically managed and it had to come from her own internal circle."

Turi also told Fox News that he believes emails sent about the weapons programs were deleted by Hillary Clinton and her team because that it would have gone to an organization within the Bureau of Political Military affairs within the State Department known as PM/RSAT (Office of Regional Security and Arms Transfers.) Thats where you would find Jake Sullivan, Andrew Shapiro and a number of political operatives that would have been intimately involved with this foreign policy."

The four felony counts -- which included two of arms dealing in violation of the Arms Export Control Act and two of lying on his State Department weapons application -- were dismissed last week against Turi with prejudice, meaning the government cannot come after him again on this matter.

The Justice Department decision, weeks before the election, coupled with the now public emails, cast a new light on Clinton's 2013 Benghazi testimony where she was asked about the movement of weapons by Sen. Rand Paul.

Paul: Were any of these weapons transferred to other countries. Any countries. Turkey included?

Clinton: Well, senator you'll have to direct that question to the agency that ran the annex and I will see what information is available.

Paul: You're saying you don't know?

Clinton: I don't know.

Turi first told his story to Fox News senior executive producer Pamela Browne in 2014, and since, Turi says he's lost everything to fight the Justice Department, which had no further comment beyond the publicly available court records.

"With all the resources that they were throwing at me, I knew there would have to be some type of explanation of the operation that was going terribly wrong in Libya," Turi said. "It is completely un-American...I was a contractor for the Central Intelligence Agency."

Turi said he is grateful the case is over. "It really is ungodly, and unjust and unconscionable, that the entire force of the United States government came after me for a simple application. I was working for the U.S. government."

Turi added, "I never shipped anything. I never even received the contract. So all I received was an approval for $534 million to support our interests overseas. And it would have been the United States government that facilitated that operation from Qatar and UAE by way of allowing those countries to land their planes and land their ships in Libya."

Close friend and Turi adviser Robert Stryk described Turi this way to Fox News in a statement:

Marc Turi is a true patriot who served his country in the fight against Islamofascist terrorists in the Middle East. His fraudulent prosecution by Hillary Clintons associates in the Justice Department is deplorable as is the fate of the American heroes murdered in Benghazi. Our most loyal citizens deserve better."

And Turi hinted there is more to emerge on the 2012 Benghazi attacks which killed four Americans including Stevens.

"Now theres a flip side to this. Some of the operations that I was involved in, in another country for the agency has a linkage and theres a backstory to the actual buy-back program of the surface to air missiles that were shipped and mysteriously disappeared out of Benghazi," Turi said. "So we can save that for another time, but the reality is a lot of this could have exposed a number of covert operations that I dont think the American public would really want to know at this point in time.

Fox News asked the State Department about Turis allegations, and whether no weapons reached extremists groups on Clintons watch. A spokesperson said they would check.

Catherine Herridge is an award-winning Chief Intelligence correspondent for FOX News Channel (FNC) based in Washington, D.C. She covers intelligence, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security. Herridge joined FNC in 1996 as a London-based correspondent.

Pamela K. Browne is Senior Executive Producer at the FOX News Channel (FNC) and is Director of Long-Form Series and Specials. Her journalism has been recognized with several awards. Browne first joined FOX in 1997 to launch the news magazine Fox Files and later, War Stories.

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Arms dealer says administration made him scapegoat on Libya ...

On Sept. 1, 1969, 27-year-old Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi deposed the king and revolutionized the country, making it a pro-Arabic, anti-Western, Islamic republic with socialist leanings. It was also rabidly anti-Israeli. A notorious firebrand, Qaddafi aligned himself with dictators, such as Uganda's Idi Amin, and fostered anti-Western terrorism.

On Aug. 19, 1981, two U.S. Navy F-14s shot down two Soviet-made SU-22s of the Libyan air force that had attacked them in air space above the Gulf of Sidra. On March 24, 1986, U.S. and Libyan forces skirmished in the Gulf of Sidra, and two Libyan patrol boats were sunk. Qaddafi's troops also supported rebels in Chad but suffered major military reverses in 1987. A two-year-old U.S. covert policy to destabilize the Libyan government ended in failure in Dec. 1990.

On Dec. 21, 1988, a Boeing 747 exploded in flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, the result of a terrorist bomb, killing all 259 people aboard and 11 on the ground. This and other acts of terrorism, including the bombing of a Berlin discotheque in 1986 and the downing of a French UTA airliner in 1989 that killed 170, turned Libya into a pariah in the eyes of the West. Two Libyan intelligence agents were indicted in the Lockerbie bombing, but Qaddafi refused to hand them over, leading to UN-approved trade and air traffic embargoes in 1992. In 1999, Libya finally surrendered the two men, who were tried in the Netherlands in 20002001. One was found guilty of mass murder; the other defendant was found innocent. Libya had hoped its fainthearted cooperation would lead to suspended sanctions, which had severely affected the Libyan economy. The UN did suspend its sanctions, but they were not formally removed for another four years, not until Sept. 2003, when Libya finally admitted its guilt in the Lockerbie bombing and agreed to pay $2.7 billion to the victims' families. In 2004, Libya also agreed to compensate the families of the victims of the UTA airliner bombing ($170 million) and the Berlin disco bombing ($35 million).

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Libya: Maps, History, Geography, Government, Culture, Facts ...

Faced with a shrinking grip throughout the country, ISIS fighters are stepping up their assaults on Libyan forces by deploying lethal IEDs.

The terror group is also increasing the number of suicide attacks and snipers in a bid to hamper soldiers loyal to the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli.

One doctor explained that ISIS fighters are trying to make sure those targets -- if they don't die -- at least will not be able to fight again.

"The snipers attack usually the spine here. They choose to fire at the spine because brain injury and heart injury if he survived, he's going to fight again," says Nabeel Aqoub, a doctor working in Sirte.

The ongoing offensive against ISIS will prove a litmus test for the new Tripoli government, which along with American air support, is fighting to bring prosperity to the post-Arab Spring state where President Barack Obama committed what he himself called the worst mistake of his presidency -- not preparing for the aftermath of former dictator Moammar Gadhafi's removal.

US Defense Secretary Ash Carter said fighters for the terror group are now trapped in Sirte.

"With the support of our air strikes those forces, those GNA-aligned forces have now cornered ISIL in one small section of the city of Sirte and I expect that they'll eliminate any remaining opposition shortly," Carter told reporters Wednesday, using another acronym for ISIS.

Once home to Gadhafi, the sprawling Mediterranean city fell to extremists in the chaos that followed the 2011 revolution. That chaos created a vacuum that ISIS quickly took advantage of, flooding the city with foreign fighters in 2014 and regenerating it as the group's largest stronghold outside Iraq and Syria.

It became a key base of operations for the organization, a place from where it carried out the gruesome mass beheadings of Egyptian Coptic Christians in February 2015 and filmed it for the world to watch. And five months later launched an operation to kill 38 tourists on a sun-drenched beach in neighboring Tunisia.

In June, US officials estimated there were 4,000 to 6,000 ISIS militants in the country.

But as the international community and Libyans worked to free Sirte, thousands of civilians abandoned their homes, leaving the city largely deserted.

Misrata, the city to the west of Sirte, took in those who fled the reign of terror and earlier this year began fighting an enemy they were woefully unprepared to defeat. But when the US began providing air support in August, the tide turned and ISIS's defenses were breached.

"This has to stop. Libyan natural resources belong to all Libyans."

Now on the verge of victory in Sirte, those who chose to stay say they have grown tired of the perpetual wars and the toll it's taking. They want peace for the next generation.

"All of us, we hope to finish today before yesterday. We are tired from 2011, war after war. We lost a lot of people," says Waleed Mohammed, another doctor based in Sirte. "If the patient dies it's okay but the problem is the handicap. And most of them are teenagers. All of them young active people in our community."

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Sirte: The final stand for ISIS in Libya? - CNN.com

The United Kingdom and France led the international intervention in Libya in 2011 with the aim of protecting civilians from forces loyal to then-leader Moammar Gadhafi.

But Britain's Foreign Affairs Committee found that the Cameron-led government "failed to identify that the threat to civilians was overstated and that the rebels included a significant Islamist element."

"The consequence was political and economic collapse, inter-militia and inter-tribal (warfare), humanitarian and migrant crises, widespread human rights violations and the growth of ISIL in North Africa," the report said, using an alternative name for the ISIS militant group, which has gained control of parts of Libya.

The committee found that Britain's policies on Libya that had intended to protect civilians had instead "drifted towards regime change and was not underpinned by strategy to support and shape post-Gadhafi Libya."

"This report determines that UK policy in Libya before and since the intervention of March 2011 was founded on erroneous assumptions and an incomplete understanding of the country and the situation," said the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, MP Crispin Blunt, in a statement.

"The UK's actions in Libya were part of an ill-conceived intervention, the results of which are still playing out today."

He said "other political options were available" and might have come at a lower cost to both Libya and the United Kingdom. He added that there was a "lack of understanding of the institutional capacity of the country" that "stymied Libya's progress in establishing security on the ground."

The committee said it had spoken to all key figures in the decision to intervene in Libya except for Cameron, who declined to take part in the inquiry, citing "the pressures on his diary," adding that other members of government had provided the information needed, the report said.

The report said Cameron "was ultimately responsible for the failure to develop a coherent Libya strategy," despite establishing a National Security Council.

It pointed out that when Cameron sought and received parliamentary approval for the intervention, he assured it was not aimed at regime change.

"In April 2011, however, he signed a joint letter with United States President Barack Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy setting out their collective pursuit of 'a future without (Gadhafi),'" the report said,

But a spokesperson for Britain's Foreign and Commonwealth Office told CNN that the decision to intervene in Libya "was an international one, called for by the Arab League and authorized by the United Nations Security Council."

The FCO spokesperson said Gadhafi "was unpredictable, and he had the means and motivation to carry out his threats. His actions could not be ignored, and required decisive and collective international action ... we stayed within the United Nations mandate to protect civilians."

The inquiry, which took evidence from key figures -- including former Prime Minister Tony Blair, military chiefs and academics -- said the United Kingdom's policy decision followed those made in France, which "led the international community in advancing the case for military intervention in Libya," in which the United States became involved and played a key role.

The international intervention, which followed an attempted uprising during the Arab Spring, paved the way for the removal of Gadhafi, who was eventually killed by the side of a road by supporters of the de facto government.

But his death gave way to chaos, including inter-ethnic and tribal rivalries, that saw the country break down into city states, many of those with competing militias, CNN International Diplomatic Editor Nic Robertson said.

"But the most damning indictment that Libyans level against the international community is that it turned its back on Libya after Gadhafi was killed," he said.

The political upheaval created a vacuum for militant groups such as ISIS, which has taken advantage of the country's weakened institutions to spread its influence and strongholds beyond Syria and Iraq.

Libya's current internationally recognized government has struggled to quell the chaos and keep its grip on power. In 2014, Islamist militias forced the internationally recognized government to flee the capital Tripoli. They took refuge in the east of the country.

The country has also become a gateway to Europe for migrants, many from sub-Sahara Africa, who have used the country to escape over the mostly open borders and reach the Mediterranean.

Oil production in resource-dependent Libya has dived since the intervention, the economy suffering a double blow as world oil prices plunge.

The World Bank has reported that Libya generated $41.14 billion GDP in 2014, the latest year for which figures are available, and that the average Libyan's annual income decreased from $12,250 in 2010 to $7,820.

Libya is likely to experience a budget deficit of some 60% of GDP in 2016, the report said.

The FCO spokesperson said "four decades of [Gadhafi] misrule" had inevitably left Libya facing "huge challenges," but that the UK was working to support the internationally-recognized Government of National Accord.

"We have allocated 10 million ($13.2 million) this year to help the new government to restore stability, rebuild the economy, defeat Daesh [ISIS] and tackle the criminal gangs that threaten the security of Libyans and exploit illegal migrants."

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Britain's Libya intervention based on slippery intel ...

Demographics of Libya include population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the Libyan population. No complete population or vital statistics registration exists in Libya.[citation needed] Of the over 6,000,000 Libyans that lived in Libya prior to the Libyan Crisis, more than a million were immigrants.[citation needed] The estimates in this article are from the 2010 Revision of the World Population Prospects which was prepared by the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat, unless otherwise indicated.[6]

The Libyan population resides in the country of Libya, a territory located on the Mediterranean coast of North Africa, to the west of and adjacent to Egypt. Most Libyans live in Tripoli, the capital of the country and first in terms of population city and Benghazi, Libya's second largest city. Ethnically, the Libyan population is largely a mixture of Arab and Berber ethnicities. According to DNA studies, 90% [citation needed] of the Arab Libyan population descended from the Arab-Berber inter-ethnic mixture[7] and the remaining 10% are Phoenicians, black Africans (especially in the south of the country) and other North African, Asian and European peoples.[citation needed]

Over the centuries, Libya has been occupied by the Phoenicians, Greeks, Italians, Arabs and Egyptians. The Phoenicians may have had the biggest impact on Libya as the capital's name, Tripoli, is Phoenician, and also many of the coastal towns and cities were established by them as trade outposts within the southern Mediterranean coast in order to facilitate the Phoenician business activities in the area. Starting in the 8th century BCE, Libya was under the rule of Carthage.[clarification needed] In the 7th century CE Libya was conquered by the Arab Muslims as part of the Arab conquest of North Africa. Centuries after that the Ottoman Empire conquered Libya in 1551 and remained in control of its territory until 1911 when the country was conquered by Italy. In the 18th century Libya was used as the base for various pirates.

In the Second World War Libya was one of the main battlegrounds of North Africa. During the war, the territory was under an Anglo-French military government until it was overrun by the Axis Powers, who, in turn, were defeated by the Allies in 1943.

In 1951, the country was granted independence by the United Nations, being governed by King Idris. In 1969, a military coup led by Muammar Gaddafi resulted in the overthrow of King Idris I. Gaddafi then established an anti-Western dictatorship. In 1970, Gaddafi ordered all British and American military bases closed.

The Libyan population has increased rapidly after 1969. They were only 523,176 humans in 1911, 2 million in 1968, and 5 million in 1969.[citation needed] That population growth was due in large part to King Idris and Gaddafi granting citizenship to many Tunisians, Egyptians and other immigrants.[citation needed] Many migrant workers came to Libya since 1969. Among the workers were construction workers and laborers from Tunisia, teachers and laborers from Egypt, teachers from Palestine, and doctors and nurses from Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. 1,000,000 workers, mainly from other neighboring African countries like Sudan, Niger, Chad and Mali, migrated to Libya in the 1990s, after changes were made to Libya's Pan-African policies.[7]

Gaddafi used money from the sale of oil to improve the living conditions of the population and to assist Palestinian guerrillas in their fight against the Israelis. In 1979, Libya fought in Uganda to assist the government of Idi Amin in the Ugandan Civil War, and in 1981, fought in the Libyan-Chadian War. Libya had occupied the Aozou Strip; however, in 1990 the International Court of Justice submitted the case and allowed the full recuperation of territory to Chad.

According to the census conducted in the 2000s, most of the people of Libya are primarily Arab or a mixture of Arab-Berber ethnicities. In addition to this, modern Libyans received large genetic input from other ethnicities like the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Greeks, Mamelukes and Ottomans, who had either conquered, settled or conducted trade in ancient Libya before its conquest by the Islamic Empire, followed by the genetic contributions from Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula and indigenous African Berbers. Arab culture was adopted by the ancestors of modern Libyans through submission, cultural and ethnic assimilation/inter-marriage of indigenous Libyans with the incoming Arabs, as in most of northern Africa during the expansion of the Umayyad Caliphate into North Africa. This indicates that most Libyans (North Africans in the general) are more racially linked with the Mediterranean peoples of southern Europe than with the peoples of the Arabian Peninsula.[citation needed]

In September 2008, Italy and Libya signed a memorandum by which Italy would pay $5 billion over the next 20 years to compensate Libya for its dominion over Libya for its reign of 30 years.[8]

Since 2011, the country is swept by Libyan Civil War, which broke out between the Anti-Gaddafi rebels and the Pro-Gaddafi government in 2011, culminating in the death and overthrow of Gaddafi. Nevertheless, even today Libya still continues to generate problems within the area and beyond, greatly affecting its population and the migrant route to Europe.

Libya has a small population residing in a large land area. Population density is about 50 persons per km (130/sq. mi.) in the two northern regions of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, but falls to less than one person per km (2.7/sq. mi.) elsewhere. Ninety percent of the people live in less than 10% of the area, primarily along the coast. About 90%[9] of the population is urban, mostly concentrated in the four largest cities, Tripoli, Benghazi, Misrata and Bayda. Thirty percent of the population is estimated to be under the age of 15[citation needed], but this proportion has decreased considerably during the past decades.

[citation needed]

Eight population censuses have been carried out in Libya, the first in 1931 and the most recent one in 2006.[10][11] The population sixfolded between 1931 and 2006.

During the past 60 years the demographic situation of Libya changed considerably. Since the 1950s, life expectancy increased steadily and the infant mortality rates decreased. As the fertility rates remained high until the 1980s (the number of births tripled between 195055 and 198085), population growth was very high for three decades. However, after 1985 a fast decrease in fertility was observed from over 7 children per woman in the beginning of the 1980s to less than 3 in 2005-2010.[citation needed] Because of this decrease in fertility the population growth slowed down and also the proportion of Libyans under the age of 15 decreased from 47% in 1985 to 30% in 2010.[citation needed]

Births and deaths [12]

The following demographic statistics are from the CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated.[13]

Population

Age structure

Median age

Population growth rate

Birth rate

Death rate

Net migration rate

Total fertility rate

Urbanization

Sex ratio

Infant mortality rate

Life expectancy at birth

uninhabited

The native population of Libya is primarily Berber [15] or a mixture of Native Libyan ethnicities like Tuareg, Toubou and Berber, there is small minority of Berber-speaking tribal groups concentrated in northwest part of Tripolitania, Tuareg no Toubou tribes can be found in southern Libya, which are nomadic or semi-nomadic. Most of the Libyans claim descent from the Bedouin Arab tribes of the Banu Hilal and the Banu Sulaym, who invaded the Maghreb in the 11th century. There is also some Punic admixture, and a curious traditional element from the Romanized Punics such as the Roman toga can be seen in Tripoli's people and was used by Muammar Gaddafi himself.

In the west of the country, there are some Tuareg nomads, mobile across the Libyan-Algerian border. Tuaregs are also scattered over Algeria, Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso.

In the southeast, there are small populations of the Nilo-Saharan Toubou (Tibbu), although they occupy between a quarter and a third of the country and who also inhabit Niger and Chad.

Among foreign residents, the largest groups are from other African nations, including citizens of other North African nations (primarily Egyptians) as well as sub-Saharan Africans.

Libyan society is to a large extent structured along tribal lines, with more than 20 major tribal groups.[16]

The major tribal groups of Libya in 2011 were listed:[16]

Some of the ancient Berber tribes include: Adyrmachidae, Auschisae, Es'bet, Temehu, Tehnu, Rebu, Kehek, KeyKesh, Imukehek, Meshwesh, Macetae, Macatutae, Nasamones, Nitriotae, and Tautamaei.[7]

As of 2012[update] the major tribal groups of Libya, by region, were as follows:[17]

Foreign population is estimated at 3%, mostly migrant workers in the oil industry from Tunisia and Egypt, but also including small numbers of Greeks, Maltese, Italians, Pakistanis, Palestinians, Turks, Indians and people from former Yugoslavia. Due to the Libyan Civil War, most of these migrant workers have returned to their homelands or simply left the country for a different one.

However, according to news accounts in Allafrica.com, and the Libya Herald, between 1 million and 2 million Egyptians are resident in Libya and Sudanese number in the hundreds of thousands. If this is correct, the foreign population could be as high as 30% of the country, as simultaneously at least two million Libyans have fled since the NATO intervention of 2011, toppling the previous Libyan government.

Analysis of Y-chromosome have found three Y-chromosome lineages (E1b1b-M81, J-M267 and E1b1b-M78) at high frequency in Libya like in other North African populations. Some studies suggest a Paleolithic component for E-M81 and E-M78, while other studies point to a Neolithic origin. E1b1b-M78 has probably emerged in Northeastern Africa and is today widely distributed in North Africa, East Africa, and West Asia. E1b1b-M81 show high frequencies in Northwestern Africa and a high prevalence among Berbers (it is sometimes referred to as a genetic "Berber marker"). Its frequency declines towards Egypt and the Levant. On the other hand, E-M78 and E-M123 are frequent in the Levant and Egypt and decline towards Northwest Africa. Another common paternal lineage in Libya and North Africa is haplogroup J through its subtypes J1 (M267) and J2 (M172). J1 is prevalent in all North African and Levantine groups and found at high frequencies in the Arabic peninsula. It has been previously associated with the Islamic expansion. J2 is sporadically detected in North Africa and Iberia and is very frequent in the Levant/Anatolia/Iran region. Its spread in the Mediterranean is believed to have been facilitated by the maritime trading culture of the Phoenicians (1550 BC- 300 BC). E-M2 is the predominant lineage in Western Africa.

Listed here are the human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroups in Libya.[18]

Almost all Libyans are Sunni Muslim. Foreigners contribute very little Christian presence, but there are some local Christian church adherents in Eastern Libya - the Copts. A small Jewish community historically lived in Libya since antiquity (see History of the Jews in Libya), but the entire Jewish community in Libya eventually fled the country for Italy, Israel, or the United States, particularly after anti-Jewish riots in the wake of the 1967 Six-Day War between Arab countries and Israel.

Libyan cuisine is heavily influenced by Mediterranean, North African (Tunisian cuisine) and the Middle Eastern (Egyptian cuisine) traditions. Notable dishes include Shorba Arabiya, or Arabian soup, which is a thick, highly spiced soup.[19]Bazeen is a traditional Libyan food, made from a mix of barley flour and a small amount of plain flour.

Libyan origin instruments are the zokra (a bagpipe), a flute (made of bamboo), the tambourine, the oud (a fretless lute) and the darbuka (a goblet drum held sideways and played with the fingers). Bedouin poet-singers had a great influence on the musical folklore of Libya, particularly the style of huda, the camel driver's song.

The official language of Libya is Standard Arabic, while the prevalent spoken language is Libyan Arabic, Berber, is spoken by about 300 thousand Libyans. The Arabic dialects are partly spoken by immigrant workers and partly by local Libyan populations. These dialects include Egyptian Arabic, Tunisian Arabic, Sudanese Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, Ta'izzi-Adeni Arabic, South Levantine Arabic and Hassaniyya Arabic.

The Berber languages is still spoken by some of the Tuareg, a rural group in Libya's south.[20]

Indigenous minority languages in Libya:[21]

Non-Arabic languages had largely been spoken by foreign workers (who had been massively employed in Libya in various infrastructure projects prior to the 2011 civil war), and those languages with more than 10,000 speakers included Punjabi, Urdu, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Sinhala, Bengal, Tamil, Tagalog, French, Italian, Ukrainian, Serbian, and English.

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Demographics of Libya - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia