DIE WELT (Germany)
TRIPOLI - Libya’s former dictator Muammar Gaddafi has been dead since Oct. 2011, but Libyans are still faced with his image daily on their one, 20 and 50 dinar notes.
Photo Hakeem.gadi
However on Feb. 17 – the second anniversary of the start of the revolution – the Libyan National Bank put new notes into circulation, reports Die Welt.
Instead of Gaddafi’s image on the one dinar note there is a now revolutionary scene, while the 50 dinar note features a Benghazi lighthouse instead of the former despot. Benghazi, in eastern Libya, is Libya’s second largest city and was a hotbed of the uprising.
New one dinar note, Photo Smurfy
The image showing Gaddafi with African leaders on the 20 dinar note has been replaced by a building important to the country’s cultural heritage: the Atiq mosque in Awjila, the oldest mosque in North Africa.
Other Libyan bills were changed only slightly. The 10 dinar note still features Omar al-Mukhtar, who fought against the Italian colonialists and was executed by the Italians in 1931. He was and is considered a national hero – by Gaddafi, even though he was from Benghazi – and particularly by the revolutionaries who named a brigade after him.
The old Libyan bank notes are to be gradually pulled from circulation.
