Tripoli, 23 December:
On the occasion of the 62nd anniversary of Libya’s independence, the Ministry of Communications and Informatics has issued a . . .[restrict]set of three new stamps and, for the first time in almost 60 years, the head of King Idris has appeared on a Libyan stamp. A set of twelve definitives (ordinary, non-commermorative stamps) with the king’s head were issued in 1952 but these replaced in 1955 with ones showing the Libya coat of arms.
The Ministry said that it considers stamps as “one of the symbols of the state and a record of its history bearing witness to time”.
One of the stamps also features a 1950 200-millime stamp of the Emirate of Cyrenaica overprinted in 1951 for use in Tripolitanian part of the newly independent Libya, and worth 96 MALs (military authority lire), the currency introduced by the British in 1943 which continued to be used in Tripolitania for some time after independence.
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