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by JackRiddler » Fri Aug 26, 2011 9:33 am
by MacCruiskeen » Fri Aug 26, 2011 11:47 am
Channel 4 News
The horror of Abu Salim
Friday 26 August 2011 3:06 pm
Alex Thomson
http://blogs.channel4.com/world-news-bl ... alim/18014
WARNING: You may find parts of this report extremely distressing
They say there are still snipers around the Abu Salim district so best not to simply drive to the hospital there.
Our driver left us on the main road running by the hospital building. We’d done a recce and seen a hole in the fence.
We split up to present less of a target – myself, cameraman Stuart Webb and our security adviser, a former Royal Marine best left unnamed – and we legged it across the empty dual carriageway and hit that hole in the fence.
We’d arranged to RV with our van under a nearby flyover in one hour precisely.
Fifty yards from the main entrance something was wrong.
Very wrong.
Four Red Cross ambulances lined up and staff hurriedly stretchered out the last few injured men.
“Conditions in there are dreadful – just dreadful,” said Red Cross worker Bridget Comninos, “we are just trying to assist doctors here.”
In one ambulance a man, almost incoherent with fear, just kept saying: “Al Hamdillulah” – thank God.
Three young children sat near him almost beatifically calm in their shock.
Ten feet away, outside the main door, a dead man’s corpse hummed with clouds of flies.
Piles of surgical dressings, bloody sheets and half-empty blood bags were all around us, oozing fluids onto the ground.
Another body, inflated with decomposition, lies 20 yards away in the sun. Male, fighting age, half the head missing.
Fifty yards further on a pile of human bodies, bloated in the hot sun. I count 22 here, including three women, and one child. Some of the male bodies are in military clothing but not all.
Inside, it is not a hospital but a mortuary – or something for which there is no word.
Stretchers and beds are stained with fluids and blood, some still dripping on the floor.
In one room a picture of Colonel Gaddafi smiles down on at least 23 more corpses shoved onto trolleys at all angles.
There is no language for the stench. You fear even to breathe in here.
A hospital orderly vomits quietly in a corridor.
This is a lost place, abandoned in the chaos of fighting.
A hospital worker says we have seen only the bodies from fighting in Abu Salim in the past few days.
Downstairs, a fighter shoots the lock off the hospital basement and here are scores more bodies. Some are Col Gadaffi’s soldiers but another, broken child lies abandoned here too. Some were clearly shot dead but in all honesty most are too far gone to investigate.
I couldn’t do it.
http://blogs.channel4.com/world-news-bl ... alim/18014
@alextomo
alex thomson #c4news #Libya. Abu Salim hosp - some of the worst things I ever saw - untransmittable horror
http://twitter.com/#!/alextomo/status/1 ... 4616471552
@alextomo
alex thomson Piles of rotting people outside, inside, in corridors, offices -all over
http://twitter.com/#!/alextomo/status/1 ... 5318231041
@alextomo
alex thomson Got fighter to shoot off door if basement - stuffed with bodies from previous fighting
http://twitter.com/#!/alextomo/status/1 ... 4857397248
by MacCruiskeen » Fri Aug 26, 2011 12:12 pm
‘Gaddafi switching to guerrilla mode’
Published: 25 August, 2011, 02:48
Edited: 25 August, 2011, 12:37
http://rt.com/news/gaddafi-guerrilla-tr ... 093/print/
Gaddafi has told the Libyan people that his retreat from his compound in Tripoli, which was seized by rebels on Tuesday, is a tactical move. Michael Maloof, an ex-Pentagon official, explains to RT why the war in Libya is far from at an end.
After almost six months of stalemate, the rebel assault on Tripoli came as a surprise to many. But strategically speaking, some analysts find the rebels advance has left them spread thinly and therefore vulnerable to a counter-attack by loyalist forces.
“Two thousand tribes have pledged support to Gaddafi. We have not heard of them yet,” remarks Michael Maloof, who used to be an official at the Pentagon.
Maloof believes Gaddafi’s leaving Tripoli to the rebels “could be a strategic retreat on his part to begin waging guerilla warfare.” And the colonel still has the means to do that.
“Where are the Scuds? Where are all the chemical weapons he is said to have? I don’t think those have been discovered yet,” he continues.
On the other hand, the Libyan rebels look “undisciplined”, especially when they start firing in the air to mark military successes. And the rebels’ National Transitional Council does not seem to be doing anything to bring this under control, Maloof told RT.
Moreover, it is hard to account for rebels’ progress without acknowledging they get foreign assistance on the ground.
“The rebels had to have had some expert assistance in moving and logistical support of some kind,” says Michael Maloof. “They would be there as advisors and moving people around suggesting how to deploy. There also had to be somebody on the ground to coordinate targets for NATO aircraft to bomb.”
Walid Phares from the Washington DC-based National Defense University believes that Gaddafi’s whereabouts and remaining military resources depend heavily on whether he managed to leave Tripoli on the day of the attack.
“If he didn’t leave Tripoli that day, then he is somewhere in Tripoli, hidden,” Phares said. “But that would be a negative thing for him because he would be found. If he had left Tripoli, it’s going to be very difficult for the current rebels, the future government, to find him in the desert.”
“Gaddafi has many supporters in his birthplace Sirt, and many supporters in the south. If Gaddafi has left for the south he could unleash a new insurgency. His regime would go, but would become the new rebels. And the current rebels now will become the new regime,” Phares added.
http://rt.com/news/gaddafi-guerrilla-tr ... 093/print/
by stefano » Fri Aug 26, 2011 12:33 pm
by seemslikeadream » Sat Aug 27, 2011 8:25 pm
Now fears of disease rise as bodies pile up on the streets
Taking away dead is a priority as Tripoli struggles with a shortage of medicine, water, fuel and food
By Kim Sengupta in Tripoli
Sunday, 28 August 2011
The shots came from two of the high-rise buildings, long bursts of Kalashnikov fire which made the rebel fighters on the ground scatter in alarm. The stubborn resistance at Abu Salim hospital, the last redoubt of the Gaddafi loyalists in Tripoli, was not yet over.
The scale of the fighting is now much reduced, but the bodies keep piling up – civilians caught up in the crossfire during the fierce violence of the past few days; fighters from both sides killed in action; those summarily executed, black men by the rebels for being alleged mercenaries, and political prisoners by the regime.
Outside Bab al-Aziziyah, Muammar Gaddafi's fortress stormed last week, the dead, mainly from sub-Saharan Africa, many with their hands tied behind their back, some gagged, have been left on display on the roadside by the revolutionaries. Inside Abu Salim, the dead from the mortuary, some with marks of manacles on their wrists, spill into other rooms at the hospital.
by seemslikeadream » Sun Aug 28, 2011 9:47 am
Gaddafi convoy spotted near Algeria
Cairo, August 27, 2011
First Published: 23:33 IST(27/8/2011)
Six armoured vehicles, thought to be carrying Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and his sons, have crossed the Libya-Algeria border, Egypt's official news agency MENA reported on Saturday.
Libyan military sources said the Mercedes bullet-proof cars left Libya for Algeria through the
border, without any pursuit from the rebels. The vehicles may have also carried other important Libyan officials.
An Algerian border official said the reported crossing was unlikely as no such sighting had been reported by local residents.
Nato declined to confirm or deny the reported crossing.
The Sun earlier reported that Gaddafi may have fled on a golf buggy through a network of tunnels under his palatial building in Tripoli.
However, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, chairman of the rebel National Transitional Council, said they have no concrete information on the location of Gaddafi or his sons.
Rebels take Ras Jdir border post
Rebels captured the Ras Jdir border post on the frontier with Tunisia, which it was feared Gaddafi might use to escape, as the hunt for the fugitive strongman continued on Saturday.
While fighting was still under way on various fronts, with the insurgents working to consolidate their hold on Tripoli, focus increasingly turned to a post-Gaddafi era, with calls for reconciliation and a peaceful transition. The rebels claimed late on Friday a new military success with the capture of Ras Jdir.
A Tunisian official said loyalists fled as more than 100 rebels arrived and raised their flag.
Algeria declined to recognise the NTC on Friday insisting it would adhere to the policy of "strict neutrality" adopted since the start of the conflict.
A foreign ministry statement sent to AFP was the first official comment from Algiers since the NTC took control of the capital in Libya, even as other countries in the region have been quick to endorse the rebels.
by Byrne » Sun Aug 28, 2011 4:04 pm
by seemslikeadream » Mon Aug 29, 2011 12:21 pm
"Can You Vacate Your Room?"
The New Rulers are in Tripoli
by PATRICK COCKBURN
Tripoli.
The new rulers of Libya, the Transitional National Council (TNC), have arrived in town. I know this because they just kicked me out of my painfully acquired hotel room when they took over the whole of the eighth floor of the Radisson Blu Hotel where I am staying.
My eviction did not elicit much sympathy from other journalists, many packed two or three to a room, when I explain I have been given another room and have it all to myself. The previous occupant, who had not done much clearing up before he departed, left behind an Omani military yearbook and some torn-up notebooks. He may have been one of the elusive group of Arab military officers who gave technical advice to the rebels, assuring their victory.
Even so, I wish the unknown officer had not taken the room’s only towel which I am unlikely to get replaced. Luxury hotel the Radisson in Tripoli may once have been with its 350 rooms and 40 or so suites, which were once looked after by 400 staff, but this number is now down to about 20 harassed young men and two or three women. These heroically try to cope with the hordes of journalists pleading for a room that have descended on Tripoli since the city fell last week and they now have to deal with more peremptory instructions from the TNC as well.
The lack of a towel is less serious than it sounds because there has been no water in the hotel or most other places in Tripoli since last Friday. Pro-Gaddafi forces have seized the water wells 600km to the south in the Sahara and turned off the pumps. They are also said to have run out of fuel and cannot flee any further. As a result, there is no water for toilets or showers in the hotel and bottled drinking water is scarce and expensive. Journalists carry water from the swimming pool in waste paper bins to flush the toilets.
This is the first big test of the TNC. It seems to have learned from the experience of Baghdad in 2003 that security has to be maintained and looting prevented. Those members of the ruling council not at the Radisson are living at former regime bases in Souq al-Jumaa, a large district of crumbling old buildings famous for its revolutionary fervour. Locals say spies could never penetrate their networks of extended families and they were first to rise up in August.
There are checkpoints every couple of hundred yards in Souq al-Jumaa. The militiamen manning them are relaxed and, so far, surprisingly stoic about the humanitarian crisis engulfing the city. A militiaman who was nestling his Kalashnikov on his knee said that, in the district, “there is no water, electricity for five hours a day, little cooking gas and the price of food has gone up two or three times.” Almost all shops are closed and when I tried to buy water at one of the few to open, they had run out. People are not desperate yet and water is being handed out in blue plastic jerry cans but it looks pitifully little in a city of two million.
An explanation that I am a foreign journalist is enough to get one waved through the checkpoints. Not surprisingly, the rebels feel an overwhelmingly sympathetic foreign press had a lot to do with their success. The influence of the internet, to which only 7 per cent of Libyans have access, in the uprising is exaggerated, but satellite television broadcasts from pro-rebel Al Jazeera and other Arabic stations had enormous influence at home and abroad.
This media sympathy might waver if Gaddafi is captured or killed. As long as he was in power many journalists felt that, whatever the failings of the rebels, at least they were better than the regime they were trying to overthrow. Even the mysterious murder of their own commander Abdel Fatah Younes, apparently with the connivance of other TNC leaders, did not dent the popularity of the rebels with the international media which continued to brush over their faults.
Just why so many Libyans hated Gaddafi and his ghastly family is made chillingly, and at times hilariously, clear, as their palaces are exposed to public view. His daughter Aisha seized a large plot of land in the Noflein district in Tripoli in 2005 and three years later moved into a compound with several luxury houses furnished with unsurpassable vulgarity and poor taste.
In one sitting room there is a sofa with the cushions resting on a gigantic golden bare-breasted mermaid who appears to be holding a dark-red feather duster but is probably meant to be a fan.
Mufat, a local man who had been put in charge of the complex, explained that when Aisha moved in “all her neighbours with windows facing her palace were told to close them and never open them again. If they did so they would be in big trouble.” When her father visited her twice a year the whole district was closed down.
Tripoli has largely run out of petrol, but there is a traffic jam inside Gaddafi’s own Bab al-Aziziya complex. Militiamen exuberantly fire their weapons into the air from the tops of buildings, but generally families, seeing how their ruler for 42 years lived, are quiet and intensely curious.
Some poorly dressed visitors to the palace were engaged in a little gentle looting of chairs, mattresses and blankets. Gaddafi may be gone but it will be some time before people in Tripoli begin to blame their new rulers for their troubles.
That said, there are some who would blame the troops of the new rulers, though they are now beyond the capacity to exercise that critical function.
The rotting bodies of 30 men, almost all black and many handcuffed, slaughtered as they lay on stretchers and even in an ambulance in central Tripoli, are an ominous foretaste of what might be Libya’s future. The incoming regime makes pious statements about taking no revenge on pro-Gaddafi forces, but this stops short of protecting those who can be labelled mercenaries. Any Libyan with a black skin accused of fighting for the old regime may have a poor chance of survival.
The atmosphere in the Libyan capital is frighteningly uncertain a week after the sudden collapse of Gaddafi’s forces. Nobody knows who is in charge. Before my room was commandeered, some dozen members of the Transitional National Council based in Benghazi gave a late-night press conference at the Radisson Blu Hotel to announce they were taking over, but appeared strained and nervous after landing by plane on a makeshift airstrip in the mountains. Their neat business suits and ties looked out of place amid the khaki uniforms and battered weapons of the militiamen standing nearby. But what the council does is important, because a new regime will only stabilise when Tripoli, where a third of the six million Libyans live, develops its own leadership.
by seemslikeadream » Wed Aug 31, 2011 11:33 am
August 31, 2011
Signs of Trouble Ahead
Islamists at the Heart of the Libyan Rebellion
by PATRICK COCKBURN
Tripoli
Rebel militiamen, many of them former prisoners of Muammar Gaddafi, have an iron grip on Tripoli, but wonder who will hold long-term power in Libya. Issam, a bearded Islamist who controls a district of the revolutionary stronghold of Souq al-Jumaa, holds permits which allow him to field 70 local militiamen with arms. “We do not have that number of weapons,” he says. For the moment he does not need them because Gaddafi loyalists “have turned 180 degrees and joined us or they are staying home after we took away their guns”.
A year ago Issam was in jail because the security forces imprisoned anybody they suspected of Islamist tendencies at the time of the anniversary of Gaddafi’s 1969 coup, which was presented as a popular revolution. “They would put me in prison for a month because of my beard which they thought Islamic,” recalls Issam. “I was lucky because many of my friends got two or three months just for being bearded.”
Much of government propaganda on Libyan state TV during the six-month civil war was focused on claims that the rebellion was being led by Islamic militants linked to al-Qa’ida. The aim was to frighten the US and Nato abroad and secular Libyans at home.
But the allegations also had some credibility, since the most militant and experienced anti-Gaddafi organisation was the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG). It is Abdul Hakim Belhaj, one of the founders of this group, which fought a ferocious guerrilla campaign against the regime in the 1990s, who now commands the militia units in Tripoli.
Mr Belhaj, 45, a veteran of the Afghan war in the 1980s, is a leading jihadi who was arrested at American behest in Malaysia in 2003, tortured in Thailand and handed over to Libya in 2004. At that time US and Libyan intelligence were co-operating in eliminating Islamists and American officers allegedly took part in interrogations in Tripoli.
Released along with other militants in 2010 by an over-confident regime, Mr Belhaj was well-placed to play a leading role in planning and carrying out the assault that captured Tripoli.
The anti-Western attitudes of Libyan Islamists have been changed by the knowledge that without Nato air strikes Gaddafi would have won the war. The long term aims of the LIFG may not have changed much, but, as with Islamists in most countries convulsed by the Arab Spring, they long ago recognized that they needed to be allied to liberals and secularists to overthrow police states in Syria, Egypt, Tunisia and Libya. They also needed to distance themselves from al-Qa’ida to avoid being denigrated as international pariahs, as Gaddafi tried to do.
The Islamists may, for the moment, look stronger than they are because they alone could provide experienced guerrilla leaders and an organized network of sympathizers in Tripoli. These cells could scarcely maintain their existence before the rebellion started on February 15, but thereafter they expanded rapidly.
Abdel Razzaq Targhuni, a Libyan currency exchange dealer with Islamist sympathies living in Dubai, recalls how he came home in late February and started to organize against Gaddafi in the wealthy Andalus district of Tripoli. “Before that there wasn’t much contact between cells,” he says.
The loyalties and divisions of the new Libyan armed forces remain mysterious but there are signs of trouble ahead. Lt Col Khalid Bilad, an officer in Libyan Special Forces, who defected at the start of the revolution, was captured, imprisoned and tortured before escaping during a Nato raid and then helped plan an insurrection in Tripoli.
His unit, once called the “Tripoli Lions”, is now joining the main militia body and – for reasons the colonel refused to explain – is naming itself after the murdered commander-in-chief of the rebel army Abdul Fatah Younes, Gaddafi’s former Interior Minister, who was probably killed by Islamists.
by elpuma » Wed Aug 31, 2011 12:08 pm
by seemslikeadream » Wed Aug 31, 2011 1:01 pm
Files: Americans aid Gaddafi in rebel fight
Al Jazeera uncovers evidence that influential Americans tried to help the now deposed Libyan leader cling to power.
Jamal Elshayyal Last Modified: 31 Aug 2011 16:39
Secret Libyan documents reveal how Americans were trying to help Gaddafi beat the revolution
In the heart of Tripoli lies Libya's intelligence headquarters, much of it was destroyed by NATO airstrikes which transformed the building that struck fear into the hearts of millions of Libyans for over four decades, into a symbol of how Gaddafi's regime has been all but destroyed.
Guarding the compound are a couple of dozen armed rebel fighters, some of them tell me their friends and families went missing as a direct result of "intelligence" gathered by those who worked in the building.
It's fair to assume that among the rubble and ransacked offices, lay some of the darkest deepest secrets of Gaddafi's regime. I'm looking for files entitled "Lockerbie" or "IRA", but unfortunately the place is a mess.
I'm taken to the office of Abdullah Alsinnousi, he was head of Libya's intelligence service and one of the Gaddafi regime's most notorious and feared strong men.
Scattered on his desk are dozens of documents branded "top secret", but the rebels accompanying me aren't keen on me taking anything away. I find a folder titled "Moussa Alsadr", he was the former head of Hezbollah who went missing in Libya over thirty years ago. Within seconds the folder is taken by my minder who says none of these documents can leave the compound.
In the room adjacent to Sinnousi's office is a bedroom with an ensuite bathroom kitted with a plush jacuzzi, an indication of the lush lifestyle led by the heads of the former regime. Sprawled on the bed lays a rebel fighter taking an afternoon nap. The scene is almost surreal, "gosh how times change", I whisper.
Communication with US
I managed to smuggle away some documents, among them some that indicate the Gaddafi regime, despite its constant anti-American rhetoric – maintained direct communications with influential figures in the US.
I found what appeared to be the minutes of a meeting between senior Libyan officials – Abubakr Alzleitny and Mohammed Ahmed Ismail – and David Welch, the former assistant secretary of state who served under George W Bush and the man who brokered the deal which restored diplomatic relations between the US and Libya in 2008.
Welch now works for Bechtel, a multinational American company with billion dollar construction deals across the Middle East. The documents record that, on August 2, David Welch met with the Gaddafi officials at the Four Seasons Hotel in Cairo, just a few blocks from the US embassy there.
During that meeting Welch advised Gaddafi's team on how to win the propaganda war – suggesting several "confidence building measures", the documents said. The documents appear to indicate that an influential US political personality was advising Gaddafi on how to beat the US and NATO.
Minutes of this meeting note his advice on how to undermine Libya's rebel movement, with the potential assistance of foreign intelligence agencies, including Israel. "Any information related to al-Qaeda or other terrorist extremist organisations should be found and given to the American administration but only via the intelligence agencies of either Israel, Egypt, Morroco, or Jordan… America will listen to them… It's better to receive this information as if it originated from those countries..."
The papers also document that Welch advised Gaddafi's regime to take advantage of the current unrest in Syria, pointing out: "The importance of taking advantage of the Syrian situation particularly regarding the double-standard policy adopted by Washington… the Syrians were never your friends and you would loose nothing from exploiting the situation there in order to embarrass the West."
'Encouragement to Gaddafi'
Despite this apparent encouragement to Gaddafi of going on a propaganda campaign at the expense of Syria, the documents claim Welch attacked Qatar, describing Doha's actions as "cynical" and an attempt to divert attention from the unrest in Bahrain.
The documents claims that Welch went on to propose the following solution to the crisis which he said many would support in the US administration; Gaddafi "should step aside" but "not necessarily relinquish all his powers". This advise is a clear contradiction to public demands from the White House that Gaddafi must be removed.
According to the document, as the meeting closed, Welch promised: "to convey everything to the American administration, the congress and other influential figures." But it appears that David Welch was not the only prominent American giving help to Gaddafi as NATO and the rebel army were locked in battle with his regime.
On the floor of the intelligence chief's office lay an envelope addressed to Gaddafi's son Saif Al-Islam. Inside, I found what appears to be a summary of a conversation between US congressman Denis Kucinich, who publicly opposed US policy on Libya, and an intermediary for the Libyan leader's son.
It details a request by the congressman for information he needed to lobby American lawmakers to suspend their support for the Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) and to put an end to NATO airstrikes. According to the document, Kucinich wanted evidence of corruption within the NTC and, like his fellow countryman Welch, any possible links within rebel ranks to al-Qaeda.
The document also lists specific information needed to defend Saif Al-Islam, who is currently on the International Criminal Court's most wanted list.
Scattered across the headquarters were smashed frames holding "the brother leader's" pictures, powerful images which depict Gaddafi's sudden fall from grace. It took six months to topple Gaddafi's regime, but the colonel did rule for over forty years During his reign thousands of people went missing, planes were blown up, and billion dollar deals were struck in the most dubious of circumstances. Finding out the true story behind all this will take a long time, and even then, there are some things that will never be known.
by Metric Pringle » Wed Aug 31, 2011 7:46 pm
TheDuke wrote:
How Cameron's secret unit choked off oil supplies to Gaddafi's frontline forces
How Cameron's secret unit choked off oil supplies to Gaddafi's frontline forces
'Libyan oil cell' was run by international development minister Alan Duncan and helped to strengthen sanctions against country
reddit this
Polly Curtis and Nicholas Watt
The Guardian, Thursday 1 September 2011
Article history
Oil facility in Libya
An oil facility in the Libyan desert. Gaddafi’s regime was trying to trade crude oil for petrol to keep its war machine running. Photograph: AFP
David Cameron has been operating a secret unit in Whitehall charged with undertaking covert economic operations to choke the Gaddafi regime of the one thing it had in abundance: oil.
The "Libyan oil cell" was run by the international development minister Alan Duncan and helped to strengthen sanctions against the oil-rich country, blocking supplies of crude oil to the dictator's side while allowing petrol and diesel to flow to the rebels.
But the government is likely to face intense scrutiny over the fact that the unit was involved in linking the rebels to a Swiss oil firm, Vitol, which has been credited with keeping the revolutionary engine running through the war. Duncan was previously a consultant with the firm and has close personal ties to its chairman, Ian Taylor. Taylor has also been a Conservative donor in the past.
The unit was backed by Cameron and William Hague, the foreign secretary, and involved half-a-dozen officials with help from MI6. It was tasked with working out how to control the flow of oil in and out of the country. Sources close to the project claim that in the last weeks of the dictatorship, Gaddafi struggled to keep his forces on the move with his refined oil stocks depleted by 90%, while rebels gathered momentum as they began to trade the nation's crude for refined petrol and diesel.
by JackRiddler » Fri Sep 02, 2011 4:50 pm
http://www.theonion.com/articles/americ ... see,21228/
News in Brief
America Gets Set To Enjoy Month Or So Of Libya Seeming Like Symbol Of Freedom
August 26, 2011 | ISSUE 47•34
GRAND RAPIDS, MI—Americans across the nation told reporters Wednesday that with the collapse of Muammar Qaddafi’s despotic regime, they were preparing to savor the next month or so of Libya seeming like an inspirational symbol of freedom. “We’ve got a nice four weeks of thinking Libya represents a triumph of liberty before the situation begins to deteriorate and some new form of authoritarianism inevitably asserts itself,” said Michigan-based architect Wes Reinhorn, adding that while he was looking forward to the nation potentially serving as a model for other Arab countries, he would eventually realize the situation in the region was very complex, and any hope he had of Libya transforming things for the better would presumably fade away by October. “We should all enjoy this stirring image of Libya as a beacon of democracy before Islamists or a new military strongman moves in to fill the power vacuum.” Other Americans, however, said that after a month of looking to Libya as a symbol of freedom, they planned to simply stop paying attention to the nation altogether.
by JackRiddler » Sat Sep 03, 2011 10:45 am
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/03/world ... nted=print
September 2, 2011
Files Note Close C.I.A. Ties to Qaddafi Spy Unit
By ROD NORDLAND
TRIPOLI, Libya — Documents found at the abandoned office of Libya’s former spymaster appear to provide new details of the close relations the Central Intelligence Agency shared with the Libyan intelligence service — most notably suggesting that the Americans sent terrorism suspects at least eight times for questioning in Libya despite that country’s reputation for torture.
Although it has been known that Western intelligence services began cooperating with Libya after it abandoned its program to build unconventional weapons in 2004, the files left behind as Tripoli fell to rebels show that the cooperation was much more extensive than generally known with both the C.I.A. and its British equivalent, MI-6.
Some documents indicate that the British agency was even willing to trace phone numbers for the Libyans,
and another appears to be a proposed speech written by the Americans for Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi about renouncing unconventional weapons.
The documents were discovered Friday by journalists and Human Rights Watch. There were at least three binders of English-language documents, one marked C.I.A. and the other two marked MI-6, among a larger stash of documents in Arabic.
It was impossible to verify their authenticity, and none of them were written on letterhead. But the binders included some documents that made specific reference to the C.I.A., and their details seem consistent with what is known about the transfer of terrorism suspects abroad for interrogation and with other agency practices.
And although the scope of prisoner transfers to Libya has not been made public, news media reports have sometimes mentioned it as one country that the United States used as part of its much criticized rendition program for terrorism suspects.
A C.I.A. spokeswoman, Jennifer Youngblood,
declined to comment on Friday on the documents. But she added: “It can’t come as a surprise that the Central Intelligence Agency works with foreign governments to help protect our country from terrorism and other deadly threats.”
The British Foreign Office said, “It is the longstanding policy of the government not to comment on intelligence matters.”
While most of the renditions referred to in the documents appear to have been C.I.A. operations, at least one was claimed to have been carried out by MI-6.
“The rendition program was all about handing over these significant figures related to Al Qaeda so they could torture them and get the information they wanted,” said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director of Human Rights Watch, who studied the documents in the intelligence headquarters in downtown Tripoli.
The documents cover 2002 to 2007, with many of them concentrated in late 2003 and 2004, when Moussa Koussa was head of the External Security Organization. (Mr. Koussa was most recently Libya’s foreign minister.)
The speech that appears to have been drafted for Colonel Qaddafi was found in the C.I.A. folder and appears to have been sent just before Christmas in 2003. The one-page speech seems intended to depict the Libyan dictator in a positive light. It concluded, using the revolutionary name for the Libyan government: “At a time when the world is celebrating the birth of Jesus, and as a token of our contributions towards a world full of peace, security, stability and compassion, the Great Jamhariya presents its honest call for a W.M.D.-free zone in the Middle East,” referring to weapons of mass destruction.
The flurry of communications about renditions are dated after Libya’s renouncement of its weapons program. In several of the cases, the documents explicitly talked about having a friendly country arrest a suspect, and then suggested aircraft would be sent to pick the suspect up and deliver him to the Libyans for questioning. One document included a list of 89 questions for the Libyans to ask a suspect.
While some of the documents warned Libyan authorities to respect such detainees’ human rights, the C.I.A. nonetheless turned them over for interrogation to a Libyan service with a well-known history of brutality.
One document in the C.I.A. binder said operatives were “in a position to deliver Shaykh Musa to your physical custody, similar to what we have done with other senior L.I.F.G. members in the recent past.” The reference was to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which was dedicated to the overthrow of Colonel Qaddafi, and which American officials believed had ties to Al Qaeda.
When Libyans asked to be sent Abu Abdullah al-Sadiq, another member of the group, a case officer wrote back on March 4, 2004, that “we are committed to developing this relationship for the benefit of both our services,” and promised to do their best to locate him, according to a document in the C.I.A. binder.
Two days later, an officer faxed the Libyans to say that Mr. Sadiq and his pregnant wife were planning to fly into Malaysia, and the authorities there agreed to put them on a British Airways flight to London that would stop in Bangkok. “We are planning to take control of the pair in Bangkok and place them on our aircraft for a flight to your country,” the case officer wrote.
Mr. Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch said he had learned from the documents that Sadiq was a nom de guerre for Abdel Hakim Belhaj, who is now a military leader for the rebels.
In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Belhaj gave a detailed description of his incarceration that matched many of those in the documents. He also said that when he was held in Bangkok he was tortured by two people from the C.I.A.
On one occasion, the Libyans tried to send their own plane to extradite a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, Abu Munthir, and his wife and children, who were being held in Hong Kong because of passport irregularities.
The Libyan aircraft, however, was turned back, apparently because Hong Kong authorities were reluctant to let Libyan planes land. In a document labeled “Secret/ U.S. Only/ Except Libya,” the Libyans were advised to charter an aircraft from a third country. “If payment of a charter aircraft is an issue, our service would be willing to assist financially,” the document said.
While questioning alleged terror group members plainly had value to Western intelligence, the cooperation went beyond that. In one case, for example, the Libyans asked operatives to trace a phone number for them, and a document that was in the MI-6 binder replied that it belonged to the Arab News Network in London. It is unclear why the Libyans sought who the phone number belonged to.
The document also suggested signs of agency rivalries over Libya. In the MI-6 binder, a document boasted of having turned over someone named Abu Abd Alla to the Libyans. “This was the least we could do for you to demonstrate the remarkable relationship we have built over recent years,” an unsigned fax in 2004 said. “Amusingly, we got a request from the Americans to channel requests for information from Abu Abd through the Americans. I have no intention of doing any such thing.”
Scott Shane contributed reporting from Washington.
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In Libya, Former Enemy Is Recast in Role of Ally
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/02/world ... nted=print
September 1, 2011
In Libya, Former Enemy Is Recast in Role of Ally
By ROD NORDLAND
TRIPOLI, Libya — Abdel Hakim Belhaj had a wry smile about the oddity of his situation.
Yes, he said, he was detained by Malaysian officials in 2004 on arrival at the Kuala Lumpur airport, where he was subjected to extraordinary rendition on behalf of the United States, and sent to Thailand. His pregnant wife, traveling with him, was taken away, and his child would be 6 before he saw him.
In Bangkok, Mr. Belhaj said, he was tortured for a few days by two people he said were C.I.A. agents, and then, worse, they repatriated him to Libya, where he was thrown into solitary confinement for six years, three of them without a shower, one without a glimpse of the sun.
Now this man is in charge of the military committee responsible for keeping order in Tripoli, and, he says, is a grateful ally of the United States and NATO.
And while Mr. Belhaj concedes that he was the emir of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which was deemed by the United States to be a terrorist group allied with Al Qaeda, he says he has no Islamic agenda. He says he will disband the fighters under his command, merging them into the formal military or police, once the Libyan revolution is over.
He says there are no hard feelings over his past treatment by the United States.
“Definitely it was very hard, very difficult,” he said. “Now we are in Libya, and we want to look forward to a peaceful future. I do not want revenge.”
As the United States and other Western powers embrace and help finance the new government taking shape in Libya, they could face a particularly awkward relationship with Islamists like Mr. Belhaj. Once considered enemies in the war on terror, they suddenly have been thrust into positions of authority — with American and NATO blessing.
In Washington, the Central Intelligence Agency declined to comment on Mr. Belhaj or his new role. A State Department official said the Obama administration was aware of Islamist backgrounds among the rebel fighters in Libya and had expressed concern to the Transitional National Council, the new rebel government, and that it had received assurances.
“The last few months, we’ve had the T.N.C. saying all the right things, and making the right moves,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the matter’s delicacy.
Mr. Belhaj, 45, a short and serious man with a close-cropped beard, burst onto the scene in the mountains west of Tripoli only in the last few weeks before the fall of the capital, as the leader of a brigade of rebel fighters.
“He wasn’t even in the military council in the western mountains,” said Othman Ben Sassi, a member of the Transitional National Council from Zuwarah in the west. “He was nothing, nothing. He arrived at the last moment, organized some people but was not responsible for the military council in the mountains.”
Then came the push on Tripoli, which fell with unexpected speed, and Mr. Belhaj and his fighters focused on the fortified Bab al-Aziziya compound of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, where they distinguished themselves as relatively disciplined fighters.
A veteran of the war in Afghanistan against the Soviets, Mr. Belhaj has what most rebel fighters have lacked — actual military experience. Yet he has still not adopted a military rank (unlike many rebels who quickly became self-appointed colonels and generals), which he said should go only to members of the army.
Dressed in new military fatigues, with a pistol strapped backward to his belt, Mr. Belhaj was interviewed at his offices in the Mitiga Military Airbase in Tripoli, the site of what had been the United States Air Force’s Wheelus Air Base until 1970.
Last weekend, Mr. Belhaj was voted commander of the Tripoli Military Council, a grouping of several brigades of rebels involved in taking the capital, by the other brigades, a move that aroused some criticism among liberal members of the council.
However, his appointment was strongly supported by Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, the chairman of the council, who said that as Colonel Qaddafi’s former minister of justice he got to know Mr. Belhaj well during negotiations leading to his release from prison in 2010. Mr. Belhaj and other Islamist radicals made a historic compromise with the Qaddafi government, one that was brokered by Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, the Qaddafi son seen then as a moderating influence.
The Islamists agreed to disband the Islamic Fighting Group, replacing it with the Libyan Islamic Movement for Change, and renounced violent struggle. “We kept that promise,” Mr. Belhaj said. “The revolution started peacefully, but the regime’s crackdown forced it to become violent.”
Mr. Belhaj conceded that Islamists had no role in creating the revolution against Colonel Qaddafi’s rule; it was instead a popular uprising. “The February 17th revolution is the Libyan people’s revolution and no one can claim it, neither secularists nor Islamists,” he said. “The Libyan people have different views, and all those views have to be involved and respected.”
Forty-two years of Qaddafi rule in Libya had, he said, taught him an important lesson: “No one can make Libya suffer any more under any one ideology or any one regime.” His pledge to disband fighters under his command once Libya has a new government was repeated to NATO officials at a meeting in Qatar this week.
Some council members said privately that allowing Mr. Belhaj to become chairman of the military council in Tripoli was done partly to take advantage of his military expertise, but also to make sure the rebels’ political leaders had him under their direct control.
Many also say that Mr. Belhaj’s history as an Islamist is understandable because until this year, Islamist groups were the only ones able to struggle against Colonel Qaddafi’s particularly repressive rule.
After Mr. Belhaj and a small group of Libyan comrades returned from the jihad against the Soviets, they formed the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and had a secret base in the Green Mountain area of eastern Libya, until it was discovered and bombed, and many of its followers rounded up.
Mr. Belhaj escaped Libya in the late 1990s and, like many antigovernment exiles, was forced to move frequently as Libya used its oil resources as a way to pressure host countries.
“We focused on Libya and Libya only,” he said. “Our goal was to help our people. We didn’t participate in or support any action outside of Libya. We never had any link with Al Qaeda, and that could never be. We had a different agenda; global fighting was not our goal.”
He said that America’s reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks led to his group’s classification as terrorist.
In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, the rapprochement between Libya and Western countries led to the apprehension of several anti-Qaddafi activists, who were returned to Libya by the United States.
While Mr. Belhaj insisted that he was not interested in revenge, it is not a period of his life that he has altogether forgotten. “If one day there is a legal way, I would like to see my torturers brought to court,” he said.
Steven Lee Myers and Scott Shane contributed reporting from Washington.
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