US Helped Build ISIS – Provide Weapons from U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya

Photo: Hillary Clinton with the “Libyan rebels”.

During an appearance on Fox News, General Thomas McInerney acknowledged that the United States “helped build ISIS” as a result of the group obtaining weapons from the Benghazi consulate in Libya which was attacked by jihadists in September 2012.

Asked what he thought of the idea of arming so-called “moderate” Syrian rebels after FSA militants kidnapped UN peacekeepers in the Golan Heights, McInerney said the policy had been a failure.

“We backed I believe in some cases, some of the wrong people and not in the right part of the Free Syrian Army and that’s a little confusing to people, so I’ve always maintained….that we were backing the wrong types.”

Then made reference to a Bret Baier Fox News special set to air on Friday which will, “show some of those weapons from Benghazi ended up in the hands of ISIS – so we helped build ISIS,” said

In May last year, Senator Rand Paul was one of the first to speculate that the truth behind Benghazi was linked to an illicit arms smuggling program that saw weapons being trafficked to terrorists in Syria as part of the United States’ proxy war against the Assad regime.

“I’ve actually always suspected that, although I have no evidence, that maybe we were facilitating arms leaving Libya going through Turkey into Syria,” Paul told CNN, adding that he “never….quite understood the cover-up — if it was intentional or incompetence”.

At the same time it emerged that the U.S. State Department had hired an Al-Qaeda offshoot organization, the February 17th Martyrs Brigade, to “defend” the Benghazi Mission months before the attack.

Senator Paul was vindicated less than three months later when it emerged that the CIA had been subjecting its operatives to monthly polygraph tests in an effort to keep a lid on details of the arms smuggling operation being leaked.

CNN subsequently reported that dozens of CIA agents were on the ground in Benghazi during the attack and that the polygraph tests were mandated in order to prevent operatives from talking to Congress or the media about a program that revolved around “secretly helping to move surface-to-air missiles out of Libya, through Turkey, and into the hands of Syrian rebels.” Key Syrian rebel leaders later defected to join ISIS.

In addition to ISIS obtaining weapons from Benghazi, many members of the group were also trained by the United States at a secret base in Jordan in 2012.

Aaron Klein was told by Jordanian officials that, “dozens of future ISIS members were trained at the time as part of covert aid to the insurgents targeting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.”

As we have previously documented, many of the United States’ biggest allies in the region, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey and Qatar, have all bankrolled and armed ISIS militants.

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor at large of Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com.

Source GlobalResearch

War on Terror, War on Muslims?

US President Barack Obama is vowing to "degrade, and ultimately destroy" a terrorist group destabilising the Middle East he says could threaten Americans at home.
Sound familiar? George W Bush made a similar vow, yet more than a decade after launching the so-called War on Terror, both the war and the terror are still raging.
Obama says the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) will be different than the two wars started by Bush. But Muslims looked at with suspicion around the world are wondering, how different will their treatment be?
What is the impact of increasing surveillance of Muslim communities, banning Islamic dress and equating a religion with a threat? Do the counter-terror measures adopted by the US, Britain and France erode the very democratic principles considered the pillars of a "free" society?
Marwan Bishara asks what happens when the War on Terror turns inward, and prolonged military action abroad turns into a culture of fear at home.

Source: Al Jazeera

What they won't admit at the Arab Summit

About the Author

Marwan Bishara

Marwan Bishara is the senior political analyst at Al Jazeera.


Rhetoric and reality
The Arab League Summit has convened just as the region reached the summit of instability, division and violence as a result of the actions of many of those and other Middle Eastern leaders. But don't expect Arab leaders to take responsibility for the dreadful situation they helped bring about - absolutely not.
Instead, much of the blame was directed at "external" forces and the extremists and the terrorists who, in the words of Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, exploited certain "shortcomings" of Arab governance (i.e. repressive authoritarianism) to try and gain control.

Sisi: Arab nations to create joint military force

It's no wonder the leaders went on to speak of the importance of unity, stability and dialogue, while emphasizing mostly military solutions.
Arab military force
The one concrete conclusion of the Arab Summit is the call for the establishment of a joint Arab military force even though the whole region is suffering from an excess of violence that's affecting and even destroying the lives of countless people.
How will this force be assembled; who will finance it and what are its objectives is not clear in the absence of any blueprints. But what is clear is that there's no precedence for such a joint force, and the Arabs don't have the means, experience or expertise to put in motion the kind of sophisticated logistical and operational plans that allow different militaries to work jointly.
And since this force is not expected to confront Israel or Iran on the battlefield, one assumes it's meant to fight the kind of asymmetrical wars as in Syria or more specifically, Yemen where the Saudis intervened, or Libya where Egypt is so keen to intervene. That is sure to plunge the region into an ever more protracted war.
'Happy Yemen'
Although violence continues to spiral out of control in Syria, Iraq and Libya, it's Yemen that has dominated the Arab League discussion following the Saudi military intervention there. Long known in the Arab world as "al-Yemen as-Said" - or Happy Yemen - the country is a terribly unhappy place as it's transformed, once again, into a battlefield for external and internal forces.

Long known in the Arab world as 'al-Yemen as-Said' - or Happy Yemen - the country is a terribly unhappy place as it's transformed, once again, into a battlefield for external and internal forces.

The Arab Summit has lent its support to Saudi Arabia in its declared effort to stem the tide of the Iranian supported Houthis that endanger national Saudi and Arab security, according to the League.
But how will the Arab nations react if or when the situation in Yemen continues to deteriorate and the Houthis, supported by Tehran, put up major resistance?
Well, already, Iran's allies in Iraq and elsewhere have expressed opposition to foreign military intervention in Yemen or other nations, which is rather puzzling, considering the present Iraqi government has welcomed military intervention in its own country.
It remains to be seen whether the League's attempt at establishing a new Arab order passes the test of Yemen.
Saudi gamble
The fact that it's Saudi Arabia that has shaken off the passivity and defensiveness of the Arabs vis-a-vis Iran's rising influence is both telling and surprising.
It's telling because of the way it exposed what has been known for so many years, notably that Saudi Arabia and Iran have been locked in a Middle Eastern cold war that involved supporting clients and allies in proxy conflicts and wars that destabilised the region.
And it's surprising because the Saudis, who generally outsourced their missions to others, including to the Americans, are for the first time leading a major war with unknown consequences to national and regional stability.
This Saudi gamble seems to turn the tables against Iran, at least in its initial phase, and it has put Riyadh in a much more comfortable strategic position than it was in only a few days ago when the Iranians were gaining all but direct control in Yemen and access to the Red Sea.
Iranian overreach
Most of those present at the Arab League Summit believe that Iran has been overzealous in the way it has intervened in various Arab nations including Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and more recently, Yemen. Tehran has been gaining strategic confidence and regional momentum thanks to George W Bush's failures in Iraq since 2003, and Barack Obama's attempt at reaching a nuclear deal and eventually political rapprochement with the Islamic Republic.
But the Ayatollahs' overreach in Iraq and Syria and their boasting of a new Iranian dominated regional order have sent shock waves across the region and united both Arab and non-Arab states against them. Turkish and Pakistani support for Saudi Arabia in Yemen is sure to weaken Iran's position in the region regardless of whether it reaches a deal with the United States. Well, at least for the time being.

Yemeni Foreign Minister Riad Yassin [AP]

Although quite pragmatic, it remains to be seen how the Iranians will react to the Saudi intervention over the longer run.
The missing elephant
Unlike most other summits over the last half a century, when the Arabs obsessed about the United States, Washington was largely missing from the deliberations and plans of the summiteers.
Indeed, much of the discussion about Yemen, Libya and Syria were driven by the lack of US dependability and the need for the Arabs to act on their own first, rather than wait for US initiatives.
For the first time since their independence, the Arabs are acting not as friends or foes of the United States, and are not taking instructions from Washington regarding their next moves. Instead, the US seems to lend a hand to those who act on their own and in coordination with others to establish order or stability that is conducive to US interests. This might encourage the Iranians to act more vigorously against ISIL in Iraq, nudge the Egyptians to act in Libya, and encourage the Turks to act in Syria.
Forgotten Palestine
Despite Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's terribly pessimistic review of the situation in Palestine and his emphasis on losing Jerusalem for good, the summiteers have repeated the same tired cliches about Palestine and peace as if either are possible to attain in negotiations with the Netanyahu government (with the exception of the Emir of Qatar or proposed abandoning unworkable initiatives in return for serious international pressure to lift the siege on Gaza and force Israel to recognise the Palestinian State).
Palestine that has long spearheaded all Arab summits has taken the backseat because of the Arabs' preoccupation with countless disasters and challenges on their hands. But more importantly, because of their incompetence and lack of seriousness towards Palestine. And of course towards Syria.
Invisible Arabs
As the summiteers focused their attention on the mostly self-generated regional instability and violence, they did pay some lip service to the important issues of everyday Arabs, including development, justice and freedoms.
Indeed, much of the lofty talk about an Arab military force, combatting terrorism and attaining stability is the antithesis to the peoples' yearning for liberty, dignity and human rights.
Alas, by emphasizing the security issues, most of those present at the Arab League Summit were mostly eager to turn the page on the Arab Spring and its calls for democracy.

Conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia ---A war of all against all

 

 Hisham Melhem is the bureau chief of Al Arabiya News Channel in Washington, DC.

It has come to pass that in that long arc stretching from North Africa, through the Fertile Crescent and all the way to Yemen all is falling down. States, and non-state actors, sects and tribes, as well as armies, marauding killers, fanatic legionnaires, proxies and millenarians waving swords while hallucinating about the end of time, all are locked in a dizzying free fall with no deliverance in sight. In the past an ‘Arab Cold War’ raged between conservatives monarchies allied with the U.S. and Arab nationalist republics allied with the Soviet Union, there were also limited civil wars, and cross border clashes, and a number of Arab-Israeli wars, and fleeting Western sponsored alliances.

The conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia while it is framed by many as a sectarian one is in fact a political conflict over national security interests and influence.
Hisham Melhem

And while at times the political rhetoric sounded apocalyptic, and some wars like the Iran-Iraq war kept smoldering for years, the regional order did not collapse and those states whose borders were drawn as ‘lines in the sands’ proved resilient. But the current cataclysmic, multiple battlefields within and across borders have led to unprecedented disintegration of the state system and the fragmentation of societies, with the cancer of sectarianism spreading particularly in a very ailing Arab body politics. It shall come to pass also, that since it took decades of political dysfunction, economic and cultural stagnation and repressive governance to bring the Arabs to this nadir and the region to this impasse that it will take decades for these complex struggles to run their courses, and for the sectarian, political, ethnic and regional fault lines to settle into new patterns after the total exhaustion of the warriors.
The sad collapse of Arabia Felix
In the second decade of the twenty first century, the most common form of warfare in the Middle East (and South Asia) has been that of the phenomenon of the non-state actors battling each other’s while fighting and or receiving aid from their state sponsors. Sometimes these non-state actors act independently, (The Islamic State ISIS) but in many cases they act as powerful proxies (Hezbollah in Lebanon) to states unwilling to risk all, in all-out conventional conflicts. The decision by the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) led by Saudi Arabia along with other Arab and Sunni majority states like Pakistan to militarily intervene in Yemen in support of the Yemeni government against the Houthi rebellion supported by Iran, will be seen –regardless of how the military campaign unfolds- as a milestone in the current cataclysmic regional wars, stretching the front of Sunni-Shiite bloodletting from Yemen on the Indian Ocean, through Bahrain, Iraq, Syria and ending in Lebanon on the Mediterranean Sea. This nascent coalition, which was brought about partially by America’s reluctance to check Iran’s regional hegemonic ambitions, represents the first attempt by regional powers, mostly majority Sunni states to check and roll back Iran’s regional gains. While it is true that Iran did not create the so-called ‘Houthi problem’ it is also true that Iran has exploited the Houthis’ political grievances and became their ally.
Yemen’s slow descent towards disintegration has been in the making for years. The long reign of the former dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh has dragged the country to civil strife and near economic collapse. Saleh’s cynical alliance with the Houthis partly explains Yemen’s full descent into civil war. The famed prosperous ancient land the Romans called Arabia Felix (happy Arabia) today is neither whole nor happy, nor prosperous. There are four Arab majority states engulfed in civil wars: Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen. Three of them; Syria, Iraq and Yemen have devolved into proxy wars involving the United States, Iran and many traditional friends and allies of the United States such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey.
Into the wild
America’s decisions and alliances in the region of late have been tentative, contradictory, and tactical. The U.S. was quick to declare its support of the Saudi-led anti Houthi and anti-Iranian campaign in Yemen and lending logistical and Intelligence assistance. At the same time in Iraq, the U.S. is using its air power to cover the Shiite-led (and Iranian advised) land campaign to regain Tikrit from ISIS. In Iraq the U.S. is implicitly ‘partnering’ with Iran against ISIS. In Yemen the U.S. is publicly ‘partnering’ with the GCC against the Houthis, Iran’s friends. In Syria, the U.S. co-exists with the Assad regime, even while attacking, verbally of course, the regime’s savage use of barrel bombs and Chlorine gas, without denouncing Iran, the very country that saved the regime from imminent collapse. All the while the U.S. is very eager to reach a historic nuclear deal with Iran which will inevitably raise the ire of Arabs, Turks and Israelis.
The wars in Iraq and Yemen have forced the U.S. to make some surreal and painful decisions, ranging from reluctantly accepting the rising influence of Iraqi Shiite militias in the campaign against ISIS, to trying to destroy the American arsenal that fell into the hands of ISIS in Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen. President Obama’s words last year that America’s war against Al Qaeda in Yemen has been successful have come to haunt him. If President Obama’s decision not to hasten the fall of President Assad in Syria and to arm and equip the moderate Syrian opposition can explain in part at least his dismal record there, one can say the reverse in Yamen. Washington’s single fixation on combatting Al Qaeda in Yemen, and Obama’s failure to provide fuller and stronger support to Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi blinded the U.S. to the rising threat of the Houthis. In Iraq, Syria and Yemen, the Obama Administration was caught off guard when it failed to see the dangerous rise of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, or the collapse of the Iraqi army last summer, or the extent of the Houthi rebellion.
The raging civil wars, the emergence of ISIS, and the deepening Sunni-Shiite conflict and the resulting proxy wars of all against all, happened on President Obama’s watch, presenting his administration with a multiplicity of crisis and tough choices. Of course, President Obama is not responsible for the collapse of the regional state system. Arabs, Iranians and others are responsible in the main for their predicament. But president Obama’s deeply flawed decisions on Syria (not to deliver on promises to the opposition or threats to Assad’s regime) and his reluctance to challenge the sectarian policies of former Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Malaki have contributed to the chaos.
A war of all against all
The conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia while it is framed by many as a sectarian one is in fact a political conflict over national security interests and influence. Sectarianism is a powerful tool for social/political mobilization, and a lethal weapon for demonization. People rarely fight each other over theological disputations, and even when they do that, they should be reminded that at core the conflict is political and can be understood rationally. The sectarian fires have only been stoked in the last few decades, with few milestones contributing to it; the Iranian Revolution, the Iran-Iraq war, the conflict between the Islamists in Syria and the Assad dynasty since 1970, and finally the American invasion of Iraq.
Iran has been especially effective in inspiring and helping the Shiite Arabs, many of whom may have felt a sense of political empowerment following the Revolution of 1979. Iran played a crucial role in the creation, funding and training of Hezbollah in Lebanon. In the conflicts of Syria and Iraq, Iran coordinated with Hezbollah in Lebanon and used it as an auxiliary force. Similar relations were developed between Iran and Iraqi Shiite groups. To put it bluntly, Iran can and is fighting its Arab foes by deploying Arab Shiites as auxiliaries as we have seen in Syria and Iraq in the last few years. No Sunni Arab or non-Arab power can make such a claim.
In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes paints a grim reality of life in the absence of order, a condition he called the state of nature, where the dominant rule is that there are no rules, a situation that leads to a ‘war of all against all’. The fraying or the collapse of the nation-state in the Arab world resulting in civil wars, proxy wars, the emergence of the marauding religious extremists have combined to push the region into a state of ‘war of all against all’. No Deus ex machina (a device employed in Greek tragedy allowing for divine intervention) will intervene to end this Arab tragedy. Civil wars are usually ended by one side winning the fight decisively, or when exhaustion forces a compromise or by foreign intervention. None of the regional sponsors of proxies is powerful enough to establish regional hegemony without serious challenges. There will come a moment in history where Arabs, Iranians, Turks, Israelis, Kurds and others, Sunnis and Shiites, Christian and Jews and atheists will be utterly exhausted before they realize that in a ‘war of all against all’ everyone loses. I shudder when I think that, I will not see that moment of bliss in my lifetime.

Most Wanted Senior ISIS commander killed in Libya

One of Tunisia’s most wanted men, a senior commander of ISIS militants in Libya, has been killed fighting with Libyan forces near the city of Sirte, Tunisian security sources said on Tuesday.
The death of Tunisian militant Ahmed Rouissi, who was fighting in Libya’s ISIS ranks, confirms the growing importance of foreign fighters in the Libyan conflict, where two rival governments and armed forces battle for control.
Western governments and Libya’s North African neighbors are increasingly worried about Islamist militants, especially ISIS allies, extending their foothold in the chaotic country just across the Mediterranean from Europe.
“According to the information we have, we can say Rouissi has been killed in the most recent fighting in Sirte,” a Tunisian security source said.
Libya is in chaos with two rival governments - one internationally recognized, the other set up in Tripoli after its forces took over the capital - that are fighting for control four years after a civil war ousted Muammar Qaddafi.
In the turmoil, militants allied to ISIS this year have claimed a string of high-profile attacks targeting foreigners, including an assault on a luxury hotel in Tripoli, the storming of oilfields and kidnapping of oil workers.
Rouissi was a top member of Tunisia's Ansar al-Sharia extremist group branded as terrorists by Washington.
Tunisian officials believe he was the mastermind in the murders of two Tunisian opposition leaders in 2013 that plunged the country into crisis.
He later joined ISIS in Libya and had been running training and recruitment operations with other foreign fighters there, according to the Tunisian security source.
Tunisians make up one of the largest contingents of foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq, but more recently militants have been sending militants to take part in the conflict in Tunisia's North African neighbor Libya.
Tunisia also said on Tuesday it had dismantled a recruiting cell sending militants to fight in Libya and arrested dozens in part of tighter security and border controls to counter Islamist militants.
“Security officers and the army arrested ten terrorists trying to sneak into Libya to join the armed groups in Libya,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement.
The communique said security forces also dismantled four terrorist cells that were recruiting for Libya and arrested 22 more suspects in those operations.
  Alarabiya

Ex-Qaddafi PM critical after torture in Libya

Al-Baghdadi al-Mahmudi, the last premier of deposed Libyan leader Muamer Qaddafi, is in critical condition after being tortured in a Libyan prison, his Tunisian lawyer said on Wednesday.

Mahmudi "is in critical condition as a result of the torture he has suffered," said Mabrouk Kourchid, adding that "he could die".

The lawyer did not provide any further details nor reveal his sources for fear they could suffer reprisals.

Mahmudi fled to neighbouring Tunisia in September 2011, shortly after rebels seized Tripoli and effectively put an end to more than four decades of Kadhafi's iron-fisted rule.

He was arrested there and extradited to Libya last June, despite warnings from rights groups that he could face the death penalty.

He went on trial in November for what the prosecutor general's spokesman said were "prejudicial acts against the security of the state and financial crimes."

In July, Mahmudi protested his innocence to journalists visiting his prison.

"I am not guilty, not guilty, not guilty," he told reporters during a visit organised by the authorities in an apparent bid to quash rumours he had been tortured.

A physician by training, Mahmudi was loyal to Qaddafi until the end, serving as premier from 2006 up to the final days of his regime.

Along with Seif al-Islam, the toppled dictator's most high-profile son who is also on trial, Mahmudi is one of the few remaining keepers of the many state secrets under Qaddafi, who was captured and killed by rebels in October 2011.
AFP

Blast in libyan city Bengazi

A major explosion rocked the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi on Wednesday, broadcaster Al Arabiya reported, apparently targeting a military intelligence building.

There were no immediate reports of casualties. The building is in the district of Fuwaihat, near the Tunisian and Turkish consulates.

Meanwhile, the Libyan Red Crescent said an Iranian team of seven medics were abducted by gunmen after they left a meeting at its office in Benghazi on Tuesday. An official in the Iranian Health Ministry confirmed the abductions. The delegation was in Benghazi to sign an agreement related to humanitarian activities with the Libyan Red Crescent, the IRNA news agency reported.

Heavy Tension in libya ahead of National Vote

Fears of militia violence and calls for a boycott threatened Friday to mar Libya’s first nationwide parliamentary election, a milestone on the oil-rich North African nation’s rocky path toward democracy after the ouster of dictator Muammar Qadhafi.

Saturday’s vote for a 200-member transitional parliament caps a tumultuous nine-month transition toward democracy for the country after a bitter civil war that ended with the capture and killing of Qadhafi in October. Many Libyans had hoped the oil-rich nation of 6 million would quickly thrive and become a magnet for investment, but the country has suffered a virtual collapse in authority that has left formidable challenges. Armed militias still operate independently, and deepening regional and tribal divisions erupt into violence with alarming frequency.

Libyan national poll--First test of Democracy

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libyans will vote in their first free national poll in more than half a century on Saturday amid fears that violence could taint an election meant to usher in a temporary national assembly and draw a line under Muammar Gaddafi's 42-year autocratic reign.

Voters will select a 200-member assembly that will choose a cabinet to replace the self-appointed interim government and also pick a new prime minister. Many of the 3,700 candidates have strong Islamic agendas.

The chamber was also due to appoint a committee charged with drafting a new constitution. But Libya's transitional rulers announced on Thursday this body would also be elected directly by Libyans - a move one analyst said was a bid to appease federalists that have urged a boycott of Saturday's vote.

CURRENT AFFAIR--Libya election postponed over logistics problems

Elections in Libya for a constituent assembly, originally set to be held by June 19, are to be postponed for logistical reasons, said electoral commission members.

One member said the postponement until July or later had been decided mainly to allow time for appeals from candidates ruled out of the contest.

“Several dates have been proposed, but most discussions are pointing to July 10,” he said.

Another member said the postponement had been decided in consultation with U.N. officials working with the commission who had “proposed a date during the first week in July.”

“But if we are not ready by that date, the election will be postponed for the month of August also, until after Ramadan,” he cautioned.

Rumours have abounded in the Libyan capital that the constituent assembly election would be put off, despite the authorities insisting it would go ahead on time.

More than 2.7 million Libyans, or around 80 per cent of eligible voters, have registered to participate in what marks the first national poll after four decades of dictatorship under Muammar Qadhafi, toppled last year.

The ruling National Transitional Council, having declared the country's “liberation” three days after the October 20 capture and killing of Qadhafi, launched a roadmap to a new Libya with a 20-month countdown to elections.

A transitional government was to organise within eight months the election of a 200-member assembly, or “general national congress.” The NTC is to step down once the congress holds its first session.

AFP

NATO’S Craven Coverup of Its Libyan Bombing--Vijai Prashad

Vijay Prashad - Ten days into the uprising in Benghazi, Libya, the United Nations’ Human Rights Council established the International Commission of Inquiry on Libya. The purpose of the Commission was to “investigate all alleged violations of international human rights law in Libya.” The broad agenda was to establish the facts of the violations and crimes and to take such actions as to hold the identified perpetrators accountable. On June 15, the Commission presented its first report to the Council. This report was provisional, since the conflict was still ongoing and access to the country was minimal. The June report was no more conclusive than the work of the human rights non-governmental organizations (such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch). In some instances, the work of investigators for these NGOs (such as Donatella Rovera of Amnesty) was of higher quality than that of the Commission.

Due to the uncompleted war and then the unsettled security state in the country in its aftermath, the Commission did not return to the field till October 2011, and did not begin any real investigation before December 2011. On March 2, 2012, the Commission finally produced a two hundred-page document that was presented to the Human Rights Council in Geneva. Little fanfare greeted this report’s publication, and the HRC’s deliberation on it was equally restrained.

Nonetheless, the report is fairly revelatory, making two important points: first, that all sides on the ground committed war crimes with no mention at all of a potential genocide conducted by the Qaddafi forces; second, that there remains a distinct lack of clarity regarding potential NATO war crimes. Not enough can be made of these two points. They strongly inferthat the rush to a NATO “humanitarian intervention” might have been made on exaggerated evidence, and that NATO’s own military intervention might have been less than “humanitarian” in its effects.

It is precisely because of a lack of accountability by NATO that there is hesitancy in the United Nations Security Council for a strong resolution on Syria. “Because of the Libyan experience,” the Indian Ambassador to the UN Hardeep Singh Puri told me in February, “other members of the Security Council, such as China and Russia, will not hesitate in exercising a veto if a resolution – and this is a big if – contains actions under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which permits the use of force and punitive and coercive measures.”

Crimes Against Humanity.

The Libyan uprising began on February 15, 2011. By February 22, the UN Human Rights Chief Navi Pillay claimed that two hundred and fifty people had been killed in Libya, “although the actual numbers are difficult to verify.” Nonetheless, Pillay pointed to “widespread and systematic attacks against the civilian population” which “may amount to crimes against humanity.” Pillay channeled the Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN from Libya, Ibrahim Dabbashi, who had defected to the rebellion and claimed, “Qaddafi had started the genocide against the Libyan people.” Very soon world leaders used the two concepts interchangeably, “genocide” and “crimes against humanity.” These concepts created a mood that Qaddafi’s forces were either already indiscriminately killing vast numbers of people, or that they were poised for a massacre of Rwanda proportions.

Courageous work by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch last year, then much later the 2012 report from the UN belies this judgment, (as does my forthcoming book Arab Spring, Libyan Winter, AK Press), which goes through the day-by-day record and show two things: that both sides used excessive violence and that the rebels seemed to have the upper hand for much of the conflict, with Qaddafi’s forces able to recapture cities, but unable to hold them.

The UN report is much more focused on the question of crimes committed on the ground. This is the kind of forensic evidence in the report:

(1) In the military base and detention camp of Al Qalaa. “Witnesses, together with the local prosecutor, uncovered the bodies of 43 men and boys, blindfolded and with their hands tied behind their backs.” Qaddafi forces had shot them. Going over many of these kinds of incidents, and of indiscriminate firing of heavy artillery into cities, the UN Report notes that these amount to a war crime or a crime against humanity.

(2) “Over a dozen Qadhafi soldiers were reportedly shot in the back of the head bythuwar [rebel fighters] around 22-23 February 2011 in a village between Al Bayda and Darnah. This is corroborated by mobile phone footage.” After an exhaustive listing of the many such incidents, and of the use of heavy artillery against cities notably Sirte, the UN report suggests the preponderance of evidence of the war crime of murder or crimes against humanity.
There is no mention of genocide in the Report, and none of any organized civilian massacre. This is significant because UN Resolution 1973, which authorized the NATO war, was premised on the “the widespread and systematic attacks currently taking place in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya against the civilian population” which “may amount to crimes against humanity.” There was no mention in Resolution 1973 of the disproportionate violence of the thuwar against the pro-Qaddafi population (already reported by al-jazeera by February 19), a fact that might have given pause to the UN as it allowed NATO to enter the conflict on the rebels’ behalf. NATO’s partisan bombardment allowed the rebels to seize the country faster than they might have had in a more protracted war, but it also allowed them carte blanche to continue with their own crimes against humanity.

With NATO backing, it was clear that no one was going to either properly investigate the rebel behavior, and no-one was going to allow for a criminal prosecution of those crimes against humanity. Violence of this kind by one’s allies is never to be investigated as the Allies found out after World War 2 when there was no assessment of the criminal firebombing of, for example, Dresden. No wonder that the UN Report notes that the Commissioners are “deeply concerned that no independent investigation or prosecution appear to have been instigated into killings committed by thuwar.” None is likely. There are now over eight thousand pro-Qaddafi fighters in Libyan prisons. They have no charges framed against them. Many have been tortured, and several have died (including Halah al-Misrati, the Qaddafi era newscaster).

The section of the UN report on the town of Tawergha is most startling. The thirty thousand residents of the town were removed by the Misratan thuwar. The general sentiment among the Misratan thuwarwas that the Tawerghans were given preferential treatment by the Qaddafi regime, a claim disputed by the Tawerghans. The road between Misrata and Tawergha was lined with slogans such as “the brigade for purging slaves, black skin,” indicating the racist cleansing of the town. The section on Tawergha takes up twenty pages of the report. It is chilling reading. Tawerghans told the Commission “that during ‘interrogations’ they were beaten, had hot wax poured in their ears and were told to confess to committing rape in Misrata. The Commission was told that one man had diesel poured on to his back which was then set alight; the same man was held in shackles for 12 days.” This goes on and on. The death count is unclear. The refugees are badly treated as they go to Benghazi and Tripoli.

To the Commission, the attacks against Tawerghans during the war “constitute a war crime” and those that have taken place since “violate international human rights law” and a “crime against humanity.” Because of the “current difficulties faced by the Libyan Government,” the Commission concludes, it is unlikely that the government will be able to bring justice for the Tawerghans and to undermine the “culture of impunity that characterizes the attacks.”

NATO’s Crimes.

For the past several months, the Russians have asked for a proper investigation through the UN Security Council of the NATO bombardment of Libya. “There is great reluctance to undertake it,” the Indian Ambassador to the UN told me. When the NATO states in the Security Council wanted to clamor for war in February-March 2011, they held discussions about Libya in an open session. After Resolution 1973 and since the war ended, the NATO states have only allowed discussion about Libya in a closed session. When Navi Pillay came to talk about the UN Report, her remarks were not for the public.
Indeed, when it became clear to NATO that the UN Commission wished to investigate NATO’s role in the Libyan war, Brussels balked. On February 15, 2012, NATO’s Legal Adviser Peter Olson wrote a strong letter to the Chair of the Commission. NATO accepted that the Qaddafi regime “committed serious violations of international law,” which led to the Security Council Resolution 1973. What was not acceptable was any mention of NATO’s “violations” during the conflict,

“We would be concerned, however, if ‘NATO incidents’ were included in the Commission’s report as on a par with those which the Commission may ultimately conclude did violate law or constitute crimes. We note in this regard that the Commission’s mandate is to discuss ‘the facts and circumstance of….violations [of law] and…crimes perpetrated.’ We would accordingly request that, in the event the Commission elects to include a discussion of NATO actions in Libya, its report clearly state that NATO did not deliberately target civilians and did not commit war crimes in Libya.”

To its credit, the Commission did discuss the NATO “incidents.” However, there were some factual problems. The Commission claimed that NATO flew 17,939 armed sorties in Libya. NATO says that it flew “24,200 sorties, including over 9,000 strike sorties.” What the gap between the two numbers might tell us is not explored in the report or in the press discussion subsequently. The Commission points out that NATO did strike several civilian areas (such as Majer, Bani Walid, Sirte, Surman, Souq al-Juma) as well as areas that NATO claims were “command and control nodes.” The Commission found no “evidence of such activity” in these “nodes.” NATO contested both the civilian deaths and the Commission’s doubts about these “nodes.” Because NATO would not fully cooperate with the Commission, the investigation was “unable to determine, for lack of sufficient information, whether these strikes were based on incorrect or outdated intelligence and, therefore, whether they were consistent with NATO’s objective to take all necessary precautions to avoid civilian casualties entirely.”

Three days after the report was released in the Human Rights Council, NATO’s chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen denied its anodyne conclusions regarding NATO. And then, for added effect, Rasmussen said that he was pleased with the report’s finding that NATO “had conducted a highly precise campaign with a demonstrable determination to avoid civilian casualties.” There is no such clear finding. The report is far more circumspect, worrying about the lack of information to make any clear statement about NATO’s bombing runs. NATO had conducted its own inquiry, but did not turn over its report or raw data to the UN Commission.

On March 12, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon went to the UN Security Council and stated that he was “deeply concerned” about human rights abuses in Libya, including the more than eight thousand prisoners held in jails with no judicial process (including Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, who should have been transferred to the Hague by NATO’s logic). Few dispute this part of the report. The tension in the Security Council is over the section on NATO. On March 9, Maria Khodynskaya-Golenishcheva of the Russian Mission to the UN in Geneva noted that the UN report omitted to explore the civilian deaths caused by NATO. “In our view,” she said, “during the NATO campaign many violations of the standard of international law and human rights were committed, including the most important right, the right to life.” On March 12, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused NATO of “massive bombings” in Libya. It was in response to Lavrov’s comment that Ban’s spokesperson Martin Nesirky pointed out that Ban accepts “the report’s overall finding that NATO did not deliberately target civilians in Libya.”

NATO is loath to permit a full investigation. It believes that it has the upper hand, with Libya showing how the UN will now use NATO as its military arm (or else how the NATO states will be able to use the UN for its exercise of power). In the Security Council, NATO’s Rasmussen notes, “Brazil, China, India and Russia consciously stepped aside to allow the UN Security Council to act” and they “did not put their military might at the disposal of the coalition that emerged.” NATO has no challenger. This is why the Russians and the Chinese are unwilling to allow any UN resolution that hints at military intervention. They fear the Pandora’s box opened by Resolution 1973.

Vijay Prashad’s new book, Arab Spring, Libyan Winter (AK Press) will be out in late March. On March 25, he will be speaking at the plenary panel of the United National Anti-War Coalition National Conference in Stamford, CT, alongside Bill McKibben, Richard Wolff and Nada Khader on “Global Economic Meltdown, Warming and War.”

Ganashakti

Libyan leader warns of possible ‘civil war’ if NTC quits as protests rage in Benghazi

Libyan leader Mustafa Abdul Jalil said on Sunday the nation would fall into a “civil war” if the ruling National Transitional Council resigned, as it faced its first major challenge with protests raging in Benghazi.

Angry protests in the eastern city of Benghazi -- the city which first rebelled against Muammar Qaddafi last year -- have dealt a severe blow to the NTC’s functioning. It led its deputy head Abdel Hafiz Ghoga to resign on Sunday, three days after furious students had manhandled him.

“We are not going to resign because it would lead to civil war,” NTC head Abdul Jalil said in an interview on the Libya al-Hurra television station late Sunday.

Abdul Jalil said some “hidden hands” were “pushing the demonstrators.”

“Who is pushing these sit-ins prompting protesters to invade the headquarters of the council with such savagery?” the new Libya’s leader said, referring to the attack on NTC offices in Benghazi Saturday, according to AFP.

Crowds of protesters threw several home-made grenades at and stormed the NTC offices with iron rods and stones before setting the building’s front ablaze, witnesses and council members said.

They even threw plastic bottles at Abdul Jalil, who is respected across Libya for his active role in the anti-Qaddafi rebellion. He had to be escorted out of the premises.

Benghazi protesters rampaged through the NTC’s offices, denouncing what they said is a “non-transparent” body. The protesters also accused the NTC of having marginalized some wounded veterans of the uprising that toppled Qaddafi in favor of people who were previously loyal to the slain dictator.

Defending the NTC and its work, Abdul Jalil paid tribute to Ghoga, despite the fury of the protesters.

“We must praise the role played by Abdel Hafiz Ghoga. He chose his country before himself,” Abdul Jalil said. His onetime deputy had supported the anti-Qaddafi revolution when others “were in Egypt or hidden elsewhere.”

Ghoga stepped down Sunday after about 4,000 students protested against him in Benghazi’s University of Ghar Yunis where he was manhandled on Thursday and had to flee from the campus to escape the angry mob.

Ghoga, who served as official spokesman for the NTC, had come under increasing opposition from Benghazi residents who accuse him of opportunism because of what they said was his belated defection from the Qaddafi regime.

“My resignation shows that the NTC is a tribune for fighting for a cause and not a governing body,” Ghoga told AFP.

“We are not looking for posts,” he said, adding that his decision was in the “best interests of Libya.”

He said “since the end of the war of liberation an air of hatred had begun to dominate which does not serve national interest.”

“To prove that we are with the interest (of Libya) and that we are a movement of struggle, we decided to give way to other patriots... the important thing is to preserve the NTC... we do not want our country sliding into chaos.”

The NTC had staunchly backed Ghoga after the Ghar Yunis incident, saying an attack on him represented “an attack on the sovereignty of the Libyan people and its glorious revolution.”

Protesters say the NTC has failed to live up to the aspirations of the revolt against Gaddafi, the most violent of the “Arab Spring” uprisings.

“We hoped for security, peace and transparency. We have seen the opposite,” said Miftah al-Rabia, 28, who was standing outside the NTC’s Benghazi headquarters on Sunday with a group of protesters, according to Reuters.

The violent protests against the NTC and Ghoga in particular even forced the council to meet at an undisclosed location on Sunday to discuss the nation’s new electoral law.

NTC member Abdul Razzak al-Arabi told AFP that the meeting had postponed the adoption of the law to Jan. 28. It was expected to scrap an article reserving 10 percent of the seats of the proposed 200-member constituent assembly for women, he added.

Several women’s bodies and rights groups had criticized the article, saying it does not go far enough in giving women a say in post-Qaddafi politics.

Arabi said the NTC had set up an election commission comprising 17 members, including lawyers, judges and human rights activists, to oversee future polls.

Abdul Jalil, meanwhile, said despite the protests he was “optimistic” about the future of Libya.

“Libya will see prosperity as she has not seen before. But we need help and support” from the people, he said.

The protests add to the list of challenges facing the NTC.

It is struggling to bring to heel dozens of armed militias who have carved the country into rival fiefdoms and are so far refusing to join a newly created national army.

Foreign states are worried about the NTC’s capacity to secure its borders against arms traffickers, al-Qaeda insurgents and migrants trying to reach Europe illegally.

The NTC was formed in the early days of the revolt against Qaddafi from a hastily-assembled group of lawyers, government officials who defected, Muslim clerics, tribal leaders and civil society activists.

At the time, Qaddafi’s troops were using automatic weapons to fire on protests in Benghazi and elsewhere, and there was little time to vet the members.

But nearly six months on from the moment the rebellion took control of the capital Tripoli, Libyans are started to question the counci’s legitimacy.

In particular, some people have cast doubt over the loyalties of former Qaddafi lieutenants who are now in the NTC. These include Abdul Jalil himself, who was justice minister under Qaddafi before defecting early in the uprising.

The council says it will dissolve itself once elections are held for a transitional national assembly. That vote is scheduled to take place in about six months.

“We still don't know who exactly is in the NTC. There is no transparency,” said Al-Rabia, a protester standing outside the building with a group of about 30 other men.

Another protester, 24-year-old Mohammed Mahmoud, said he fought against Qaddafi during the revolt and wounded his shoulder and hand.

“We fought on the front line and received injuries but we did not see the NTC with us,” he said. “I have one single question: Why has the NTC failed at everything except selling oil? We want to correct the path of the revolution.”

AGENCIES

Head of the Libyan land forces escapes an assassination attempt

Gunmen tried to kill head of the Libyan land forces, Khalifa Haftar, on Saturday in a bold daylight attack in Tripoil, setting off hours of intense gun battles along the main highway to the airport. Assailants in Tripoli also attacked one of Libya’s largest military bases.

The gunmen were believed to be from renegade groups of former rebel fighters. The violence deepens concerns about unity among the ex-rebels − many of whom remain heavily armed − while the police and military struggle to restructure their forces after the overthrow of Muammar Qaddafi.

Military officials said revolutionary fighters from the western mountain town of Zintan were likely behind the violence. They spoke on condition of anonymity because an investigation was still under way.

The violence began in the morning with the attack on Haftar’s convoy as it moved from his home in Tripoli to the military headquarters, said a military spokesman, Sgt. Abdel-Razik el-Shibahy.

A group of armed men at a mock checkpoint tried to stop them, but Haftar convoy swerved from the checkpoint and drove over a nearby bridge where they were shot at by two gunmen positioned on the other side, al-Shibahy said.

The military spokesman said no one in the convoy was harmed and soldiers arrested the two gunmen, who are in military custody for questioning.

Minutes later, a second army convoy heading down the same road was ambushed, apparently by the same group of gunmen at another phony checkpoint. Soldiers firing AK-47 rifles wounded two gunmen, al-Shibahy said.

His predecessor

Haftar’s predecessor, military chief Abdel-Fattah Younis, was killed in late July. At the time, rebels insisted it was the work of Qaddafi’s regime, but several witnesses said Younis was killed by fellow rebels.

Near the airport road, gunmen shot at soldiers stationed inside the Katiba Hamza military base, which is used to train Libya’s new army. No one was harmed in the shootout, al-Shibahy said.

By nightfall, gunbattles raged between gunmen and the National Army along Tripoli’s airport road, according to an Associated Press reporter near the scene. A solider who was involved in the battles, Saddam Fakry, said the army also shelled the gunmen’s positions.

Libya’s new leaders have tread cautiously in seeking to persuade former fighters to disarm, stopping short of demanding their weapons until the interim government can deliver on promises of jobs and training.

The night before the attack on his convoy, Haftar told The Associated Press in an interview that he is against forcing fighters to disarm.

“Collecting weapons has to be completely voluntary,” he said, adding that the transitional government should instead reward former rebels for their courage in joining the fight to oust Qaddafi.

“You know, fighters usually get medals of honor for their contribution, or a raise at their jobs,” Haftar said.

Earlier incident

Meanwhile, an insider source who kept his identity anonymous, told the Libyan al-Manara Media website that a military force belonging to Haftar stormed into the National Transitional Council’s headquarters in Rixos hotel in Tripoli on Tuesday

The source said that members of the transitional council were shocked especially that Haftar’s forces were heavily armed. He also said that one of Haftar’s men grabbed a mobile phone belonging to one of the hotel’s workers to stop any attempts to leak any pictures of what had happened.

According to the source, the transitional council kept around one $1 billion inside the hotel, and that Haftar demanded five percent of the money to be channeled to launch a national army for him to lead.

It is also an attempt for Haftar to pressure the interim government to appoint him as the chief of staff of the Libyan national army, the source added.

Libya’s new army post-Qaddafi has been recently formed and there is no official figure named as the head of the army yet.

Meanwhile, interim members described it as an attempted coup to bring the army to be in charge of the country.

Other sources said that Haftar’s forces came to offer their security to members of the transitional council instead of that of the rebels.

Haftar was one of Qaddafi’s army commanders in the Chadian–Libyan conflict, he fell out with the regime when Libya lost the war, and sought exile in the United States.

After falling out with the Qaddafi regime, Haftar set up his own militia financed by the CIA, according to the 2001 book Manipulations africaines, published by Le Monde diplomatique.

He came back to Libya to join rebels to oust the Qaddafi regime, and was appointed as the head of the land forces in the national army.

AP

Niger says asylum granted to Saadi Qaddafi; denies finding any surface-to-air missiles

Niger has decided to grant Muammar Qaddafi’s son Saadi asylum for humanitarian reasons, President Mahamadou Issoufou said Friday, adding that his brother Saif al-Islam is not in the country. He also denied that his country had seized the dangerous surface-to-air missiles left behind by Qaddafi’s retreating army.

“We have agreed on agreed on granting asylum on Saadi Qaddafi for humanitarian reasons,” Issoufou told a news conference at the end of a two-day visit to South Africa.

“Saif al-Islam is not in Niger. I would have to consider what to do if he comes,” he said, according to AFP.

“We will deal with issues in terms of law and democracy and international agreements.”

Saadi Qaddafi, 38, fled Libya across its southern frontier to Niger in August during the fall of Tripoli that ended his authoritarian father’s 42-year regime.

Libya’s new leadership wants Saadi to stand trial for crimes allegedly committed while heading the country’s football federation.

Niger’s Prime Minister Brigi Rafini said in September that there was “no question” of extraditing Saadi, at least until he could be assured of a fair trial in Libya.

Saif al-Islam, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court in relation to crimes against humanity allegedly committed during the crackdown against Libyan protests.

No dangerous surface-to-air missiles left behind

Meanwhile, Niger’s minister of defense denied on Friday that his country had seized the dangerous surface-to-air missiles left behind by Qaddafi’s retreating army, which military experts now fear are being sold to terrorist organizations that operate in the Sahel.

“We have not found any surface-to-air missiles yet,” Minister of Defense Mahamadou Karidio told The Associated Press by telephone from Niamey, the capital of landlocked Niger.

Niger is one of the world’s poorest countries which shares a massive border with Libya. It is through this ungoverned desert border that three of Qaddafi’s generals, one of his sons and his chief of intelligence fled in convoys escorted by ethnic Tuaregs, the traditional inhabitants of the Sahara who fought alongside Qaddafi.

The stretch of desert separating Libya from Niger and Mali has also been used by arms smugglers and drug traffickers for decades.

On Sunday, Niger’s military intercepted a convoy and found two 14.5 mm and four 12.7 mm machine guns, two ML-49 and three M-80 machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, and belts of ammunition, Karidio said. The army also found a Thuraya satellite phone and seized six Toyota pickup trucks, and took hold of several prisoners.

“What we have found are caliber 14.5-mm machine guns, and also 12.7. And we found 14.5 and 12.7 cassettes of ammunition on belts,” Karidio said.

Military experts are concerned about Qaddafi’s stockpile of SA-7 surface-to-air missiles, a shoulder-fired weapon that can be hidden in a PVC tube and looks like a rolled-up poster, said Africa expert Peter Pham, the director of the Michael S. Ansari Africa Center.

Not unlike the ‘stinger’ missiles that allowed the Afghans to take down Soviet planes, the SA-7s usually have an infrared red sensor on them, allowing fighters to aim them in the general direction of a passing plane. The weapon is powerful enough to take down a commercial jet in mid-flight.

Experts worry that the hundreds of surface-to-air missiles left behind by Qaddafi’s fleeing military are being sold to terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, al-Qaeda’s affiliate in North Africa.

The President of neighboring Chad told French weekly Jeune Afrique in March that he was “100 percent sure” that the al-Qaeda affiliate which operates in Niger, Mali, Mauritania and Algeria, had gotten their hands on Qaddafi’s surface-to-air missiles.

Meanwhile, Niger’s president said that his army has clashed repeatedly with arms traffickers from neighboring Libya, underlining the security threat posed by the fall of Qaddafi’s regime.

“We are very worried because this crisis will destabilize the whole region,” President Issoufou told reporters during a visit to South Africa, AP reported.

Issoufou said Niger and its West African neighbors already face violence from Islamist extremists, and now he’s also worried about armed Qaddafi loyalists at large.

Agencies

Venezuela’s Chavez says Muammar Qaddafi is ‘martyr’

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Thursday expressed anger over the death of Muammar Qaddafi, calling it an “outrage” and saying the ousted Libyan strongman was a “martyr.”

“Sadly the death of Qaddafi has been confirmed,” said Chavez, who had just returned to Venezuela from cancer treatment in Cuba.

“They assassinated him. It is another outrage,” the Venezuelan leader told reporters in the town of La Grita.

“We shall remember Qaddafi our whole lives as a great fighter, a revolutionary and a martyr,” he said.
Chavez had defended Qaddafi since the start of the uprising against the Libyan leader’s regime in February, and accused NATO of using the conflict to gain control over Libya’s oil.

“The saddest thing is that in its quest to dominate the world, the empire and its allies are setting it on fire,” Chavez said, referring to the United States by his preferred nickname.

Chavez has refused to recognize the new Libyan regime, and has ridiculed Libya’s new U.N. representative as a “puppet” and a “dummy.”

AFP

Qaddafi warns developing world of similar fate; deposed leader believed to be in south

Deposed leader Muammar Qaddafi said leaders of the developing world who recognized Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC) that ousted him with the aid of NATO firepower would suffer a similar fate.

“If the power of (international) fleets give legitimacy, then let the rulers in the Third World be ready,” he said in an apparent reference to NATO’s military support for NTC forces.

He made the comments in an audio recording obtained by Reuters on Thursday from Syria-based Arrai television. It was not clear when the message was recorded.

“To those who recognize this council, be ready for the creation of transitional councils imposed by the power of fleets to replace you one by one from now on,” he said.

Qaddafi also called on Libyans to take to the streets, saying conditions in Libya were “unbearable.”

“I urge all Libyan people to go out and march in their millions in all the squares, in all the cities and villages and oases,” Qaddafi said.

“Go peacefully ... be courageous, rise up, go to the streets, raise our green flags to the skies,” he added.

Qaddafi has been on the run since NTC forces captured the Libyan capital Tripoli on Aug. 23. Despite several leads as to his whereabouts, he has eluded capture, along with two prominent sons.

The NTC has mounted a manhunt to find Qaddafi that is focusing on the Sahara desert near the borders with Niger and Algeria.

Qaddafi said the NTC was illegitimate. “How did it get its legitimacy? Did the Libyan people elect them? Did the Libyan people appoint them?”

Arrai TV broadcast Qaddafi’s last speech on Sept. 20.

The de facto prime minister, meanwhile, said that Qaddafi was hiding in southern Libya under the protection of tribes, crossing occasionally into Niger, but transitional government forces expect to pinpoint his whereabouts soon.

“The latest report is that he is in southern Libya under the protection of the Tuareg tribe, and from time to time crosses into Niger,” Mahmoud Jibril told Reuters during a visit to Baghdad.

“Security is the most important thing for him. To specify where he is exactly even for ten hours is very difficult. I hope within the coming days we will be able to confirm where he is located exactly,” he said.

Jibril said he was in Iraq to discuss re-establishing diplomatic relations between Tripoli and Baghdad and to ask for the fellow OPEC country’s help in oil development.

The NTC has mounted a manhunt for Gaddafi that focuses on the Sahara desert near the borders with Niger and Algeria.

Reuters

Snipers halt NTC’s advance in Sirte; rebels deny capture of Qaddafi’s spokesman

Fighters for Libya’s new rulers have been forced to regroup on the edge of Sirte, after pro-Qaddafi snipers halted a two-week old assault on the ousted despot’s hometown.

And in Bani Walid, the only other stronghold of forces loyal to Muammar Qaddafi, the National Transitional Council’s (NTC) fighters appeared to have opened another front on Friday.

NTC abuse of prisoners

The detainees reported mistreatment in six facilities, including beatings and the use of electric shock, and some of them showed scars to support the claims. None had been brought before a judge

HRW

As the fighting raged, Human Rights Watch called on the NTC to stop militia groups from making arbitrary arrests and abusing prisoners, including with beatings and electric shocks.

The New York-based group said it had visited 20 detention facilities in Tripoli and interviewed 53 detainees.

“The detainees reported mistreatment in six facilities, including beatings and the use of electric shock, and some of them showed scars to support the claims. None had been brought before a judge,” HRW said in a statement.

“After all that Libyans suffered in Muammar Qaddafi’s jails, it’s disheartening that some of the new authorities are subjecting detainees to arbitrary arrest and beatings today,” Joe Stork, HRW’s deputy Middle East and North Africa director, said in the statement.

As the NTC forces faced stiff resistance on the battlefield Friday, doubts grew that Qaddafi’s vocal spokesman Mussa Ibrahim had been captured after reports he had been seized while disguised as a woman, complete with veil.

NTC commanders said late Thursday they received reports from fighters on the ground that Ibrahim had been seized outside Sirte, where his loyalists have been under siege for the past week.

But the fighters’ high command in Libya’s third-largest city Misrata said it had been informed Ibrahim had not been captured, although members of his family were.

AFP correspondents on fronts east and west of Sirte said the former rebels had made no advances.

In the fiercest fighting for days, the NTC fighters pounded Sirte with 106mm anti-tank guns, rocket-launchers and machine guns, while Qaddafi loyalists hit back with mortar, machine-gun and sniper fire.

One NTC fighter was killed and 11 wounded, a medic said, as NATO warplanes and drones flew overhead without striking.

NTC fighters held the line on the eastern outskirts of the city amid some sporadic artillery shelling and gunfire, an AFP correspondent said.

“If we want we can destroy Sirte completely. We have enough ammunition and shells to fight for 10 years,” said Nasser Obeidi, leader of a group operating four Russian-built 130mm artillery cannon.

“But we are allowing civilians to leave the city before we start a big assault. People are leaving the city daily, sometimes in large numbers,” he told AFP.

Fleeing residents

You know, with the snipers. You can't find them. Yesterday there was no ammunition. It was finished. I swear to God. If the Qaddafi people knew that they would have come and taken Sirte from us

Rami Moftah, a rebel

The prolonged battle for Qaddafi’s hometown, besieged from three fronts, has raised concern for civilians trapped inside the city of about 100,000 people.

Cars streamed out of Sirte from the early hours and into the afternoon on Friday. Shelling and tank fire continued from both sides on the eastern and western fronts, black smoke rose from the centre of town and NATO planes flew overhead.

Medical workers at a field hospital near Sirte said four fighters with the interim authorities were killed by pro-Gaddafi snipers and 20 others were wounded.

A Reuters team on the edge of Sirte heard five huge explosions just before sundown. It was not immediately clear what had caused the explosions.

Fighting was particularly heavy near a roundabout on the eastern outskirts of the city, where forces of the National Transitional Council (NTC) have been pinned down for five days.

Some fighters again fled the frontline under the fire.

“It’s difficult, difficult," said anti-Qaddafi fighter Rami Moftah. “You know, with the snipers. You can't find them. Yesterday there was no ammunition. It was finished. I swear to God. If the Qaddafi people knew that they would have come and taken Sirte from us.”
Several residents told Reuters they were leaving Sirte because they had not eaten for days.

“I am not scared. I am hungry,” said Ghazi Abdul-Wahab, a Syrian who has lived in the town for 40 years.

Abdul-Wahab said he had been sleeping in the streets with his family after a NATO air strike hit a building next to his house, making him fear his home could also be struck.

“People inside are scared about their houses. People want to protect their houses,” he said, adding that some locals may fight because they have heard the NTC wants to kill them.

At least 15 civilian cars were seen leaving Sirte’s eastern gate, while about 1,000 evacuees were registered 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of the city, NTC officials said, adding they were detained 15 suspected Qaddafi supporters.

Benghazi

In Benghazi, Red Cross official Abdelhamid al-Mendi said more than 50,000 Libyans have fled their homes since the war began in February.

“The numbers of impressive, but the situation is under control, thanks to the efforts of the Libyan Red Crescent, aid from the international Red Cross” and other organizations.

Obeidi acknowledged, however, that Qaddafi forces had deployed snipers in the city which was troubling the fighters.

But a former colonel in Qaddafi’s army who is now an NTC fighter supervising cannon outside Sirte said his forces were determined to win.

In Bani Walid, a heavy barrage of rockets and artillery hit NTC positions from the west, joining other fire that has been coming for days from the south.

“Today is the most intense attack we have faced since we came here,” said NTC field commander Abdelbaset Tarhauni, as NATO fighter jets buzzed overhead.

An AFP correspondent saw one dead and six wounded NTC fighters from the attacks.

Agencies

Rebels urge more NATO strikes after heavy losses in Qaddafi’s hometown

Anti-Qaddafi forces on Wednesday urged NATO to intensify its air war as they took heavy losses in a push on the ousted Libyan despot’s birthplace, Sirte, and his other remaining bastion, Bani Walid.

Wednesday’s fighting was so intense that the fighters of the National Transitional Council (NTC), Libya’s interim ruling body, had to retreat three kilometers (two miles) outside the eastern edge of Muammar Qaddafi’s hometown.

“There were heavy clashes today. Our men came under heavy attack,” said the commander, who asked not to be named.

It is becoming a day-to-day fight. One day we are winning, the next day they are winning

An NTC commander

“Fighting was particularly intense around the port and on the eastern outskirts of Sirte.”

NTC fighters captured the port of Sirte, in the east of the city, two days ago, marking a major victory for them in the battle for the control of Qaddafi’s bastion.

It was unclear late Wednesday whether the port was still under the control of the fighters, but the commander said the NTC troops were still present there.

“It is becoming a day-to-day fight. One day we are winning, the next day they are winning,” he said.

While the fugitive Qaddafi’s whereabouts remain unknown, Libya’s defense ministry spokesman said one of the deposed leader's sons, Seif al-Islam, was in Bani Walid and other, Mutassim, in Sirte.

Along with his father and former intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi, Seif is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity.

NTC commander's death

NATO is here but is not doing enough. They take out the rocket launchers firing at us, but they are immediately replaced. We need more help from NATO

Captain Walid Khaimej

Among those killed in the rocket barrage at Bani Walid was senior commander Daou al-Salhine al-Jadak, whose car was struck by a rocket as he headed towards the front, NTC chief negotiator Abdullah Kenshil told AFP.

Jadak, one of the highest ranking NTC commanders on that front, who hailed from the town, told AFP two days before his death that he had been imprisoned for more than 18 years for helping organise a 1993 rebellion.

An AFP correspondent said that despite heavy use of tanks, rocket launchers and artillery, the NTC forces had not advanced from positions held for the past few days in the desert town 170 kilometers (100 miles) southeast of Tripoli.

“There is always incoming missile and artillery fire. We are returning fire with heavy weapons but we are not sending in infantry. We are waiting for reinforcements,” Captain Walid Khaimej told AFP.

“NATO is here but is not doing enough. They take out the rocket launchers firing at us, but they are immediately replaced. We need more help from NATO.”

Under a U.N. mandate, the alliance has been giving air support to the popular revolt that erupted in February and forced Qaddafi out of Tripoli and into hiding last month.

Its daily operational updates suggest it has scaled down the intensity of its strikes: they report attacks on targets in Bani Walid on just one of the past three days.

But Colonel Roland Lavoie, the air campaign's military spokesman, said: “NATO has not reduced its activity in Libya,” noting alliance aircraft had conducted at least 100 sorties per day in the past few days.

“The number of strikes depends on the danger against the civilian population, in conformity with our mandate,” Lavoie told AFP in an email.

In a separate incident, three fighters of Libya’s new rulers were killed in “friendly fire” Wednesday when they were shelled by a tank positioned behind them at the frontline in eastern Sirte, he added.

Thousands of fearful civilians have been fleeing Sirte, 360 kilometers east of Tripoli, as the new regime's forces close in from the east, south and west.

Meanwhile, interim justice minister Mohammed al-Alagi told reporters in Tripoli that Libya’s new authorities were ready to assist if asked to provide people for questioning over the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.

Prosecutors in Scotland said Monday they have formally asked the NTC to help the probe into the attack on Pan Am flight 103, which killed 270 people when it exploded over the Scottish town of Lockerbie on December 21, 1988.

AFP

Qaddafi forces score Sirte’s port but are forced out from Bani Walid

Anti-Qaddafi forces overran Sirte’s port on Tuesday, but in the other stronghold of supporters of the ousted Libyan leader, the new regime’s fighters were beaten back by fierce resistance.

On the political front, a member of Libya’s new ruling National Transitional Council (NTC) said formation of a transitional government, already delayed by disputes over power-sharing, had been postponed until they had won control of the entire country.

In a radio message from the Syria-based al-Rai TV, Muammar Qaddafi hailed the resistance put up in Bani Walid, where the NTC admitted they had been forced back by forces loyal to the toppled strongman.

Fleeing civilians

They are using heavy weapons but we are not, as we want to cause minimum damage to civilians

NTC fighter Fateh Marimri

Capturing the port at Sirte marked a key victory in the battle for control of Qaddafi’s birthplace, but intense fighting carried on inside the city.

Taking Sirte, 450 km east of Tripoli, would bring Libya’s new rulers closer to gaining control of the whole country, something still eluding them more than a month after their fighters seized the capital.

Hundreds of fearful civilians have fled Sirte, a sprawling Mediterranean city, as the new regime’s forces close in from east, south and west.

NTC fighter Fateh Marimri, who drove out of Sirte’s eastern gate in what he said was a captured Qaddafi 4X4, reported fierce fighting around the Mahari Hotel.

“They are using heavy weapons but we are not, as we want to cause minimum damage to civilians,” Marimri told AFP.

“They are now fighting us in civilian clothes and there are African mercenaries everywhere in Sirte.”

Humanitarian crisis in Sirte

There’s no food, no electricity; we were eating just bread

Saraj al-Tuweish, a civilian

The port and university lie on the northeastern side of Sirte but Qaddafi’s compound and military bunkers lie in the center and NTC fighters said they expected the fiercest resistance there.

Fleeing residents said Qaddafi’s forces had been trying to prevent people from leaving.

"There’s no food, no electricity; we were eating just bread," Saraj al-Tuweish, who got out with his extended family on Tuesday, told AFP.

"I've been trying for 10 days to get out and every time the army forced us back.

"We would go the checkpoint and they would refuse, they would shoot in the air. Today we used a dirt road early in the morning and we managed to escape."

The lack of clean drinking water has triggered an epidemic of water-borne diseases. An AFP correspondent saw dozens of children being treated at a clinic in the town of Harawa, 40 kilometers east of Sirte.

We have medicines but no nurses to treat the constant flow of patients, mainly children, suffering from vomiting and gastrointestinal diseases

Dr Valentina Rybakova

"We have medicines but no nurses to treat the constant flow of patients, mainly children, suffering from vomiting and gastrointestinal diseases," said Dr Valentina Rybakova, a Ukrainian working in Libya for eight years.

“This is a big humanitarian crisis. We are trying to get help from everybody but the main problem is that these people have no access to clean drinking water."

As the fighting raged in Sirte, a group of fighters from the Zintan Brigade discovered a huge weapons cache in a village south of the city, one of them told AFP.

"The stock is massive. Around 100 houses in the village were full of all kinds of ammunition," said Maatiz Saad.

"The stock is so big that we would need hundreds of pickup trucks to load it and move it out. Ammunition was stored even in the village hospital. There are bullets for all kinds of guns and hundreds of rockets."

Qaddafi’s radio message

Al-Rai TV station has been broadcasting audio speeches by Qaddafi, reported on Tuesday that the toppled leader had addressed his supporters and urged them to fight in a speech broadcast on a local radio station in Bani Walid.

“You should know that I am on the ground with you,” he said. “Through your jihad, you are imitating the exploits of your ancestors.”

“Heroes have resisted and fallen as martyrs and we too are awaiting martyrdom,” Qaddafi said.

The report by Arrai television could not be independently verified.

Arrai also broadcast footage of what it said was Qaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam, dated Sept. 20, rallying his forces at an unidentified location.

“This land is the land of your forefathers. Don't hand it over,” Saif al-Islam, shouted to a crowd of followers.

NTC forces said the fierce resistance of Qaddafi loyalists had stalled their offensive in Bani Walid.

"NTC fighters pulled out from some areas they control in Bani Walid due to the intensity of fire,” said Abdallah Kenshil, the new government’s chief negotiator in abortive efforts to broker the town's surrender.

In Benghazi, NTC member Mustafa al-Huni said Libya’s new rulers had decided to postpone the formation of a transitional government until they had won control of the entire country.

NATO meanwhile urged Libya's new regime to make plans to destroy stockpiles of chemical weapons and nuclear-related agents amassed by Qaddafi. Washington said Tuesday it was working closely with the new regime to secure all arms stockpiles.

In a letter to the U.N. General Assembly meanwhile, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a staunch supporter of Qaddafi, said the Libyan conflict marked "a new cycle of colonial wars... with the sinister goal of refreshing the capitalist global system."

Meanwhile, Libya’s transitional government delivered 20 million dinars ($16 million) Tuesday to Sabha, a remote southern city beset by Qaddafi loyalists, hoping to bolster support for revolutionary forces.
Al Arabiya