Libyan Civil War Megathread

[derspiess]

NTC leader: 'Free elections in eight months'

Will the civil war happen before or after these elections.

Before, after, and during would be my guess.

[Caliga]

 

[MadImmortalMan]

Some of their claims have turned out to be crap, but hey.

[The Brain]

Apartments.

[Ed Anger]

Libyan Rebels Rebels Won't Deport Lockerbie Bomber

TRIPOLI, Libya—The Libyan rebel government won't deport the man convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, its justice minister said.

Associated Press

In this Aug. 20, 2009 file photo, Libyan Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, who was found guilty of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, gestures on his arrival in Tripoli, Libya. The Libyan rebels' interim government says it will not deport the man convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.


New York senators last week asked the Libyan national transitional government to hold Abdel-Baset al-Megrahi fully accountable for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103, which killed 270 people.

But the transitional government's justice minister, Mohammed al-Alagi, said Sunday in Tripoli that the request by American senators had "no meaning" because Mr. Megrahi had already been tried and convicted.

"We will not hand over any Libyan citizen. It was Gadhafi who handed over Libyan citizens," he said, referring to the government's decision to turn Mr. Megrahi over to a Scottish court for trial.

The Scottish government released Mr. Megrahi in 2009, saying it believed he would soon die of cancer. He was greeted as a hero in his native Libya and met with Col. Moammar Gadhafi.

New York Senator Charles Schumer had encouraged the new Libyan leadership to hold Mr. Megrahi accountable. "A new Libya can send a strong statement to the world by declaring it will no longer be a haven for this convicted terrorist," he said.

Scottish officials overseeing Mr. Megrahi's parole have said they want to contact him now that the fighting between Libyan forces and rebels has reached Tripoli.

Mr. Megrahi is the only person convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, Britain's worst terrorist attack. His release after serving eight years of a life sentence infuriated the families of many victims, who suspected Britain's real motive was to improve relations with oil-rich Libya.

Mr. Megrahi's current whereabouts are unknown, and on Saturday no one answered the door of his villa, hidden behind high walls in an upscale Tripoli neighborhood. A neighbor, Yousef Mohammed, said he saw Mr. Megrahi's son in the street on Friday and assumed the family hadn't left the area.

No private guards or rebel fighters were visible in the quiet side street of walled villas. The neighbor, said he often saw Mr. Megrahi in the neighborhood. "This guy is sick. All the time, I saw him" in the heelchair, he said.

Mr. Mohammed said that he and other neighbors didn't believe Mr. Megrahi was involved in the Lockerbie bombing and that the family was well liked in the neighborhood.

lolz.

[Razgovory]

The Serbs said the same thing about Slobodon.  They aren't going to give him away.  I suspect they will be willing to sell him though.  They better hurry up, before the guy drops dead though.

[Admiral Yi]

I wish poor Chuck would get over his pathological fear of speaking to the press.

[Ed Anger]

The Serbs said the same thing about Slobodon.  They aren't going to give him away.  I suspect they will be willing to sell him though.  They better hurry up, before the guy drops dead though.

Obama paid enough already. We should steal their frozen assets as compensation.

[CountDeMoney]

Mr. Mohammed said that he and other neighbors didn't believe Mr. Megrahi was involved in the Lockerbie bombing and that the family was well liked in the neighborhood.

lolz.
[/quote]

Tribal dune coons will be tribal dune coons, no matter who's in charge.

[mongers]

Well I'm atomistic that they'll pull through.

If even a small proportion of the atrocity stories turn out to be true, then I think Cameron and Sarkozy  were right to intervene when they did to stop war crimes being committed in Benghazi.


That's not to say the rebels have committed summary executions, these terrible things happen in civil wars, but it seems to be the magnitude of, and deliberated nature of what the pro-Gaddafi forces have done to civilians in recent days, marks the regime out as worst offender.

[jimmy olsen]

Terrible, but not surprising

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/28/evidence-gaddafi-men-bloody-revenge

...Marwan said that in the chaotic final hours of the war, Gaddafi loyalists had conducted bloody reprisals against the local civilian population.

He said he found three bodies of prisoners who had been locked in a shipping container; all had suffocated. Another body washed up on the beach. The victim had his hands tied, and had been shot.

"Some of the people here are just children. What we need to do now is rehabilitate them, teach them right from wrong," Marwan said.

There are several other haunting massacre sites across Tripoli; bringing the perpetrators to justice is an almost impossible task.

Many were executed last Sunday or Monday as the rebels advanced into the capital and an uprising began inside it. Gaddafi loyalists shot 17 detainees held in an internal security building in the Gargur area. The victims were killed minutes before they would have been freed.

One survivor, Osama al-Swayi, told Human Rights Watch that 25 people had been held inside the prison. He said he heard the rebels shouting and expected to be released; his captors, however, ordered him and the others out of their cells and told them to lie on the floor. "I saw three dark men. One soldier gave the order: 'Just finish them off.' But I don't know who it was. There were three or four who fired at us ... I was near the corner and got hit in the right hand, the right foot, and the right shoulder. In one instant they finished off all the people with me," he said.

Another 18 bodies were found rotting in a dry riverbed between Gargur and Gaddafi's shattered compound at Bab al-Aziziya – further evidence of apparent war crimes. Some 50 charred bodies were also discovered in a military camp in Tripoli held by Gaddafi's supporters.

"The evidence we have been able to gather so far strongly suggests that Gaddafi government forces went on a spate of arbitrary killing as Tripoli was falling," Sarah Leah Whitson, Human Rights Watch's North Africa director, said in a statement.

She added: "These incidents, which may represent only a fraction of the total, raise grave questions about the conduct of Gaddafi forces ... If they are proven to be extrajudicial killings they are serious war crimes and those responsible should be brought to justice."

[jimmy olsen]

Given the population of the country, 50,000 is a larger number than I anticipated though

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8728537/Libya-Up-to-50000-people-imprisoned-by-Gaddafi-regime-are-missing-rebels-claim.html

Libya: Up to 50,000 people imprisoned by Gaddafi regime are missing, rebels claim
Up to 50,000 people imprisoned by the Gaddafi regime are missing, it has emerged, as evidence mounts of war crimes committed by the former leader's retreating soldiers.

By Gordon Rayner, Chief Reporter

9:55PM BST 28 Aug 2011

Rebel leaders estimate that 60,000 opponents of the ousted dictator have been jailed since the insurgency began in February, but with most of Libya now rebel hands, only 11,000 have been freed.

Mass executions of opposition forces are being uncovered on a daily basis, and human rights groups fear the total number of prisoners murdered by the retreating loyalists, already in the scores, could escalate sharply.

Over the weekend the charred remains of at least 53 people were found in a warehouse where they appeared to have been executed by the Khamis Brigade, Libya's most feared military unit. A further 18 bodies were discovered decomposing in a nearby ditch by a Daily Telegraph reporter yesterday.

Col Ahmed Omar Bani, a rebel military leader, said: "The number of people arrested over the past months is estimated at between 57,000 and 60,000.

"Between 10,000 and 11,000 prisoners have been freed up until now ... so where are the others?"

One theory is that the prisoners are being held in underground bunkers which have not yet been discovered, but Col Bani said it would be "catastrophic" if they had been killed.

Many of those who were imprisoned were captured rebel fighters, but thousands more were civilians suspected of supporting the revolution who were rounded up in a series of security crackdowns.

Human Rights Watch said it had gathered evidence that pro-Gaddafi forces had carried out "arbitrary executions of dozens of civilians" before Tripoli fell to the rebels.

One man who said three of his sons were among those executed in the Khamis Brigade warehouse told the BBC that up to 150 civilians were packed into the building, guarded by mercenaries.

"They promised them water at sunset but came with guns instead," he said. "They started shooting, then they threw in hand grenades, three of them."

Eyewitness accounts of loyalists opening fire on prisoners is likely to be presented to the International Criminal Court if and when members of the Gaddafi member are captured and sent there for war crimes trials.

Meanwhile Gaddafi's spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, said the fugitive dictator was willing to take part in negotiations for the formation of a transitional government.

The offer was dismissed as "delusional" by William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, while Libya's National Transitional Council dismissed the suggestion of talks as "a daydream of what remains of the dictatorship".

Mahmoud Shammam, the NTC's information minister, said: "I would like to state very clearly, we don't recognize them. We are looking at them as criminals. We are going to arrest them very soon."

The whereabouts of Gaddafi and his family are still unknown, though Libya is filled with rumours that they have fled to Zimbabwe, Algeria or even Europe.

The coastal town of Bin Jawwad, around 60 miles east of Sirte, was the latest to fall to the opposition yesterday, and with loyalist forces almost defeated in Tripoli, the rebels were massing on the outskirts of Sirte, Gaddafi's home town and his main remaining stronghold, to begin a ground assault following a weekend of bombardment by Nato air strikes.

One of the biggest problems facing the interim government is a shortage of food, water and electricity supplies in Tripoli.

Usama el-Abed, the deputy leader of the new city council, said that between 60 and 70 per cent of the capital's residents do not have enough water, but he added that the shortages are due to technical problems, which he hopes will soon be fixed, not sabotage by loyalist forces.

The United Nations is preparing to ship in baby food, bottled water and medicine, while World Health Organization officials are on Malta to arrange aid shipments which should arrive in Libya later this week.

But there were also encouraging signs of normality beginning to return to the streets of Tripoli, with traffic policemen in their distinctive white uniforms returning to duty.

One of the officers, Abu Bakr al-Murbet, said: "Today is the first day that we started working. Things are under control and running smoothly."

The rebel-controlled AGOCO oil company said it would re-start production at its Sarir and Mesla fields in a fortnight and expected to begin exports by the end of September, providing much-needed funds for the interim government.

[CountDeMoney]

Given the population of the country, 50,000 is a larger number than I anticipated though

Where'd you anticipate it from, your think tank command center?

[Berkut]

It is nice to see something turn out the way we hoped. It is far from perfect, but it could never have happened at all without US and European intervention.

Now we have to figure out how to help make an oil rich country into a functioning democracy, or something close to it. The track record is pretty terrible.

[DGuller]

Now, if those NATO warplanes could only bomb Assad's compound on their way home.  It would be a terrible idea for NATO to get involved in Syria, but it would be a good idea nonetheless.