Once upon a time in Libya, people didn’t exist simply to pay the bills – there were no rental costs, there were no electricity and utilities costs, education and medical care was free. For a number of decades Libya was a flourishing socialist state.
A “leader” is not one who spends the most on an election campaign and wins. A leader is not one who comes into office for 4 years, to look important. A leader is not one who is cleared of any responsibility for the reforms or policies that were pushed through under their administration.
In 1986, an attempt to assassinate Gaddafi failed. In 1992, sanctions against Libya were introduced. We know today that sanctions are rarely about taking the moral high ground – they are about asserting force, attacking revenue streams – in this case, oil – they are about freezing financial assets.
As Libya’s economy was so dependent on oil – the only option was to mend ties with the West, agreeing to dismantle the majority of Libya’s armed forces. Gaddafi wrapped up his military programmes and the oil trade resumed. “The only mistake I made was trusting the Westerners” – Gaddafi is quoted as saying.
Sarkozy was the first to launch a blow against Gaddafi; the very man who had funded him, helping him to become the President of France. It is said that the Sarkozy campaign received around 50 million Euros from Gaddafi in 2007.
Having orchestrated the government coup, the NATO coalition killed the Colonel and plunged the country into chaos. The authoritarian leader once ruled Libya’s many clans “with an iron fist” - today, inter-ethnic conflict prevails and the country is in shambles.
Gaddafi had warned that Libya is the only real gatekeeper of refugees between Africa and Europe. Without a hard stance on human trafficking, Gaddafi prophesised that “the European continent will turn black.” The Libyan government used to patrol its coasts, often dealing to traffickers harshly. Gaddafi was criticised for this by predominantly Human Rights NGOS. Today, traffickers do business uninterrupted, and can make up to a million dollars per boat load of refugees into Europe.
[Caution: The video gets loud at 12.10 – but watch for the man who is probably NATO special forces. They should not have been in Libya at the time – this was against international law. As explained by Putin in the video, the Western coalition, using the appropriate tools of international law – the United Nations - imposed a No Fly Zone over Libya. In complete and blatant contravention, Gaddafi’s regiment was destroyed with the use of military drones.]
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2018 11:56 am Post subject:
Gaddafi's last words as he begged for mercy: 'What did I do to you?'
As National Transitional Council fighters fought their way into Sirte, radio intercepts spoke of 'an asset' in the besieged city. But no one knew until the final moments that the deposed dictator was within their grasp
Peter Beaumont and Chris Stephen
Sun 23 Oct 2011 00.05 BST First published on Sun 23 Oct 2011 00.05 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/23/gaddafi-last-words-begge d-mercy
Frame grab of a man purported to be former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi
Unconscious or already dead, former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is seen in this still image taken from video footage on 20 October, 2011. Photograph: Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters
Osama Swehli is bearded and wears his hair long, tied back in a thick ponytail. A soldier with the National Transitional Council’s fighters in the Libyan coastal city of Sirte, his English is fluent from his time living in west London.
Until the fall of Sirte – Muammar Gaddafi’s home city – Swehli was one of those who listened in to the radio frequencies of the pro-Gaddafi defenders of the besieged city.
Twelve days ago, the Observer encountered Swelhi at a mortar position in Sirte close to the city’s still contested television station at the edge of District Two where the Gaddafi loyalists would be trapped in a diminishing pocket. “We know some of the call signs of those inside,” Swehli explained, as men around him fired mortars into the areas still under Gaddafi control.
“We know that call sign ‘1’ refers to Mo’atissim Gaddafi and that ‘3’ refers to Mansour Dhao, who is commanding the defences. We have an inkling too about someone known as ‘2’, who we have not heard from for a while and who has either escaped or been killed.” That person, he believed, was Abdullah Senussi, Muammar Gaddafi’s intelligence chief.
“There is someone important in there, too,” Swelhi said, almost as an afterthought. “We have heard several times about something called ‘the asset’ which has been moved around the city.” Precisely who and what “the asset” was now is clear, even if most government fighters in and around the city could not believe it at the time. They were convinced that Libya’s former leader was in all likelihood hiding in the Sahara desert. But the asset was Gaddafi himself, who would die in the city, humiliated and bloody, begging his captors not to shoot him.
Intervening in Libya in 2011 was the right thing to do
Bernard-Henri Lévy
Read more
Already the last minutes in Gaddafi’s life have gained a grisly status. A spectacle of pain and humiliation, the end of the man who once styled himself the “king of the kings of Africa” has been told in snatches of mobile phone footage and blurry stills and contradictory statements. It is the longest of these fragments of a death – a jerky three minutes and more shot by fighter Ali Algadi on his iPhone and acquired by a website, the Global Post – that describes those moments in the most detail. A dazed and confused Gaddafi is led from the drain where he was captured, bleeding heavily from a deep wound on the left side of his head, from his arm, and, apparently, from other injuries to his neck and torso, staining his tunic red with blood. He is next seen on the ground, surrounded by men with weapons shouting “God is great” and firing in the air, before being lifted on to a pickup truck as men around him shout that the ruler for more than four decades should be “kept alive”.
There are other clips that complete much of the story: Gaddafi slumped on a pickup truck, face smeared with blood, apparently unconscious; Gaddafi shirtless and bloody on the ground surrounded by a mob; Gaddafi dead in the back of an ambulance. What is not there is the moment of his death – and how it happened – amid claims that he was killed by fighters with a shot to the head or stomach. By Friday, the day after he died, the body of the former dictator once so feared by his Libyan opponents was facing a final indignity – being stored on the floor of a room-sized freezer in Misrata usually used by restaurants and shops to keep perishable goods.
If there is an irony surrounding the death of Muammar Gaddafi, it is, perhaps, that he should have met his end in Sirte, a city more than any other associated with his rule. Gaddafi was not born in the city itself but in Bou Hadi, a sprawling, largely rural area of farms and large villas on the city’s outskirts.
It was Sirte that Gaddafi turned into his second capital – a former fishing village that he transformed into a place dedicated to both his own ego and his Third Revolutionary Theory, which he embodied in his Green Book that was taught in all Libyan schools. It was here, too, that the nomenklatura of Gaddafi’s regime had their second homes, sprawling villas in roads lined by eucalyptus trees, beside well-tended parks or overlooking the Mediterranean. And as the city fell, bit by bit over the weeks, its nature was revealed.
Abandoned houses reveal evidence of a city’s dedication to the Gaddafi cult. The Observer found a discarded mobile phone belonging, it seems clear, to a friend of Mo’atissim Gaddafi with pictures of parked white stretch limousines. There are pictures in the wealthier houses of Gaddafi with their occupants and stylised beaten copper images of Gaddafi on the walls. In one building, discovered by paramedics with the government forces, there is a trove of snapshots of Gaddafi and his sons. No wonder, perhaps, that this is where he chose to make his last stand.
The conflict around the city – during the long siege that began in September – reveals another nature of Sirte that must have made it attractive to Gaddafi. There are concrete walls within walls, compounds within those barriers, easy for Gaddafi and his protectors to defend. For those attacking Sirte they seemed for a while to be insuperable obstacles, not least the long barrier blocking access to the vast plaza of the Ouagoudougou conference centre.
During the weeks of the siege, life on the Gaddafi side of the lines in Sirte was thrown up in fragments, as disjointed as the last moments of Gaddafi’s life. There were small counter-attacks as the government forces crept forward, sometimes with rocket-propelled grenades that burst in the air or crashed into buildings. At other times machine-gun fire rattled into the bullet-pocked facades of offices, banks, schools or villas. But it was at night that Gaddafi’s forces were most active. They probed for weak positions. There were rumours of cars attempting to break out as the net closed.
Twice the Observer heard accounts of sightings of a car belonging to Mo’atissim Gaddafi. And with each day fighters posed the same question to which they could not supply an answer: why was it that those fighting on the Gaddafi side would not give up?
It is only now, after Gaddafi’s death, that any sketchy details of how he lived on the run have begun to emerge and, indeed, who was ultimately responsible for his safety. How Gaddafi came to be in Sirte – if not the reason that he went to one of the few locations still strongly supportive of him – remains murky. It is believed he fled from Tripoli shortly before it fell in August.
Motorcades carrying his wife and daughter to Algeria, and at least one other son to Niger, were spotted and the details leaked to the media by Nato. But the convoy carrying the dictator appears to have been missed. For his escape, Gaddafi had only one highway to travel – leading south of the capital to Beni Walid, 90 miles from Tripoli, the only highway not in rebel hands. A further detour would then have been necessary to avoid the rebels who were pushing in all directions out of the coastal city of Misrata, involving the convoy driving south-east, deeper into the Libyan desert, to the only traffic junction leading to Sirte at Waddan. This city, which fell to the rebels last month, was under 24-hour surveillance, according to the Pentagon, with drones keeping a close eye on the chemical weapons store five miles north of the city – home to Libya’s remaining stockpile of nine tonnes of mustard gas.
The rebels were deeply divided over where Gaddafi was. Some believed he had fled on one of the convoys carrying his wife and other sons that were spotted crossing south to Niger and east to Algeria. Misrata’s Shaheed brigade set up a special unit, suspecting that Gaddafi had been trapped in the capital by the speed of the rebel advance and for the last two months they have been carrying out raids in Tripoli hoping to find him.Still others thought he had driven to the fabled Bunker, a possibly mythical concrete complex constructed deep in the desert by the dictator for such an emergency. They were all wrong.
The truth of Gaddafi’s last movements has now been revealed by one of his inner circle who travelled with him on his last convoy: Mansour Dhao – number “3” in the pro-Gaddafi radio codes – a former commander of Libya’s Revolutionary Guards. And like Gaddafi, Dhao was not supposed to be in Sirte. Instead, it was widely reported that Dhao had fled Libya in a convoy of cars heading for Niger. But as the weeks of the siege of Sirte went on, it became clear this was not true. Even as it was revealed that Gaddafi and his fourth son Mo’atissim were dead, Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director of Human Rights Watch, stumbled across an injured Dhao in hospital, who confirmed he had been in the same convoy with Gaddafi when the former Libyan leader had been captured and his son killed.
A day later Dhao was interviewed by a television crew. What Dhao had to say contradicted not only some previous understanding of who was conducting the war on Gaddafi’s behalf but supplied the first description of how events had unfolded on Gaddafi’s last day. While it was believed that Gaddafi’s son Khamis had directed the regime’s attempts to put down the rebellion against it, Dhao insisted that it was Mo’atissim. Not only that, Mo’atissim took control of his father’s safety, making all the key decisions until the end. “He was in charge of everything,” said Dhao. His face heavily bruised, Dhao insisted it was Mo’atissim who organised each movement of Gaddafi as he was ferried between safe houses for the two months since the fall of Tripoli, moving location on average every four days before becoming trapped in Sirte, the monument that became his living mausoleum. Crucially, it has been Dhao who has provided the most compelling account yet offered of Gaddafi’s last day of life as he attempted to leave the last pocket in the shattered seaside District Two to reach the countryside beyond Sirte’s eastern boundary.
“Gaddafi did not run away, and he did not want to escape,” Dhao said. “We left the area where we were staying, to head towards Jarif, where he comes from. The rebels were surrounding the whole area, so we had heavy clashes with them and tried to escape towards Jarif and break out of the siege. After that the rebels surrounded us outside the area and prevented us from reaching the road to Jarif. They launched heavy raids on us which led to the destruction of the cars and the death of many individuals who were with us.
“After that we came out of the cars and split into several groups and we walked on foot, and I was with Gaddafi’s group that included Abu Bakr Yunis Jabr and his sons, and several volunteers and soldiers. I do not know what happened in the final moments, because I was unconscious after I was hit on my back.”
Some things do not ring true. According to Dhao, Gaddafi was moving from place to place and apartment to apartment until last week, but given the state of the siege of Sirte at that stage it seems unlikely that he could have entered the city from outside. The net was closing around the last loyalists who were squeezed into a pocket, surrounded on all sides, that was becoming ever smaller by the day.
Dhao made no mention either of the attack on the Gaddafi convoy by a US Predator drone and a French Rafale jet as it tried to break out of Sirte, attempting to drive three kilometres through hostile territory before it was scattered and brought to a halt by rebel fighters. It is possible that Dhao did not know that the first missiles to hit the Gaddafi convoy as it tried to flee came from the air.
What is clear is that at around 8am on Thursday, as National Transitional Council fighters launched a final assault to capture the last remaining buildings in Sirte, in an area about 700 metres square, the pro-Gaddafi forces had also readied a large convoy to break out.
But if Dhao was not aware of the air strike, then neither did Nato’s air controllers and liaison officers with the NTC fighters know that Gaddafi was in the convoy of 75 cars attempting to flee Sirte, a fact revealed in a lengthy statement on Friday.
“At the time of the strike,” a spokesman said, “Nato did not know that Gaddafi was in the convoy. These armed vehicles were leaving Sirte at high speed and were attempting to force their way around the outskirts of the city. The vehicles were carrying a substantial amount of weapons and ammunition, posing a significant threat to the local civilian population. The convoy was engaged by a Nato aircraft to reduce the threat.”
It was that air attack – which destroyed around a dozen cars – that dispersed the convoy into several groups, the largest numbering about 20. As NTC fighters descended on the fleeing groups of cars, some individuals jumped from their vehicles to escape on foot, among them Gaddafi and a group of guards. Finding a trail of blood, NTC fighters followed it to a sandy culvert with two storm drains. In one of these Gaddafi was hiding.
Accounts here differ. According to some fighters quoted after the event, he begged his captors not to shoot. Others say he asked of one: “What did I do to you?” But it is what happened next that is the source of controversy.
What is certain from several of the clips of video footage – most telling that shot by Ali Algadi – is that Gaddafi was dazed but still alive, although possibly already fatally wounded. The question is what happens between this and later images of a lifeless Gaddafi lying on the ground having his shirt stripped off and propped in the back of a pickup truck and the next sequence which shows him dead.
Here the accounts differ wildly. According to one fighter, caught on camera, he was shot in the stomach with a 9mm pistol. According to doctors not present at his capture and ambulance staff, Gaddafi was shot in the head. Some NTC officials have said anonymously he was “killed after capture”, while others have said he was killed after capture in a crossfire.
If there are suspicions that Gaddafi was summarily killed, already raised by Amnesty and UN human rights officials, they have been deepened by the death, too, of his son Mo’atissim in even more dubious circumstances. He was filmed alive but wounded smoking a cigarette and drinking from a bottle of water, before the announcement that he also had died.
On Saturday, in the cold storage unit where Gaddafi’s body was being stored as the family demanded its release for burial, those filing in to film his corpse were less bothered about how he had died than the legacy of his 42-year rule. “There’s something in our hearts we want to get out,” Abdullah al-Suweisi, 30, told Reuters as he waited. “It is the injustice of 40 years. There is hatred inside. We want to see him.”
Hillary’s emails truly are the gifts that keep on giving. While France led the proponents of the UN Security Council Resolution that would create a no-fly zone in Libya, it claimed that its primary concern was the protection of Libyan civilians (considering the current state of affairs alone, one must rethink the authenticity of this concern). As many “conspiracy theorists” will claim, one of the real reasons to go to Libya was Gaddafi’s planned gold dinar.
One of the 3,000 Hillary Clinton emails released by the State Department on New Year’s Eve (where real news is sent to die quietly) has revealed evidence that NATO’s plot to overthrow Gaddafi was fueled by first their desire to quash the gold-backed African currency, and second the Libyan oil reserves.
The email in question was sent to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by her unofficial adviser Sydney Blumenthal titled “France’s client and Qaddafi’s gold”.
From Foreign Policy Journal:
The email identifies French President Nicholas Sarkozy as leading the attack on Libya with five specific purposes in mind: to obtain Libyan oil, ensure French influence in the region, increase Sarkozy’s reputation domestically, assert French military power, and to prevent Gaddafi’s influence in what is considered “Francophone Africa.”
Most astounding is the lengthy section delineating the huge threat that Gaddafi’s gold and silver reserves, estimated at “143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver,” posed to the French franc (CFA) circulating as a prime African currency.
And here is the section of the email proving that NATO had ulterior motives for destroying Libya (UPDATE: The link has since been killed, but here is the web cache)[GR also removed]:
This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French franc (CFA).
(Source Comment: According to knowledgeable individuals this quantity of gold and silver is valued at more than $7 billion. French intelligence officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began, and this was one of the factors that influenced President Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to commit France to the attack on Libya. According to these individuals Sarkozy’s plans are driven by the following issues:
a. A desire to gain a greater share of Libya oil production,
b. Increase French influence in North Africa,
c. Improve his internal political situation in France,
d. Provide the French military with an opportunity to reassert its position in the world,
e. Address the concern of his advisors over Qaddafi’s long term plans to supplant France as the dominant power in Francophone Africa)
Ergo as soon as French intel discovered Gaddafi’s dinar plans, they decided to spearhead the campaign against him- having accumulated enough good reasons to take over.
Sadly, Gaddafi had earlier warned Europe (in a “prophetic” phone conversations with Blair) that his fall would prompt the rise of Islamic extremism in the West. A warning that would go unheeded; what’s a few lives in France and Libya, if the larger goal lines the pockets of politicians and the elite so much better after all?
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'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
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Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
1. There is no electricity bill in Libya; electricity is free for all its citizens.
2. There is no interest on loans, banks in Libya are state-owned and loans given to all its citizens at zero percent interest by law.
3. Having a home [is] considered a human right in Libya.
4. All newlyweds in Libya receive $60,000 dinar (U.S.$50,000) by the government to buy their first apartment so to help start up the family.
5. Education and medical treatments are free in Libya. Before Gaddafi only 25 percent of Libyans were literate. Today, the figure is 83 percent.
6. Should Libyans want to take up [a] farming career, they would receive farming land, a farm house, equipment, seeds and livestock to kickstart their farms are all for free.
7. If Libyans cannot find the education or medical facilities they need, the government funds them to go abroad, for it is not only paid for, but they get a U.S.$2,300/month for accommodation and car allowance.
8. If a Libyan buys a car, the government subsidizes 50 percent of the price.
9. The price of petrol in Libya is $0.14 per liter.
10. Libya has no external debt and its reserves amounting to $150 billion are now frozen globally.
11. If a Libyan is unable to get employment after graduation the state would pay the average salary of the profession, as if he or she is employed, until employment is found.
12. A portion of every Libyan oil sale is credited directly to the bank accounts of all Libyan citizens.
13. A mother who gives birth to a child receives U.S.$5,000.
14. 40 loaves of bread in Libya costs $0.15.
15. 25 percent of Libyans have a university degree.
As usual the terrorist militias in Tripoli, armed and funded by the illegitimate UN puppet government (GNA) and led by Fayez Serraj are the ones who attacked the Tajoura Migrant Center on the suburbs of Tripoli.
The tribes of Libya confirmed to me that Turkish Drones were used in the attack and that Turkey is arming, leading and funding the terrorist militias in Libya. This has been confirmed in the past few days by a statement of Erdagon (leader of Turkey) that Turkey will support the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood in Libya and will never allow the Libyans to have their country back. These are threats that should call upon the UN and the world to condemn Turkey for the destruction and war crimes they are committing in Libya.
By this time, it should be obvious to anyone following the Libya story that these types of crimes against humanity are false flags committed by the terrorists so they can point the finger at the Libyan National Army. The Libyan National Army is fighting to cleanse Libya of terrorist militias and to return Libya to a secure and sovereign state. The LNA gets no benefit from attacking the migrant centers, they are there to fight terrorists. The terrorist militias are known to use civilians as targets to scare the people and to attempt to blame the LNA for civilian attacks. This is the same dirty game played by the terrorists, mercenaries and rat traitors backed by NATO during the destruction of Libya in 2011.
The Libyan people fully understand these nasty games and will not be fooled by them. During the first few weeks after the LNA entered Tripoli to begin to cleanse the terrorist militias, the GNA (led by Serraj) terrorist militias fired rockets into civilian homes in Tripoli saying that it was the LNA (Libyan National Army) that did this criminal act. But they were soon shut down when even Africom stepped up and made a formal statement that the rockets had been fired from the Serraj terrorist militia camps as tracked by radar.
Vladimir Safronkov, Russia's deputy representative to the UN made the following statement regarding this attack and said : "The UN Security Council calls for the cessation of violence and the beginning of the political process in Libya. “But there are very few specifics. We were forced to recall in this situation that what is happening in Libya today is the result of an invasion (NATO military alliance into the Libyan Jamahiriya) of 2011". As Mr. Safronkov stated all of these problems in Libya are a result of the illegal invasion and destruction of Libya in 2011 by NATO and their 250,000 mercenaries. The UN calls for peace talks but everyone in the world understands that it is not possible to have peace talks with armed terrorists. They want to control and kill, there is only one solution that is to either kill them or throw them out of the country. After 8 years of suffering under these terrorists, the Libyans understand that there is only one road to taking their sovereignty back and that is the physical cleansing of the virus of terrorists that invaded their county.
The Libyan National Army is moving ahead but is being slowed by the constant arming of the terrorist militias by Turkey and Qatar. So, beware of any report slamming the LNA or saying they are not moving fast enough. These kind of reports are propaganda, understand that the LNA is moving ahead and they are cleaning the terrorists but they are forced to fight Turkey and Qatar too - both countries should be condemned internationally for their part in the continued destruction of Libya.
The Libyan National Army released a formal statement today regarding the migrant camp attack: Please find the link below:
Six years after Muammar Gaddafi’s death, his regime’s frozen funds in Brussels are generating tens of millions of euros in interest for mystery beneficiaries, despite international sanctions.
A POLITICO investigation into €16 billion of the Libyan dictator’s assets held in Belgium discovered big, regular outflows of stock dividends, bond income and interest payments. Legal documents, bank statements, emails and dozens of interviews point to a loophole in the sanctions regime.
While Gaddafi’s wealth is meant to be held in trust for the Libyan people until the war-shattered country stabilizes, interest payments flowed from frozen accounts in Brussels to bank accounts in Luxembourg and Bahrain over recent years, documents reviewed by POLITICO show. Belgium’s finance ministry says such payments are legal.
The interest goes to accounts belonging to the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA), the country’s sovereign fund, which was founded in 2006 to invest Gaddafi’s oil wealth. LIA now lies at the heart of a turf war between rival claimants in Libya, and it’s not clear who runs the agency or gets any of the funds sent to its accounts.
The Libyan Investment Authority’s funds are locked in at least four bank accounts managed by Euroclear, a financial institution headquartered in Brussels.
Following a NATO-led intervention that toppled Gaddafi, who died in October 2011, civil war has reduced Libya to a hydra-headed set of competing administrations governed by rival strongmen, in an environment still destabilized by Islamist militants.
Those divisions are mirrored in the battle to control LIA. Two groups purport to be the official government: a U.N.-backed one in Tripoli, and another in the eastern port of Tobruk, which is backed by the army. Both factions have appointed bosses of the sovereign fund. To complicate matters further, there are two competing chairmen in Tripoli, who are locked in disputes over who is the legitimate chief.
POLITICO contacted the investment authority’s lawyers, consultants, a former head of LIA and current claimants to be its chairman. None was able to specify which, if any, of the rival claimants to LIA was able to access the millions in interest payments from Belgium.
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International powerhouse
s anti-regime protests that started in Tunisia spread to Libya, Egypt and Syria — in a series of political upheavals across the region that came to be known as the Arab Spring — countries across the world, including the U.S. and the EU, froze the fund’s assets in accordance with a U.N. resolution in March 2011.
The U.N. sanctions targeted assets of the Gaddafi regime, including about $67 billion of LIA’s assets, primarily invested with banks and fund managers across Europe and North America. An earlier package of measures in February had introduced an arms embargo and travel bans against prominent members of the regime.
In Europe, national governments are responsible for enforcing these sanctions. The 28 EU governments held a meeting in October 2011 that interpreted the sanctions as being applicable only to the original frozen assets, not the interest earned after September 2011.
Creditors across Europe ranging from Prince Laurent of Belgium, the king’s brother, to an Italian dairy company have unsuccessfully attempted to wrest back some of the money they say is owed to them by the Libyan state from LIA coffers.
Under Gaddafi’s rule, LIA (and its LAFICO subsidiary) had become a formidable international player and purchased assets in strategic companies, especially in Italy and Britain, including in the carmaker Fiat, the soccer club Juventus, Royal Bank of Scotland, and Pearson, the then publisher of the Financial Times.
The Libyan Investment Authority’s funds are locked in at least four bank accounts managed by Euroclear, a financial institution headquartered in Brussels.
According to copies of Euroclear statements from 2013 seen by POLITICO, the frozen funds invested in shares before 2011 had risen in value to €14 billion. Those stocks included holdings in big Italian companies such as the oil giant ENI, the bank Unicredit and the engineering company Finmeccanica, among others. A further €2 billion was held in a current account, according to the statement reviewed by POLITICO that was dated November 29, 2013.
Interest windfalls
t is unclear whether other EU countries are allowing the interest to flow out as Belgium does, but officials linked to LIA said that interest flows from the fund’s assets around the world were frequent, and large.
Mohsen Derregia, who was appointed chief executive of LIA in 2012 and lasted a year in the post, confirmed in a telephone interview that interest flowed from Gaddafi’s frozen assets during his time at the helm. He said the fund received about $630 million between April 2012 and April 2013, from the combined (supposedly frozen) assets around the world. He said that he could not specify how many of those millions came from Belgium.
He was fired from his post by the government in Tripoli of then Prime Minister Ali Zeidan in the spring of 2013, he said.
Abdul Magid Breish, who served as chairman of LIA from mid-2013 until June 2017, and still claims to be the legitimate head, also said that there was nothing illegal about interest payments. Breish is now locked in legal battles to assert his claim to LIA after the Government of National Accord in Tripoli appointed its own chairman, Ali Hassan Mahmoud, in 2016.
While little has been resolved between the factions and violence still persists between militia on the ground in Libya, what is clear is that interest from LIA’s billions in Belgium is going to someone.
Belgium’s finance ministry insists that the interest payments are legal, and that no special authorization had to be given.
In an email exchange from the fall of 2013 between a Euroclear employee and the Belgian finance ministry, a Euroclear official writes that funds from these accounts had been “released” to an HSBC account in Luxembourg belonging to LIA and to several other LIA accounts at the Arab Banking Corporation, a bank headquartered in Bahrain, whose main shareholder is the Libyan Central Bank.
As part of that exchange, Philippe Cloetens, a compliance official at Euroclear, informed Belgian officials that interest and dividends worth €28 million covering a period of September 2011 to October 2013 had been credited to the HSBC account, and that funds would continue to be “released.” His email is dated December 6, 2013.
“You should note that starting in December 2013, the interest received by this account will be released once a month, as is already the case for the three other accounts blocked,” Cloetens wrote in the email.
Another email from Cloetens to a Belgian finance ministry official dated October 24, 2012 said that interest payments were “released” to the Bahrain accounts, but the sums were not given.
Cloetens referred all questions to Euroclear’s spokesperson, who said: “Euroclear’s policy is to respect and to be in full compliance with all applicable laws and regulations.”
HSBC and the Arab Banking Corporation in Bahrain declined to comment.
Belgian green light
elgium’s finance ministry insists that the interest payments are legal, and that no special authorization had to be given.
Georges Gilkinet, a lawmaker and a member of the Belgian parliament’s finance and budget oversight committee, called on Finance Minister Johan Van Overtveldt to explain the interest payments during a session of the assembly on September 26, 2017.
In a response during that session, Van Overtveldt justified the payments by saying they were in accordance with an “interpretation” of the sanctions’ rules by RELEX, an expert group at the Council of the EU composed of diplomats from member countries.
Muammar Gaddafi, the former leader of Libya in 2010 | Ernesto Ruscio/Getty Images
Van Overtveldt did not respond to Gilkinet’s questions about whether the interest was paid to Belgian companies, owners of the frozen assets or the Libyan state.
Alexandre De Geest, treasury chief at Belgium’s finance ministry, confirmed to POLITICO that the country allowed earnings from frozen Libyan assets to be paid based on the RELEX decision.
“From 16 September 2011, interests or any other earnings related to the frozen funds of the four entities [listed in sanctions], such as dividends on shares, are not frozen. This conclusion was agreed upon during the RELEX meeting of 20 October 2011 by the European External Action Service and the legal service of the Council,” De Geest wrote in an email.
He added that providing further information on the frozen assets was “prohibited” under EU law. A finance ministry spokesman also did not reply to a question on whether he knew who was claiming the money in the LIA accounts.
Despite LIA’s prominence on the international stage, it is difficult to determine who can access its various accounts.
A spokeswoman for the Council legal service agreed with the Belgian interpretation of the law — saying that the RELEX decision limited the freeze only to assets before September 16, 2011.
Didier Reynders served as finance minister at the time of the RELEX decision but a spokesman for him said that he had “no information” on the case.
De Geest said that the RELEX ruling meant that Belgium’s finance ministry did not need to grant any special license or authorization to green light interest payments from Gaddafi’s assets.
Final destination
espite LIA’s prominence on the international stage, it is difficult to determine who can access its various accounts.
In the past few years, LIA has engaged in high-profile court battles with Goldman Sachs and Société Générale over investments and trades hailing from the Gaddafi era.
The London-based lawyers working for LIA in these cases declined to respond when approached by POLITICO to ask which group was currently controlling LIA or paying fees for court cases.
Derregia, who taught at Britain’s University of Nottingham business school before heading LIA, insists that none of the millions of euros of interest and dividends ever reached the Libyan people. “So far these funds have been spent on legal cases and on legal feuds within the LIA, nothing went to the people. With all that money we could have launched education and health projects for all the Libyans,” he said. “But politics, not economics or the people, are what they care about.”
“Euroclear is transacting transactions on behalf of the custodian — be it ABC Bahrain, or HSBC Luxembourg" — Abdul Magid Breish, former chairman of LIA
Enyo, a London-based law firm that represented the LIA in its proceedings against Goldman Sachs and Société Générale, referred all questions on LIA to an advisory company, Osborne & Partners. Osborne & Partners declined to “provide guidance on LIA financial or operational matters.”
LIA lost the case against Goldman in 2016, in which it claimed unsuccessfully that it had been misled into risky derivative trades by the U.S. bank. It was more successful in May 2017, when it won a €963 million settlement with Société Générale, in which LIA complained about the way the French bank handled five transactions between 2007 and 2009.
While several claimants are still battling to be recognized as the rightful head of LIA, they have agreed to create a special, temporary legal entity to “receive and manage” LIA’s affairs in the Goldman Sachs and Société Générale cases, run through BDO LLP, an accountancy and advisory firm. This “Receiver and Manager,” as recognized under British law, is intended to handle LIA’s goods and money until the disputes between the rivals are settled.
BDO LLP declined to comment.
Breish, who was forced aside as chairman last summer, told POLITICO that some of the money won in the Société Générale case was intended for litigation costs.
Chasing the money
n an interview with POLITICO, Breish said rivalries over the control of LIA created confusion in sorting out where the final payments from Euroclear transactions ended up.
He said he did not receive any such payments in his time in charge, but reckoned that other rivals to the LIA title might have done so.
“Euroclear is transacting transactions on behalf of the custodian — be it ABC Bahrain, or HSBC Luxembourg ... If a dividend or interest coupon is paid, it comes through Euroclear to be settled and then it is credited to the account of the custodian, then that custodian has already accounts in the name of LIA. And that custodian will then credit these amounts. When all of these procedures are finished then the problem starts,” Breish said.
Little has been resolved between the factions and violence still persists between militia on the ground in Libya | Abdullah Doma/AFP via Getty Images
“If somebody approached, for instance, ABC Bahrain whether it is the LIA in Tripoli or LIA in Tobruk or a claimant who says: ‘I am the chairman of the LIA’ and asks them to transfer money coming from dividends on an account in a third bank ... or sends a telex requesting a transfer, the custodian should say that there is an authority problem.”
However, Breish said that “there may have been some custodians who may have honored requests from this LIA or that LIA.”
POLITICO attempted to contact Mahmoud’s LIA operations in Tripoli and Malta by telephone and email, but received no reply. Joanne Benecke, an administrator for the Maltese headquarters of the LIA, declined to comment and said that the Valletta office served simply as a “LIA advisory.” She declined to provide further details about the management.
The administration in Tobruk has nominated Ali Shamekh as its chief executive of LIA. Emails and telephone calls to him, his predecessor and the regional government, the Libyan House of Representatives, in eastern Libya all went unanswered.
VIEW THE DOCUMENTS
On interest payments: E-mail exchange between the Belgian finance ministry and Euroclear explaining that interest payments were released to LIA accounts at the Arab Banking Corporation in Bahrain.
View this document on Scribd
Euroclear statement: Excerpt from a 2013 Euroclear statement detailing the frozen funds belonging to the LIA. Euroclear is informing Belgian officials that interest and dividends worth €28 million (covering a period of September 2011 to October 2013) have been credited to an HSBC account in Luxembourg, and funds will continue to be released on a monthly basis.
View this document on Scribd
From the Arab Banking Corporation: Internal documents detailing LIA’s shareholdings.
View this document on Scribd
Related stories on these topics: _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
Both sides in Libya's civil war receive equipment and backing from foreign countries. But Turkey, which has long trained and funded opposition fighters in Syria and relaxed its borders so foreign fighters joined IS, has in recent months been airlifting hundreds of them over to a new theater of war in Libya.
The U.N.-supported government controls only a shrinking area of western Libya, including the capital, Tripoli. It's facing a months-long offensive by forces loyal to Gen. Khalifa Hifter who is allied with a rival government based in Libya's east. The United Nations recognizes the government in Tripoli, led by Prime Minister Fayez Sarraj, as Libya's legitimate government because it was born out of U.N.-mediated talks in 2015.
The commanders also highlighted differing opinions within the Libyan militias about accepting Syrian extremists into their ranks. One said the fighters' backgrounds aren't important, as long as they've come to help defend the capital. The other said some commanders fear the fighters will “tarnish” the image of the Tripoli-based government.
The U.N. has repeatedly condemned the flow of weapons and foreign fighters into Libya. But the organization has not directly responded to reports and accusations by Hifter's side that Sarraj's government and Turkey are apparently using IS- and al-Qaida-linked extremists as mercenaries.
Turkey has not confirmed or denied reports of Syrian fighters being sent to Libya to support Sarraj, and the Turkish military did not respond to requests for comment.
However, in a televised interview last month, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said: "As a combat force, we will have a different team there. They won't be from within our soldiers. Those different teams and the combat forces will work together. But our high-ranking soldiers will coordinate." He did not elaborate.
Rumors of Turkey-backed Syrian fighters in Libya have swirled for weeks. Foreign leaders and commentators have pointed to videos circulated online that appear to show Syrians in Tripoli. In one video, a man with a Syrian accent films the dormitories where he and other fighters are living, saying “Thank God, we arrived safely in Libya.” Another clip shows a plane full of fighters, some wearing fatigues and speaking with Syrian accents.
Turkey's Libyan allies and Syrian opposition leaders have denied any organized efforts to send combatants to Libya. But in January, Sarraj told the BBC that his government “would not hesitate to cooperate with any party to defeat this aggression" by Hifter's forces.
Rami Abdurrahman, the director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told the AP that his war-monitoring network has determined there are at least 130 former Islamic State or al-Qaida fighters among the approximately 4,700 Turkey-backed Syrian mercenaries sent to fight for Sarraj.
He said the IS militants had joined the so-called Syrian National Army, a patchwork alliance formed by Turkey from different factions who battled the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Most of the groups are loyal to Turkey, and the SNA was used as shock troops last year in Turkey’s offensive against U.S.-allied Kurdish forces in northern Syria.
In theory, a cease-fire brokered by Russia and Turkey remains in place around Tripoli but Libya's warring sides have traded accusations of violations, and the shaky truce is threatened by clashes. Representatives from Sarraj and Hifter began meetings in Geneva on Tuesday to work toward a more permanent cease-fire.
The Observatory also quoted a Syrian fighter from Idlib province who applied to go to Libya as saying he was motivated by the financial benefits offered by Turkey.
Elizabeth Tsurkov, a fellow at the U.S.-based Foreign Policy Research Institute who closely follows Syria's armed groups, said the promise of payment, Turkish citizenship or the prospect of fleeing to Europe were the main motives of Syrian fighters sent to Libya.
“None of them are committed to the fight in Libya due to personal conviction or ideology,” she said.
A Libyan official at the prime minister's office said Syrian fighters have been in Libya since early August. At first, he said they were only facilitating the work of Turkish military experts. But as the fighting escalated in mid-December, the number of Syrian fighters arriving in Libya increased. These fighters now immediately deploy to the front lines, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to talk to reporters on the subject.
The Tripoli authorities and U.S. officials have also accused Hifter of relying on hundreds of Russian mercenaries. Sudanese armed groups from the Darfur region recently joined the fighting on both sides, according to a report by U.N. experts.
The influx of Syrian, Russian and Sudanese mercenaries has threatened to prolong the war and cripple international efforts to establish a long-term cease-fire. Last month, a summit in Berlin brought together the major international stakeholders in Libya, but with few concrete results.
Nicholas Heras, a Syria expert at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, said Turkey is focusing on Libya to establish a sphere of influence in the Mediterranean.
“However, the Turks do not want to risk significant casualties to their own forces when the Turkish military has built a proxy force of Syrian fighters that can reinforce the Libyan fighters,” he said.
Follow us @middleeast for more news on the region.
Abdurrahim El-Keib, who served for around a year as Libya’s interim prime minister shortly after the ouster of the OPEC member’s longtime leader, has died of a heart attack, al-Wasat reported Tuesday. He was 70, according to the news website.
El-Keib, a professor of electrical engineering, was appointed as premier in November 2011 by the country’s National Transitional Council, with a mandate to steer the war-torn nation toward elections. He took over from Mahmoud Jibril, who resigned from the post when Libya’s liberation was declared on Oct. 23, three days after the death of Moammar Qaddafi.
El-Keib handed over power to Ali Zaidan in November 2012. _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
Russia’s deployment of warplanes to Libya this month to support a militia leader’s assault on the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli raises Moscow’s involvement in the country’s civil war and threatens to escalate it.
Moscow’s intervention on behalf of military commander Khalifa Haftar, whose forces have been trying to capture the capital for more than a year, is driven by a desire to outflank its main regional rival, Turkey, according to analysts. Ankara has recently ramped up support for the Government of National Accord...
The US military says Russian fighter jets in Libya are part of a bigger and more worrying plan for the region
https://www.businessinsider.com/us-says-russian-jets-libya-bigger-plan -for-region-2020-6
Lolita C. Baldor, Associated Press Jun 1, 2020, 3:08 PM
A Russian fighter jet deployed to Libya
Russia has claimed that it didn't deploy the fighter jets that US Africa Command says it spotted heading to Libya.
The US has rejected that denial and says that the jets are a sign of Moscow's longer-term goal of establishing a foothold on NATO's southern flank.
Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
WASHINGTON (AP) — US Africa Command flatly rejected Russian claims that Moscow did not deploy fighter jets to Libya, saying Friday that the 14 aircraft flown in reflect Russia's longer term goal to establish a foothold in the region that could threaten NATO allies.
Brig. Gen. Gregory Hadfield, deputy director for intelligence, said the US tracked the MiG-29 fighter jets and SU-24 fighter bombers that were flown in by Russian military, passing through Iran and Syria before landing at Libya's al-Jufra air base. The base is the main forward airfield for Khalifa Hifter and his self-styled Libyan National Army, that have been waging an offensive to capture Tripoli.
"If Russia secures a permanent position in Libya and, worse, deploys long-range missile systems, it will be a game-changer for Europe, NATO and many Western nations," said Hadfield. Russia's interference in Libya, he said, give it access to that country's oil and a "military base strategically positioned in striking distance of Europe."
A Russian fighter jet deployed to Libya
A Russian fighter jet deployed to Libya. AFRICOM
Russia has denied links to the aircraft, calling the claim "stupidity." Instead, Viktor Bondarev, the former Russian air force chief who heads the defense committee in the upper house of parliament, said the planes are not Russian, but could be Soviet-era aircraft owned by other African nations.
Hadfield disputed that, saying there were none of those aircraft in that part of Africa. And, he said, "not only did we watch them fly from Russia by way of Iran and Syria to Libya, we were able to photograph them at multiple points."
Libya was plunged into chaos when a NATO-backed uprising toppled longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011. The country is now split between a government in the east allied with Hifter and one in Tripoli, in the west, supported by the United Nations.
Hadfield said the fighter aircraft will likely provide close air support and offensive strikes for the Wagner Group, a Russia-based state-sponsored company that employs mercenaries to fight alongside the eastern forces of Hifter.
A Russian MiG-29 Fulcrum spotted at Al Jufra Airfield in Libya
A Russian MiG-29 Fulcrum spotted at Al Jufra Airfield in Libya. AFRICOM
Hifter's forces launched an offensive to capture Tripoli last year, clashing with an array of militias loosely allied with the UN-supported but weak government there. Hifter is backed by the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Russia, while the Tripoli-allied militias are aided by Turkey, Qatar and Italy.
In an interview with a small group of reporters, Hadfield said the new fighter aircraft have not yet been used. But he said they will have to be flown either by pilots from Russia or contractors employed by Wagner. He said there have been about 2,000 personnel at the base, but more have been flown in.
Another concern, said Hadfield, is that there also are Russian surface-to-air missiles there. But currently, he said, they are older models, and not state-of-the-art weapons.
Eastern European nations have been increasingly concerned about Russia's expanding military involvement and incursions in the region, on NATO's southern flank.
In his new documentary, “The Oath of Tobruk,” Bernard-Henri Levy details how a self-promoting leftist intellectual persuaded a conservative French president to back the Libyan revolt.
In his ubiquitous black suit paired with an always crisp, always pristine white shirt unbuttoned to reveal an alarming swathe of chest, France’s most flamboyant public intellectual scampers up sand dunes in the Libyan desert, ushers uninitiated Libyan seniors through the gilded corridors of the French presidential palace and unabashedly attempts to conduct the forces of history.
In a documentary titled, “Le Serment de Tobrouk” - or “The Oath of Tobruk” – released in France Wednesday, French philosopher-writer Bernard-Henri Levy is the narrator, director, star of a documentary about his role in the 2011 Libyan intervention.
More than a year after UN Security Council Resolution 1973 - which provided the legal basis for the NATO intervention in Libya - was adopted, the documentary charts the unprecedented saga of how one intellectual managed to bulldoze the international agenda on Libya.
The storyline of Levy’s extraordinary role in Libya is by now fairly well-known, certainly across France. In early March 2011, Levy – or “BHL” as he’s called in his native France - traveled from Egypt into eastern Libya. There, he met Libyan rebel leaders and proceeded to convince then President Nicolas Sarkozy to support the rebels diplomatically and militarily.
For the next few months, the French people witnessed the unusual spectacle of a notoriously self-promoting leftist intellectual joining forces with a notoriously energetic conservative president to wage war in a distant, sandy nation.
There’s a new man in the French presidential palace today, and as Libya prepares to hold its first free general elections this summer, “The Oath of Tobruk” provides an opportunity to revisit an unprecedented chapter in international relations.
It was France’s recognition of the Libyan NTC (National Transitional Council) back in March 2011 that paved the way for the international intervention that helped oust Muammar Gaddafi.
“I think BHL served a very important role for Sarkozy,” says Christopher Dickey, Paris bureau chief of Newsweek and The Daily Beast. “I think Sarkozy was looking to intervene in any case. The question was who to talk to? The key role that BHL played was that he found someone to talk to on his first visit to [the eastern Libyan city of] Benghazi.”
An introductory spiel in different countries
A self-styled “militant philosopher,” 63-year-old Levy has never been at a loss to find the right person to talk to. “The Oath of Tobruk” features archival footage of a young BHL meeting the late Afghan resistance hero Ahmad Shah Massoud in Afghanistan in 1998.
Seated with a battery of Afghan elders on a low divan in a carpeted room, Levy attempts to explain his puzzling presence and his even more puzzling mission to a visibly exhausted Massoud.
“We are not journalists. We are writers,” he explains as the resistance hero widely known as “The Lion of the Panjshir” looks on, battle-wearied and unimpressed.
Levy goes on to explain that he will try to convince France’s president, Jacques Chirac, about Massoud’s cause. He doesn’t promise anything, he stresses, but he’ll try.
In the end, he did not succeed. Massoud was killed two days before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks desperately trying to save his patch of the Panjshir from Taliban forces. He never lived to see the military intervention in his broken, benighted homeland.
More than a decade later, Levy finally succeeded in getting the ears of a French president.
In early March 2011, as Gaddafi’s troops were advancing on Benghazi, a similar scene unravels - this time in a different country with a different cast of characters.
In a nondescript room in Benghazi, a faintly amused Mustafa Abdel Jalil, head of the then yet to be formed NTC, patiently waits as a voice off-screen translates Levy’s introductory spiel into Arabic.
“I am no politician. I am merely a writer. But like you, I believe that it is better to act than to speak…"
Another voice, also off-screen, interjects with an impatient, ‘Do you have a letter from the international community?’
Levy holds up his hand. “Give me five minutes!” he commands.
He gets his five minutes. The rest, as they say, is history.
A pledge in the Libyan desert
There’s little doubt “The Oath of Tobruk” is a mammoth ode to Bernard-Henri Levy, narrated by Bernard-Henri Levy, directed by Bernard-Henri Levy, starring Bernard-Henri Levy.
A controversial figure derided for his vanity, Levy has faced a tough home crowd with the release of his latest film. In an interview with the French TV station France 2 over the weekend, a panel of anchors grilled Levy about his on-screen “omnipresence” in a documentary on Libya.
Levy remonstrated by citing US film-maker Michael Moore - who also features in his own documentaries – only to be dismissed for attempting to compare himself with the likes of Moore and French photojournalist and film-maker Raymond Depardon.
The footage featuring Levy in Libyan towns and cities such as Benghazi, Djebel Nafoussa, Misrata, Sirte and Tripoli was shot by photographer Marc Roussel, who had the presence of mind to switch his camera on video mode during critical moments.
Sitting in a darkened Paris cinema hall before the start of a screening on Wednesday, Nino Ciccarone, a retired school teacher, carefully chose his words when asked about France’s arguably best-known intellectual. “BHL is a well-known philosopher in France who’s very controversial – especially his position in Libya. So, his point of view interests me,” said Ciccarone.
Levy’s point of view is dictated by the international community’s failure to prevent the 1990s massacres in Bosnia. He views his engagement in Libya in the tradition of French Colonel Philippe Leclerc, who fought with the Free French Forces in the 1941 Battle of Kufra.
It was in this isolated oasis in eastern Libya that the Free French Forces made a pledge called the "Oath of Kufra" - swearing not to lay down their arms until France was liberated from the Nazis. The title of Levy’s film pays homage to this pledge, made on Libyan soil six decades ago.
Long on Levy, short on problems
Critics of the documentary have accused Levy of “washing his hands of” some of the more troubling issues confronting the new Libya, an accusation he vehemently denies.
LIBYA: ON THE BLOGS
“The Oath of Tobruk" does not shy away from some of these problems, including the rise of Islamist fighters and NTC head Jalil’s controversial October 2011 victory speech asserting that the country had chosen Islamic sharia as the source of legislation.
But the issues are perfunctorily handled in a film that is long on Levy but short on the Libyan people.
The 100-minute documentary has footage of Levy’s June 2011 visit to Israel, where he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But it makes no mention of the gaffe he committed when he assured Netanyahu that the NTC would seek diplomatic ties between Libya and Israel if it came to power.
The NTC responded by promptly issuing a statement denying the reports but the damage was already done in the Arab world, where Levy’s Jewish roots and his pro-Israeli views are a matter of deep suspicion.
Reacting to Jalil’s sharia law declaration, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recounts how she personally told the NTC chief that she hoped Libyan women would be allowed to play a role in the new Libya.
“He smiled,” said Clinton – and with that, the issue of Libyan women’s rights is summarily dropped.
Clinton is among the list of influential players – including Sarkozy, British Prime Minister David Cameron and US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice - interviewed in the film.
Their accounts of midnight calls to the likes of US President Barack Obama and other world leaders to get UN Security Council Resolution 1973 passed provides an insightful account of how history can sometimes be shaped by a handful of men and women.
As an outsider, Levy finally got a chance to manipulate the forces of history. Although he insists the Libyan intervention was for a greater good, that remains an open question.
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In Syria, a bloody uprising has raged for over a year with few international solutions in sight. In the pre-screening darkness of a Paris cinema hall, Ciccarone, the retired schoolteacher, said he believed the Libyan precedent had strengthened Russia’s and China’s resolve to steer clear of an intervention in Syria.
In any case, most people believe Levy will not be able to repeat history in Syria and certainly not under new French President Francois Hollande’s administration.
“I think for the moment, Levy’s fortunes have declined after Sarkozy,” said Dickey. “My sense is that everybody looks at BHL as an independent, somewhat unpredictable actor, and politicians generally don’t like unpredictable actors – especially with sensitive affairs.”
In which case, “The Oath of Tobruk” remains a self-serving but certainly insightful testament to a very unique moment in world history. _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
Muammar al-Gaddafi: 'I rule!'. Photo: Neil Weightman via Flickr (CC BY-NC).
What was NATO's violent intervention in Libya really all about? Now we know, writes Ellen Brown, thanks to Hillary Clinton's recently published emails. It was to prevent the creation of an independent hard currency in Africa that would free the continent from economic bondage under the dollar, the IMF and the French African franc, shaking off the last heavy chains of colonial exploitation.
The brief visit of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Libya in October 2011 was referred to by the media as a "victory lap."
"We came, we saw, he died!" she crowed in a CBS video interview on hearing of the capture and brutal murder of Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi.
But the victory lap, write Scott Shane and Jo Becker in the New York Times, was premature. Libya was relegated to the back burner by the State Department, "as the country dissolved into chaos, leading to a civil war that would destabilize the region, fueling the refugee crisis in Europe and allowing the Islamic State to establish a Libyan haven that the United States is now desperately trying to contain."
US-NATO intervention was allegedly undertaken on humanitarian grounds, after reports of mass atrocities; but human rights organizations questioned the claims after finding a lack of evidence. Today, however, verifiable atrocities are occurring.
As Dan Kovalik wrote in the Huffington Post, "the human rights situation in Libya is a disaster, as 'thousands of detainees [including children] languish in prisons without proper judicial review,' and 'kidnappings and targeted killings are rampant'."
Before 2011, Libya had achieved economic independence, with its own water, its own food, its own oil, its own money, and its own state-owned bank. It had arisen under Qaddafi from one of the poorest of countries to the richest in Africa.
Education and medical treatment were free; having a home was considered a human right; and Libyans participated in an original system of local democracy. The country boasted the world's largest irrigation system, the Great Man-made River project, which brought water from the desert to the cities and coastal areas; and Qaddafi was embarking on a program to spread this model throughout Africa.
But that was before US-NATO forces bombed the irrigation system and wreaked havoc on the country. Today the situation is so dire that President Obama has asked his advisors to draw up options including a new military front in Libya, and the Defense Department is reportedly standing ready with "the full spectrum of military operations required."
The Secretary of State's victory lap was indeed premature, if what we're talking about is the officially stated goal of humanitarian intervention. But her newly-released emails reveal another agenda behind the Libyan war; and this one, it seems, was achieved.
Mission accomplished?
Of the 3,000 emails released from Hillary Clinton's private email server in late December 2015, about a third were from her close confidante Sidney Blumenthal, the attorney who defended her husband in the Monica Lewinsky case. One of these emails, dated April 2, 2011, reads in part:
"Qaddafi's government holds 143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver ... This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French franc (CFA)."
In a 'source comment', the original declassified email adds:
"According to knowledgeable individuals this quantity of gold and silver is valued at more than $7 billion. French intelligence officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began, and this was one of the factors that influenced President Nicolas Sarkozy's decision to commit France to the attack on Libya. According to these individuals Sarkozy's plans are driven by the following issues:
1. A desire to gain a greater share of Libya oil production,
2. Increase French influence in North Africa,
3. Improve his internal political situation in France,
4. Provide the French military with an opportunity to reassert its position in the world,
5. Address the concern of his advisors over Qaddafi's long term plans to supplant France as the dominant power in Francophone Africa."
Conspicuously absent is any mention of humanitarian concerns. The objectives are money, power and oil.
Other explosive confirmations in the newly-published emails are detailed by investigative journalist Robert Parry. They include admissions of rebel war crimes, of special ops trainers inside Libya from nearly the start of protests, and of Al Qaeda embedded in the US-backed opposition.
Key propaganda themes for violent intervention are acknowledged to be mere rumors. Parry suggests they may have originated with Blumenthal himself. They include the bizarre claim that Qaddafi had a "rape policy" involving passing * out to his troops, a charge later raised by UN Ambassador Susan Rice in a UN presentation. Parry asks rhetorically:
"So do you think it would it be easier for the Obama administration to rally American support behind this 'regime change' by explaining how the French wanted to steal Libya's wealth and maintain French neocolonial influence over Africa - or would Americans respond better to propaganda themes about Gaddafi passing out * to his troops so they could rape more women while his snipers targeted innocent children? Bingo!"
Toppling the global financial scheme
Qaddafi's threatened attempt to establish an independent African currency was not taken lightly by Western interests. In 2011, Sarkozy reportedly called the Libyan leader a threat to the financial security of the world. How could this tiny country of six million people pose such a threat? First some background.
It is banks, not governments, that create most of the money in Western economies, as the Bank of England recently acknowledged. This has been going on for centuries, through the process called 'fractional reserve' lending. Originally, the reserves were in gold. In 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt replaced gold domestically with central bank-created reserves, but gold remained the reserve currency internationally.
In 1944, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were created in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to unify this bank-created money system globally. An IMF ruling said that no paper money could have gold backing.
A money supply created privately as debt at interest requires a continual supply of debtors; and over the next half century, most developing countries wound up in debt to the IMF. The loans came with strings attached, including 'structural adjustment' policies involving austerity measures and privatization of public assets.
After 1944, the US dollar traded interchangeably with gold as global reserve currency. When the US was no longer able to maintain the dollar's gold backing, in the 1970s it made a deal with OPEC to 'back' the dollar with oil, creating the 'petro-dollar'. Oil would be sold only in US dollars, which would be deposited in Wall Street and other international banks.
In 2001, dissatisfied with the shrinking value of the dollars that OPEC was getting for its oil, Iraq's Saddam Hussein broke the pact and sold oil in euros. Regime change swiftly followed, accompanied by widespread destruction of the country.
In Libya, Qaddafi also broke the pact; but he did more than just sell his oil in another currency. As these developments are detailed by blogger Denise Rhyne:
"For decades, Libya and other African countries had been attempting to create a pan-African gold standard. Libya's al-Qadhafi and other heads of African States had wanted an independent, pan-African, 'hard currency'.
"Under al-Qadhafi's leadership, African nations had convened at least twice for monetary unification. The countries discussed the possibility of using the Libyan dinar and the silver dirham as the only possible money to buy African oil.
"Until the recent US/NATO invasion, the gold dinar was issued by the Central Bank of Libya (CBL). The Libyan bank was 100% state owned and independent. Foreigners had to go through the CBL to do business with Libya. The Central Bank of Libya issued the dinar, using the country's 143.8 tons of gold.
"Libya's Qadhafi (African Union 2009 Chair) conceived and financed a plan to unify the sovereign States of Africa with one gold currency (United States of Africa). In 2004, a pan-African Parliament (53 nations) laid plans for the African Economic Community - with a single gold currency by 2023.
"African oil-producing nations were planning to abandon the petro-dollar, and demand gold payment for oil/gas."
Showing what is possible
Qaddafi had done more than organize an African monetary coup. He had demonstrated that financial independence could be achieved. His greatest infrastructure project, the Great Man-made River, was turning arid regions into a breadbasket for Libya; and the $33 billion project was being funded interest-free without foreign debt, through Libya's own state-owned bank.
That could explain why this critical piece of infrastructure was destroyed in 2011. NATO not only bombed the pipeline but finished off the project by bombing the factory producing the pipes necessary to repair it.
Crippling a civilian irrigation system serving up to 70% of the population hardly looks like humanitarian intervention. Rather, as Canadian Professor Maximilian Forte put it in his heavily researched book Slouching Towards Sirte: NATO's War on Libya and Africa,
"the goal of US military intervention was to disrupt an emerging pattern of independence and a network of collaboration within Africa that would facilitate increased African self-reliance. This is at odds with the geostrategic and political economic ambitions of extra-continental European powers, namely the US."
Mystery solved
Hilary Clinton's emails shed light on another enigma remarked on by early commentators. Why, within weeks of initiating fighting, did the rebels set up their own central bank? Robert Wenzel wrote in The Economic Policy Journal in 2011:
"This suggests we have a bit more than a rag tag bunch of rebels running around and that there are some pretty sophisticated influences. I have never before heard of a central bank being created in just a matter of weeks out of a popular uprising."
It was all highly suspicious, but as Alex Newman concluded in a November 2011 article:
"Whether salvaging central banking and the corrupt global monetary system were truly among the reasons for Gadhafi's overthrow ... may never be known for certain - at least not publicly."
There the matter would have remained - suspicious but unverified like so many stories of fraud and corruption - but for the publication of Hillary Clinton's emails after an FBI probe. They add substantial weight to Newman's suspicions: violent intervention was not chiefly about the security of the people.
It was about the security of global banking, money and oil.
Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books including the best-selling Web of Debt. Her latest book, The Public Bank Solution, explores successful public banking models historically and globally. Her 300+ blog articles are at EllenBrown.com. Listen to 'It's Our Money with Ellen Brown' on PRN.FM.
This article was originally published on Ellen Brown's website. _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
WARNING: IMAGES BELOW ARE PARTICULARLY GRAPHIC AND UPSETTING.
SIRTE, Libya — An analysis of video obtained by GlobalPost from a rebel fighter who recorded the moment when Col. Muammar Gaddafi was first captured confirms that another rebel fighter, whose identity is unknown, sodomized the former leader as he was being dragged from the drainpipe where he had taken cover.
A frame by frame analysis of this exclusive GlobalPost video clearly shows the rebel trying to insert some kind of stick or knife into Gaddafi's rear end.
Full coverage: Death of Muammar Gaddafi
GlobalPost correspondent Tracey Shelton said there is some question as to whether the instrument was a knife from the end of a machine gun, which Libyans call a Bicketti, or some kind of stick.
This latest video discovery comes as international and human rights groups call for a formal investigation into how the former Libyan leader was killed. In video clips that have emerged of his capture, Gaddafi can be seen injured but alive. Later he is seen with what appears to be gunshot wounds to his head and chest. According to the Geneva Conventions, however, abuse of prisoners under any circumstance is not permissable.
Related: Gaddafi to be buried in "secret desert location"
Here is a frame by frame look at the attack. Below the frames is video decoding the cell phone footage of the capture. And, finally, at the bottom is the full video. You can see the attempt to sodomize Gaddafi at the 16 second mark.
WARNING: Extremely graphic
The World is a nonprofit newsroom that produces relevant, fact-based and human-centered global journalism. The story you just read is freely available because readers like you support The World financially.
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The following explanations are mainly based on Der Freitag blog author Angelika Gutsche’s review of German written books by Mark Altten “Das Gaddafi-Komplott” and by Manfred G. Meyer “Gaddafi, Koks und Knaben” as well as on articles from the magazine ‘Der Spiegel’, including other limited sources in English in addition to basic mainstream or official sources.
By Thermal Detonator – Edited by Adam Fitzgerald (October 30, 2020)
When I made this blog several years ago, the intention was to keep it oriented with 9/11 Truth, and with what few articles I’ve written on here, only on a few sparse occasions does it delve in some areas even before the first attack in the World Trade Center in 1993. And although Libya is not necessarily equated or known as being affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks, like Osama bin Laden, Mummar Gaddafi was ultimately the first Arab villain propagated to the U.S, and the West, and there’s quite a bit here to unpack in what should be examined and questioned amongst 9/11 truth seekers in their sharpness to spot war propaganda and pretexts, particularly in the Middle East and as well as getting a better gist with the relationships between intelligence agencies, organized crime and terrorist groups, even for a regular person simply entertained by the official narrative with the Hamberg Cell, who were the 9/11 pilot hijacking team.
Libya with its oil reserve discoveries since the late 50’s had been able to transition the country from being one of the world’s poorest nations to a wealthy state. However, resentment grew within its population due to the majority of its wealth being concentrated into the hands of the monarchy. Discontent rose in the form of Arab nationalism/socialism that was heavily influenced by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser.
A bloodless coup, known as the, al-Fateh Revolution or September 1st Revolution, was carried out by a group of military officers led by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, known as the Free Officers Movement, who overthrew King Idris I, which subsequently led to expelling Americans and inviting in the Soviets. Gaddafi deported Libya’s Italian and Jewish population and ejected its Western military bases. Libya’s dedication to Arab unity was made clear, as well as its support of the Palestinian cause against Israel.
Gaddafi basically took control of Libya in 1969 and nationalized the oil reserves in 1970 and used the increasing state revenues to bolster the country’s military. As well as funding foreign revolutionaries and implementing social programs while emphasizing house-building, healthcare and education projects.
He would also govern Libya for the next 42 years, becoming the longest serving ruler in the Arab world and Africa while being independent from foreign rule.
But by the late 70’s early 80’s Gaddafi started to experience resistance within its diplomatic representatives and ambassadors within the government.
Mohamed Yousef el-Magariaf
In Sudan, the CIA-sponsored National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL) announced its creation on October 7, 1981, which was founded by Mohamed Yousef el-Magariaf, a former Libyan ambassador to India. The NFSL called for major reforms such as democratic elections, a free press, and separation of powers. The group was allowed to operate out of Sudan until 1985, when its leader was ousted in a coup. The NFSL launched a wide campaign to topple Gaddafi, establishing a short-wave radio station, a commando military training camp and also published a newsletter. According to various sources, the group was supported by Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. The NFSL’s goal was to overthrow Mummar Gaddafi.
Jaballa Matar
The most active Libyan NFSL member was Jaballa Matar, originally Libya’s ambassador to the United Nations in New York, but resigned in 1973, allegedly in protest against Libya’s politics. The Matar family initially returned to Libya before immigrating to Egypt in 1979, like many wealthy Libyans at the time. Matar was well-connected; in addition to his Cairo apartment he owned a country house in Yorkshire, England, and also an address in Virginia, just a few blocks away from another Libyan, Ragab Mabruk Zatout who had a construction company in Tobruk, Libya.
Ragab Mabruk Zatout
Denying that he ever worked for the CIA given that they are also based there in Virginia, Zatout seemed to be well “connected”. In the early eighties, Zatout settled with his import-export company Nine Stars which is based in Virginia. Eyewitnesses reports state that Zatout met with FBI people, al-Magariaf was also seen with him.
When and why this connection becomes important, actually starts in the year of 1978, in the small port city of Darna, Libya, where a business relationship begins with a Lebanese citizen and Hilmar Hein, a German building/scaffolding contractor from the Reinickendorf area of West Berlin with links to the underworld, and a nefarious past. There will be much more to explain about Hein and his outfit as the time goes, but he is a guy that’s flashy and whom owns two Lamborghinis, a silver Rolls-Royce and a Mercedes. Also known as the be hard to reach and a bit of a Coke addict, Hein had many lucrative contracts flown to him from the Berlin Senate and who had good relations with the Bilfinger construction group, which was active in Libya.
Hilmar Hein
One of Hein’s co-workers and confidants Manfred Meyer with whom he had an “exceptionally strong friendship between men”, described Hein as a loving, bisexual and eccentric multimillionaire and fidget philipp who was even friends with Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (Shah of Iran). Hein had been in contact with Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iran since the mid-1970s. It was clear to him that big money could be earned in the oil countries.
The circumstances with Zatout as a man within the Gaddafi government at the time after the 1973 oil crisis, is that he awarded contracts worth billions. But there was a prospect for an airport to be built in the Kufra oasis in Libya for $ 96 million and Hein was awarded the commitment as general contract through Zatout.
Zatout arranged for Hein to meet Gaddafi and former Libyan Prime Minister Abdel Salem Dschalloud. Zatout became good acquaintances and visited Hein several times in Berlin, between the German and Libyan contractors, Hein had a feeling that Zatout was close to Gaddafi, but for Hein it was only about the 96 million dollars.
In short time, Zatout became a political refugee and needed a new nationality and some accommodations, while showing up in West Berlin telling Hein that he has some problems with the job but needed some help, first it being diplomatic passports.
Hein actually knew people who did this sort of thing, including an official at the Bolivian consulate who, ended up sending 20 fresh diplomatic passports, from then on making Ragab Zatout, the Libyan, and Roberto Zatout, the Bolivian.
Zatout was always exceptionally accommodating. In one example, Hein and Zatout were together at a Berlin casino, and Zatout would always share his winnings with Hein as if they were family.
At some point, Zatout gave Hein a video showing hooded, armed Libyans ready to fight Gaddafi, led by members from a resistance group called al-Burkan, “the Volcano”. Zatout had said “These are my friends,” and asked if he can get passports for them.
Hilmar Hein however was not interested in the beginning. His primary wish was simply to become wealthy. But if the way to wealth is only through Zatout, then he takes part and becomes a resistance fighter. Zatout’s promises sounded too good: “When Gaddafi is gone, you’re our man in Germany. Then you can make it big.” Hein’s motivations in wanting Gaddafi removed from power in Libya had nothing to do with ideology or fundamentalism, but purely for profit motive.
Soon Zatout introduces Jaballa Matar to become acquainted with him and the NFSL; but Hein didn’t know anything at the time that they were being supported by the CIA
This all eventually changes, with the Hein gang starting to train anti-Ghaddafi Libyan students in the basement of a large building on a Berlin industrial estate. The course was a standard assassination primer, reminiscent of the one in which the CIA had used 30 years before in Guatemala though much less sophisticated.
By the end of 1983 Hein is contacted by Zatout in the U.S. and asked if he could assist in obtaining weapons. Five to ten pistols with silencers, preferably “Walther type, caliber 7.65 mm. Hein gets the pistols and silencers made by his employee in his workshop Helmut Nagler. Hein has them painted black.
So then comes the year 1984, a truly memorable year in the United States as the Games of the XXIII Olympiad-Summer Olympics is coming, added with what always comes, being a presidential election year where with incumbent Republican Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush defeated Democratic nominee, former Vice President Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro. Its already a couple of years before the Iran-Contra scandal breaks, while the U.S. through the Pakistani ISI is aiding the mujahideen during the middle of the Afghan-Russian war, where also in the USSR there becomes change in leadership as Konstantin Chernenko succeeds the late Yuri Andropov as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
1984, a year that had impatiently been looked upon dismally to fit a bleak Orwellian prophecy, in which no such thing happened, but it is a very event-filled and intriguing year as far as world events, in which a chain of incidents occurred throughout Europe and Libya in what could be considered the year of the volcano.
1984
January
Assassination of Libyan Ambassador Ammar el-Taggazy
On January 21, 1984, 43 year old Libyan Ambassador Ammar El Taggazy was shot and severely wounded from behind by two masked and unidentified gunmen outside his Rome apartment as he approached his garage. He was beaten and fired upon with two pistols. El Taggazy had been in a deep coma when he arrived at Umberto I Polyclinic with bullet wounds in the head, abdomen and shoulder. The following day a caller telephoned the London office of the Associated Press and claimed responsibility on behalf of Al-Burkan. The doctors removed the bullets from El Taggazy, abdomen and shoulder in operation but his condition was unthinkable to operate on his brain to remove the bullet still lodged there. El Taggazy did not recover and died at the Rome hospital on February 10, 1984.
February
Killing of Kurg
On February 28, 1984 a cook who worked for Bilfinger Berger Construction Company from Libya, Helmut Krug, was shot in Würzburg, Germany. He was executed in an apartment and was suspected of being a member of Al Burkan.
March
The Blue Angel nightclub Bombing
March 10, 1984, a bomb exploded on a street with several Arab-owned stores in London, at the Blue Angel nightclub, which was popular with Arabs, wounding 23 people, three of them seriously. Three other bombs were detonated by police outside other Arab-owned stores. “Libyan terrorists” were reportedly responsible.
Manchester neighborhood bombing
March 11, 1984, two bombs exploded outside a home occupied by Libyan dissidents in Manchester, England, the first of the two explosions occurred before dawn when a two-pound bomb blew up a car parked near the apartment. No one was hurt in the blast, which destroyed the car and damaged another nearby. Later, when another explosive device was found in the rear of the building, the area was ordered evacuated and an attempt was made to explode the bomb deliberately under controlled conditions. The bomb blew up prematurely; however, wounding a family of three Syrians who apparently had slept undisturbed through the previous explosion. They were treated for cuts caused by flying glass. Bomb Exploded in Nightclub
Omar Khayyam Night Club Bomb
March 12, 1984 a bomb was dismantled by police at the Omar Khayyam nightclub in London. Officers cleared out the club and Restaurant on Regent Street, one of London’s most fashionable shopping thoroughfares, and cordoned off the area after the explosive device was discovered at about 7 P.M., said a Scotland Yard spokesman. There was no explosion and there were no injuries, the spokesman said. Employees at the nightspot said they had found the device under a table. The club, especially popular with Egyptians and Libyans, is in a building that houses the offices of the Royal Jordanian Airline.
Libyan terrorists were reportedly responsible for all three consecutive days of bombing attacks and attempts.
Earlier that month Scotland Yard warned of tensions in England between Libyan exiles and supporters of Colonel Qaddafi. The police alerted exiles and other possible targets that they might be objects of attack.
The UK Government asked Libya to help put an end to the bombings. A Foreign Office spokesman said that Two Libyan diplomats were summoned to the Foreign Office and were told that Britain was ”extremely concerned about the outbreak of violence”.
Libya denied all responsibility for the bombings and told Britain to stop ”pointing accusing fingers regarding these incidents,” according to an official Libyan press agency dispatch monitored in London. But five Libyans arrested in the police sweep were quickly deported.
April
Murder of Yvonne Fletcher
On April 17, 1984, Gaddafi opponents demonstrated in front of the Libyan People’s Office (Libyan Embassy) in St. James’ Square, London. The demonstration was organized by the NFSL. Suddenly shots were heard, which killed British police officer Yvonne Fletcher who had been deployed to monitor a demonstration and died shortly afterwards by an unknown gunman. A television team on site and filmed the death of Yvonne Fletcher. Her death resulted in an eleven-day siege of the embassy, at the end of which those inside Libyan People’s Office were expelled from the country and the United Kingdom severing diplomatic relations with Libya. During the anti-Gaddafi protest, two gunmen opened fire from the first floor of the embassy with Sterling submachine guns. In addition to the murder of Fletcher, eleven Libyan demonstrators were wounded. The inquest into Fletcher’s death reached a verdict that she was “killed by a bullet coming from one of two windows on the west side of the front on the first floor of the Libyan People’s Bureau”. Following the breaking of diplomatic relations, Libya arrested six British nationals, the last four of whom were released after nine months in captivity. No one has ever been charged with Fletcher’s murder.
The UK Channel 4 TV program ‘Dispatches’ put out a two part episode titled “Murder in St James’s” in April of 1996,—which included the opinions of the British Army’s senior ballistics officer, Lieutenant Colonel George Styles, the Home Office pathologist Bernard Knight and army surgeon and forensic pathologist Hugh Thomas—raised the question of the entry angle of the bullet that killed Fletcher. The conclusion of those interviewed was that the bullet could not have come from the first floor of the embassy, and could not have been from a Sterling submachine gun.
‘Dispatches’ Channel 4 Documentary ‘Murder In St. James’s’ part I
Prime Minister Tony Blair was questioned on this subject by MP Tam Dalyell in Parliament on June 24, 1997. The Guardian of July 23, 1997 reported a parliamentary speech by Dalyell, referring to Fletcher’s murder:
“With the agreement of Queenie Fletcher, her mother, I raised with the Home Office the three remarkable programmes that were made by Fulcrum, and their producer, Richard Bellfield, called Murder In St. James’s. Television speculation is one thing, but this was rather more than that, because on film was George Styles, the senior ballistics officer in the British Army, who said that, as a ballistics expert, he believed that the WPC could not have been killed from the second floor of the Libyan embassy, as was suggested.“
“Also on film was my friend, Hugh Thomas, who talked about the angles at which bullets could enter bodies, and the position of those bodies. Hugh Thomas was, for years, the consultant surgeon of the Royal Victoria hospital in Belfast, and I suspect he knows more about bullets entering bodies than anybody else in Britain. Above that was Professor Bernard Knight, who, on and off, has been the Home Office pathologist for 25 years. When Bernard Knight gives evidence on film that the official explanation could not be, it is time for an investigation.”
Participants who appeared in the ‘Dispatches’ documentary highlighted issues such as the velocity of the bullet and the angle at which it entered Fletcher’s body. Lt-Col Styles stated that a high velocity bullet from a Sterling sub-machine gun would have passed straight through her body at an angle of 15°, and Hugh Thomas rebutted evidence given by Ian West, the pathologist at the inquest, that the 60° angle of entry of the bullet could be explained by Fletcher’s turning to the right or left.
The film went on to allege that the anti-Gaddafi organization Al Burkan, which was allegedly funded by the Reagan White House, had obtained a gun from the Hein gang in West Berlin, and used it to kill Fletcher with a single shot. The head of Al Burkan, Ragab Zatout was present in the UK during the murder of Fletcher.
The murder of WPC Fletcher began what was known as the ‘The Libyan hostage situation’ which lasted 294 days, or until February 5, 1985.On the evening of April 17, 1984, airport manager for British Caledonian Airways at Tripoli Universal Airport, Libya, Doug Ledingham, was arrested by soldiers.
There was a standoff between the Libyan and British governments over the pursuit of who shot WPC Fletcher. The detachment resulted in the breaking of diplomatic relations by Britain with Libya, and the return to Libya under diplomatic immunity of the occupants of the Libyan Peoples’ Bureau in London. Rumors abounded at the time between April 17 and 27 as to the fate of the person who is alleged to have fired the fatal shots from the Libyan People’s Bureau. In 1986, a British businessman who had worked for Colonel Gaddafi’s regime reported WPC Fletcher’s killer had been hanged as soon as he returned to Libya.
Following the breaking of diplomatic relations with Libya, the British Embassy in Tripoli was evacuated and eventually ransacked by the Libyans. A skeleton staff of British diplomats took up office in the Italian Embassy.
Heathrow Airport Bombing
On April 20, 1984, a bomb exploded in the baggage area of Terminal 2 at Heathrow Airport. The bomb exploded at 7:55 pm, as 60 people were inside the baggage area. The blast injured 22, one seriously. The Angry Brigade, an anarchist group, claimed responsibility for the bombing. British officials dismissed the claim, and once again, pointed their fingers at “Libyan-related Arab groups”, coming just three days after the murder of Yvonne Fletcher.
Coup attempt in Libya
April 1984, an arson attack on the University of Tripoli and in May the LNSA attacked a military facility near Tripoli. Journalist Jack Anderson reported in an article that appeared in several American newspapers that the group had been funded and trained by the CIA.
On May 8, 1984, three weeks after the embassy protest, NFSL commandos took part in an attack on Gaddafi’s Bab al-Azizia compound in Tripoli, in an attempt to assassinate him. According to Richard Belfield in his book A Brief History of Hitmen and Assassinations
“The CIA had traditionally supported the NFSL, but by 1983 it was it was an ineffective Talking Shop of intellectuals and émigré, long past there effective sell-by date. Reagan’s men bypass the CIA and set up their own organization. Al Burkan appeared from nowhere, sweet surprise to most in the anti-Gaddafi opposition who were shocked to suddenly discover this overgrown and heavily financed cuckoo in what was, by now, an old and battered nest.”
The attack on May 8 was thwarted when the group’s leader, Ahmed Ibrahim Ihwas, was captured when trying to enter Libya at the Tunisian border. Although the coup attempt failed and Gaddafi escaped unscathed, dissident groups claimed that some eighty Libyans, Cubans, and East Germans had been killed in the operation. Some 2,000 people were arrested in Libya following the attack, and eight were hanged publicly. Basically, Ragab Zatout coup attempt was thwarted by the Libyan army.
May
More hostage negotiations
From May 14 to 16, 1984 four British men in Libya were rounded up and detained as hostages, against the four arrested Libyan nationals in Britain by those claiming to be officials of the Gaddafi regime. The men in order of capture were: Michael Berdinner, Alan Russell, Malcolm Anderson and Robin Plummer. At first, Allen Russell and Malcolm Anderson were held at a separate location where they were questioned and beaten. Ledingham, Berdinner and Plummer (Plummer in solitary confinement) were in the same facility, the Italian Mansion, a building approximately 400 yards distant from the Italian Embassy.
June
On June 12, 1984, a month after being taken hostage, the five men were allowed a meeting with the British Second Consul, George Anderson, who was able to offer only pastoral care and contact with home, but no suggestion of release. It was clear by this time, however, that the men were being held as hostages by one of Col Gaddafi’s Revolutionary Committees, in defiance of international law. Return to their respective prisons was followed by little or no improvement in the hostages’ circumstances.
Murder of Mohammed Saleh Abouzeid Shatiti
June 21, 1984, a 52-year-old Libyan businessman named Mohammed Saleh Abouzeid Shatiti, with close ties to Qaddafi was shot dead in Athens during a visit of Libyan foreign minister Abdul Salam Turayki, who was also in Greece for talks with officials about a June 13 shooting of a Libyan-born Greek in his small shop in Athens. Shatiti lived with his 17-year-old son in Greece and had a wife and four other children in Libya, but had not visited the country for three years because he feared for his life, as told to police by his friends. A witness to the killing, Dimitris Haralambous, said Shatiti was driving a car and was being followed by two men on a motorcycle. “He stopped the car and he tried to run into a nearby hotel, while his passenger ran the other way. One of the men riding the motorcycle followed Shatiti and shot him with a pistol,” Haralambous said. “The gunman ran away and I tried to help the victim, who was alive for a few minutes and was saying something in an unknown language,” Haralambous said. The two assassins, described as thin, dark-skinned men, escaped. Athens police tried to say the murder of Shatiti may have been linked to his opposition of Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi, but Treiki told reporters, “Libya does not export terrorism.”
July
On July 19, 1984 a second meeting with George Anderson resulted in all the hostages being put into one location, the Italian Mansion, and being fed an improved diet and given medical attention. This improvement in circumstances was accompanied by a slow but inexorable descent into gloom of the hostages isolated from all news of the outside world.
Meanwhile, in Britain, unbeknownst to the hostages, their families, notably Pat Plummer and Carole Russell, were working tirelessly with Kate Adie of the BBC and Brent Sadler of ITN to keep the hostages’ plight in the media to keep the situation in the news and the profile high on the government’s agenda. By now, the families were being kept up to date on a daily basis by contacts within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London as to the stalemate between Libya and Britain, with a continual decline in international relations between Libya and most of the rest of the world.
By the summer of 1984 in London, a committee in parliament was held to determine whether or not what the British government had done over the Libyan hostage situation was reasonable. The committee concluded that in the circumstances, the British government had done all it reasonably could in the light of what little was known at the time.
August
On August 7, 1984 the Libyans allowed family members to visit the hostages. These visits brought unofficial news of the, as yet, publicly undisclosed involvement of Terry Waite, the Special Envoy to the Archbishop of Canterbury, of the Church of England.
Murder of Ali el-Giahour
Ali el-Giahour
August 20, 1984, a 45 years old Libyan businessman named Ali el-Giahour, who was facing trial in connection with March bomb attacks in London was found murdered in a London apartment. Spokesmen refused to comment on speculation that Mr. Giahour had been killed by a Libyan death squad, but said it was believed he had been lured to the apartment where he was killed by an assassin. The murder weapon was left in the bathtub filled with water. He had been charged with conspiracy to cause explosions after five bombs went off at Arab targets in London in March. One bomb wounded 23 people in a crowded club. Giahour was free, granted bail pending the hearing, despite police objections, Scotland Yard said. The murder is never solved.
Helmut Nagler
Essentially what put the Hein gang on the map was the second part of the ‘Dispatches’ episode “Murder in St James” where according to member Helmut Nagler, Hein had sent him in February of 1984 to London in a Mercedes with several pistols hidden within the bottom oil pan. It was his second delivery of weapons for Zatout. He drove the gold-colored Mercedes, registration B-NY 604, to Hamburg and takes the ferry “Prince Hamlet” to England. In London he meets with Zatout and handed the weapons with no money transaction. The murder weapon received, a Walther that was used on Giahour comes from the golden Mercedes, and was confirmed as weapon # 176979.
‘Dispatches’ Channel 4 Documentary ‘Murder In St. James’s’ part II
Authorities investigating the murder at first believed that the apartment flat Giahour was led to was rented by Zatout.
Dieter Harbecke
One of the other Hein gang member Manfred Meyer who was also aware of the weapons transaction had confirmed to German authorities that not only was it used for the Giahour murder but also on Yvonne Fletcher. In which German police and intelligence had also suggested the same thing. Years later, Meyer gave the police the information about the connections between the cook Helmut Krug and the brothel ‘Regina’ in Berlin, whose boss, former foreign legionnaire Dieter Harbecke, who was an associate to Hein, Zatout and Matar. Harbecke was known as a “man for the rough”. A Der Spiegel article from September 1988 had called Harbecke a ‘police spy’. It was rumored that he was “a real undercover agent, the criminal legend secure camouflage”.
And according to a February 16, 1987 Der Spiegel article charting some of Hein’s crimes, Walther pistols dominated the arsenal of the Heins gang; according to Hein’s practitioners, they were most suitable for the threads of the homemade silencers, brass pipes lined with aluminum and leather plates. The weapon also used on Gaddafi diplomat Ammar el-Taggazy who was shot in Rome at the beginning of 1984 was, according to former employees, owned by Hein.
Although the bombing campaign in March that Giahour was implicated in was feeding the British narrative of Pro Libyan terrorist retaliating or striking anti-Gaddafi militants or supporters, it was revealed that Giahour was also a member of Al Bukan and working for UK intelligence likely as a double agent, ultimately suggesting that Giahour as a free man with his bombing cases pending against him, no longer made him useful for Al Burkan or as an asset for any other special interests he was working for, nor especially Libya, and was ultimately a liability that needed to be silenced, as Giahour himself told his lawyer that he feared that he was a target as a free man.
September
Hostages begin to be incrementally freed
On September 1, 1984 Doug Ledingham (35) and another man ironically named George Bush (oil worker, 45) another prisoner, arrested and detained on bona fide charges unrelated to the Libyan hostage situation, were freed and allowed home. On the day of their release, British television news was granted access to and showed the world for the first time, detail of the hostage situation.
Attempted assassination of a Libyan diplomat in Madrid
On Tuesday, September 11, 1984 Mohammed al-Dris Ahmed an administrative employee of the Libyan embassy in Madrid, Spain was shot on his way to work, wounding him in his arms, his wounds were not serious . The Libyan, Mohammed Al Dris Ahmed, was in his car with two other people when the attack occurred. Two young men, both carrying Lebanese passports, were arrested soon after the attack, Mustafa Ali Khalil, 22, and Mohammed Khair Abbas, 20. Khalil, carrying an Italian-made pistol with seven bullets in the cartridge clip, and was captured as he tried to catch a taxi a few blocks from the scene. Abbas was arrested in his Madrid hotel room, and police said they also took a pistol from him. The two members of the (Lebanese) Amal militia were sentenced on July 25, 1985 in Spain to prison terms of over 20 years each. The defense counsel had argued for acquittal on the grounds that the accused were acting under orders. Three Libyans, including two diplomats, were expelled from Spain at the end of December 1985.
Both Al-Burkan and the Shia militant group Musa Sadr Brigade took credit. Al-Burkan claimed credit through an anonymous phone call placed in London
The Musa Sadr Brigade as well as Amal Miltia, are known as being part of the Amal Movement, a Lebanese political party associated with Lebanon’s Shia community, founded by Musa al-Sadr, also known as Imam Musa, described as a tall and charismatic philosopher and Shi’a religious leader from a long line of distinguished clerics tracing their ancestry back to the 3rd century A.D
The Amal movement has essentially turned into what we know now at today as Hezbollah, which was arguably founded as early as 1982 or as what American and Western media proclaim was after the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings, however, Musa al-Sadr did not live long enough to witness those events or transitions takes shape, as he ended up disappearing in 1978 with two companions who departed on August 25, for Libya to meet with government officials at the invitation of Muammar Gaddafi. The three were last seen on August 31, 1978. They were never heard from again. Many theories exist around the circumstances of Sadr’s disappearance, none of which have been proven. His whereabouts remain unknown to this day. But the main implicating theory around his disappearance is that Gaddafi had something to do with it for an array of different reasons.
Al Jazeera put out an excellent 48 minute documentary in 2012 about Musa al-Sadr and the Mystery regarding his disappearance called the ‘The Imam and the Colonel’ that’s highly recommended for viewing to get a full gist of the story.
But If Qadafi was responsible for the disappearance of Al-Sadr, it may have been his biggest mistake if one doesn’t rely on the official narratives with the presiding events take shape over the next few years in which we will cover some in a follow-up chapter. But ultimately what events get blamed on the Qaddafi regime after 1984 will drastically affect Libya’s economy.
Also on September 21, two bombs were defused outside the Libyan Embassy in Nicosia, on the island of Cyprus, west of Lebanon.
October
Libyan embassy Attack in Bonn
October 14th 1984, Hein’s men attacked the Libyan embassy in Bonn where two Molotov cocktails were used in the contrite attack. According to an insider Manfred Meyer, the Burkan activists where offered 450,000 German marks to make an example of Gaddafi’s men all over the world. However, under the hands of the Berliners, the company got smaller and smaller from level to level – the bazooka initially intended as an explosive was not available, and neither was the hand grenade that was then planned. Finally, four juice bottles were filled with gasoline and sealed with rags. Hein employee Helmut Nägler later claimed to be the organizer. His gasoline bottle thrower, two petty criminals, only hit one embassy door; the total damage was, according to official findings, a pitiful thousand marks.
Closing the Libyan hostage situation
On October 17, 1984, two of the wives of the hostages, Pat Plummer and Carole Russell, attended a meeting with the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The two wives petitioned for a representative of the British Government to go to Libya and start negotiations for the release of the hostages. This meeting was soon followed by the arrival in Libya of Terry Waite.
October 21, 1984 Alan Russell and Malcolm Anderson were removed from the Italian Mansion and taken to the Libyan courts, where they were charged with transporting state secrets.
November
November 10–18, 1984 Terry Waite was in Libya. The hostage situation showed no signs of thawing, in spite of national and international efforts to secure the release of the hostages and the intervention at a pastoral level of Waite.
December
December 13–14, 1984 Allen Russell was placed on trial and charged with sharing state secrets with British journalists. Robin Plummer seized the opportunity to speak to the press post being question and states his innocence and makes a plea for warm clothing.
December 24, 1984 the four men were confirmed as political hostages by Gaddafi. Waite held a Christmas carol service with the hostages.
1985 – January
January 6, 1985 Col Gaddafi himself placed the matter of the remaining hostages before the members of the Basic and General Peoples’ Congresses, the system of democracy prevalent in Libya at the time, for a decision on the release of the hostages.
Assassination of Farag Omar Makhyoun
On January 13, 1985, Farag Omar Makhyoun, a 31-year-old cultural attaché at the Libyan Embassy was shot seven times and killed in Rome near his home but managed to fire two shots from a .38-caliber pistol during an ambush by his assailants before collapsing on an icy street. The incident occurred exactly a year after Ammar El Taggazy assassination also in Rome. Makhyoun died clutching a gun in his hand. An anonymous caller to the London office of The Associated Press said that a group named Al Burkan was responsible. Libya had initially blamed a Shiite Moslem group from Lebanon and PLO leader Yasser Arafat. Police said they were checking the possibility the assailant may be a follower of Shiite Moslem religious leader, Mousa Sadr.
1985 – February
February 5, 1985 the Congresses voted by an overwhelming majority to release the hostages. But there were conditions to the release. The release was however subject to a few days’ delay, for undisclosed reasons.
February 7, 1985 after almost nine months (294 days), the hostages arrived back in England.
Assassination attempt on ex-ambassador Ezzedin al-Ghadamsi
On February 28, Ezzedin al-Ghadamsie an ex Libyan ambassador in Vienna was gunned down and seriously injured by an unknown assassin. The perpetrators were not caught, but strangely enough they left the murder weapon with a silencer in a side street. The Libyan government condemned the act and blamed Palestinian groups and the CIA. Gaddafi’s former companion and confidante al-Ghadamsie had been sent to Austria as an ambassador, but after his dismissal in 1980 the diplomat refused to return to Libya. Even after his resignation, reports indicate that he continued to work for Libya.
But incidentally 3 years later in another gun attack on May 20, 1987, Ghadamsi was slightly injured in the head. A Libyan assassin was arrested by the police and sentenced to ten years in 1988, cited private reasons as the motive for the crime. Ghadamsi however spoke political acts after his relationship with Gaddafi deteriorated; the ex-ambassador later moved to London and repeatedly criticized the Gaddafi regime.
The Bust
With Ghadamsi attacked, the traces pointed to the environment in West Berlin where the scaffolding contractor Hilmar Hein was also based. Hein’s former intimate Manfred Meyer had been asked by Hein in February 1985 to take part in a murder. Meyer correctly concluded that he should be drawn ever deeper into something that he could not get out of.
Manfred Meyer
On February 25, 1985, Manfred Meyer surrendered to the police in Berlin and asked to be charged with murder in Vienna. A murder attack is planned by an Israeli named Genneadij Levenzon in collaboration with Moshe Ben Ari, a Mossad agent. But the police didn’t want to know about it, and sent Meyer back home. Levenzon was already known to the police because two pistols with silencers were traced in Belgium in September 1984 that was linked to Levenzon.
Ghadamsi was gunned down three days later.
Levenzon was already suspected in the indictment along with Hein whom was a companion of the boutique owner Moshe Ben Ari, an Israeli citizen who served in the Mossad and head of the ‘Third Eye of Zion’, a group which carries out Mossad’s dirty work in West Berlin.
However, if Ben Ari protected Hein, one can conclude that Israel, the CIA and MI6 were closely invested with any attempts to assassinate Gaddafi. The Federal Criminal Police Office counted Ben Ari as a key figure in Eastern European organized crime in Germany.
But it doesn’t end there as far as associations, in Easter of 1983 Hilmar Hein traveled to Thailand where he had met Zatout and with John Poindexter, President Reagan’s security adviser and was involved in in the soon-to-be coming Iran-Contra affair, along with other fellow conspirator Oliver North, National Security Council official and CIA agent, also involved in the Iran-Contra affair. According to Der Spiegel, Oliver North “took care of the deposition of unwanted leaders. He still remembers the memos from ‘El Burkan’ and the NFSL that went over his desk. ” In Bangkok, not only the CIA, but also the Israeli secret service Mossad had headquarters.
Even before engaging in the Al Burkan activity Hein also had a relationship with one of the richest men in the world at the time, the Saudi Arabian arms dealer Adnan Kashoggi, founder of the Safari Alliance Club, a name also involved in the Iran-Contra Affair. Hein knew Politicians such as the Berlin Senator for the Interior, Heinrich Lummer (CDU), who were also welcome guests on Kashoggi’s luxury yacht anchored in the port of Nice, France.
According to Angelika Gutsche writing for German weekly newspaper Der Freitag ‘Libyans, secret services, gunmen‘ published December 22, 2016, which is about Al Burkan and the Hein gang entanglement based on available articles and two books, one written by Manfred Meyer himself in 2012, that’s only published in German language, Gaddafi, Koks und Knaben: Ein CIA-Mordkomplott (Gadhafi, Cocaine, and Boys: A CIA Murder Plot) she says that distrust between Zatout and Hein had grown over money spent on Gaddafi’s coup attempt and Al Burkan activities. Hein had already paid ten million marks to the brothel owner Dieter Harbecke, who wanted to come forward with fiduciary checks issued by Zatout. Harbecke, who felt booted out, shot at Hein’s car as a warning. Hein then got himself a bodyguard: the boutique owner Moshe Ben Ari. At the time of the el-Giahour ‘murder, both Hein and his bodyguard Moshe Ben Ari were in London; both returned to Berlin on August 20. Hein later admitted in court that he had received at least one pistol from Ben Ari.
After the Giahour murder during a flight to the U.S. to visit Zatout, Hein asked his business partner Werner Stange whether he would be willing to put Gaddafi out of the way for ten million marks, but Hein also expressed the idea of changing sides and betraying Zatout to Gaddafi. Hein started to become no longer reliable to Zatout.
On March 7, 1985 Hein is arrested but denies any involvement in murder and says he gave Zatout guns and that he didn’t know what he has done with the guns.
The trial began in February 1987 before the Berlin Regional Court. For two years, the police investigated Hein and 13 accomplices, organized crime experts, drug and homicide officers, the Federal Criminal Police Office and Scotland Yard were also involved. The indictment is 178 pages long. Hein was found guilty on 30 of 67 charges among other things because of the attack on the embassy in Bonn, and is sentenced to seven years in prison. In 1991 he was released early only serving 5 years.
Nägler now lives in Switzerland, in a villa that once belonged to Hein. Hein often travels to Switzerland to visit Nägler.
Rageb Zatout essentially fled and was able to evade from all prosecution of these Al Burkan incidents spanning from 1984 to 85, taking up exile in the U.S. Zatout gave himself up as a Gaddafi victim in 2011. Already on April 11, 2011, he founded the New Libya Party with other exiles in Benghazi, in which only he himself sees a ‘hope for democracy’. The party has supporters in the United States, Canada and Germany. One can imagine that, especially among the secret services. In Libya, the number of followers is likely to remain within narrow limits.
In June 2011, months before Qaddafi is finally taken out in the NATO allied military intervention in Libya, which has essentially has been defined as the birth point of ISIS, the Der Spiegel article reminiscing on Al Burkan and Hein gang wrote Zatout up as being the now important “man of the Libyan opposition”, “an advisor to the insurgents”. Among other things, he demonstrated this in an interview with CNBC Arabiya, where he was able to spread his ideas about the ‘new Libya’.
Hein spent five years in prison for this. Zatout now appears as a politician in Arab news channels. “There he prides himself on having launched the terrorist organization Libyan National Salvation Army (LNSA) on January 6, 1981 together with Jaballah Matar.
Jaballah Matar was arrested in Cairo in March 1990 and extradited to Libya, where he was imprisoned in Tripoli until 2011. As of 2010, Hischam Matar, the son of Jaballah Matar, was a courting interviewee in the Western media, who skillfully built his father, who was on the list of Amnesty International, as a victim of the ‘Gaddafi regime’. Of course, the prehistory of the Jaballah Matar, which dates back to the 70s and 80s, was not just a language. Another son of Jaballah Matar is called Ziad Matar. He also asked for his father’s release in 2011 and wanted NATO operations in Libya to accelerate. Like his father and brother, he was a leading member of the NFSL.
Hildog and Mohamed Yousef el-Magariaf
The NFSL founder Mohamed Yousef el-Magariaf, at the onset of the Libyan Civil War in 2011, Magariaf remained active in engaging with his political contacts, in an effort to gain international support for himself and the Libyan people. After the 2011 civil war, Magariaf returned to Libya from the United States, where he had spent most of his 30 years in exile. He is now the leader of National Front Party, the formal successor of the NFSL which was dissolved on 9 May 2012, after the National Transitional Council seized power. During the Libyan Congressional election of 2012, Magariaf was elected congressman, within the National Front Party. Magariaf was elected President of the General National Congress (GNC) on 9 August 2012. After serving as President for 9 months he resigned in May 2013 in anticipation of the political isolation law which was passed, barring him from office due to his previous role as an ambassador under the Gaddafi regime. Former Libyan foreign minister Abdel Rahman Shalgham, who defected from the Libyan government at the beginning of the 2011 Libyan civil war in March, told al-Hayat on July 18, 2011 that the Libyan government was responsible for the 1989 bombing of UTA Flight 772 (a scheduled international passenger flight of a French airline operating in France, the Congo and in Chad) stating “The Libyan security services blew up the plane. They believed that opposition leader Mohammed al-Megrief was on board”. Magariaf also survived an assassination attempt on his life in the southwestern Libyan town of Sabha in 2013. Magariaf is reported to have good relations with the Muslim Brotherhood, yet is perceived as a moderate who led one of the most liberal parties in the 2012 election in Libya.
According to German Mark Altten in his 2011 book “The Ghaddafi plot” The following trail of death, led to Cold War Berlin, where secret services, the semi-silk underworld and exiled Libyans mixed deadly cocktails:
“On January 21, 1984, the Libyan Ammar Taggazy was shot by unknown people in Rome.
On February 28, 1984, a cook who worked in Libya died in Würzburg.
On April 17, 1984, pistol bullets in London injured police officer Yvonne Fletcher.
In mid-August 1984 the life of Libyan businessman Ali el-Gia-hour came to a cruel end in a London apartment.
On October 14, 1984, an attack on a Libyan facility in Bonn was carried out.
On January 13, 1985, the Libyan Farag Makhyoun died in an attack in Rome.
On February 28, 1985, Ezzedin al-Ghadamsi, from Libya, was seriously injured by gunfire in Vienna.”
None of these crimes, committed between late January 1984 and late February 1985, has ever been solved. And according to the conditions for release of the 1984 Libyan hostage incident, Libya requested that the British Government stop anti-Libyan propaganda channeled through British media; there has been almost no reference to the hostage situation in literature since the time of the release. Most references that state the history of Libya at the time make reference to the murder of WPC Fletcher and then make no reference whatsoever to the hostage situation, skipping instead to the bombing of Libya by the U.S. in 1986, which we will also over more extensively in a follow-up article. But Fletcher’s murder became a major factor in Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s decision to allow US President Ronald Reagan to launch the U.S. Air Force bombing raid on Libya in 1986 from American bases in Britain, in which none of U.S.’s European allies would allow using its territory or airspace in the bombing campaign.
Between Zatout, Hein and Ben Ari organized the assassination of Libyan officials in London, Rome and Vienna; planned the assassination of Gadhafi in the attack on his Tripoli barracks on May 1984; and had a hand in the shooting of WPC Yvonne Fletcher in April ’84 in London. And although this story may sound ages ago, or too late or beyond the statute of limitations to some, it is a tale worth knowing indeed not just in the aftermath escalating the war on terror a decade after 9/11, but that the same sort of organized crime nexus or arrangements laid out here mostly in 1984, either had a systemic, if not direct relationship to the road of 9/11 at least within the lines of foreign intelligence.
Hilmar Hein and Ragab Zatout
But before we move on to the next article covering the following years, they’re still one other intriguing Libyan worth also bringing attention to.
Saleh Ibrahim Mabrouk
On November 19, 2015, head of counter-terrorism at Scotland Yard, Commander Richard Walton, announced that a Libyan man had been arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to murder WPC Yvonne Fletcher. The Libyan aged in his 50’s was detained in south-east England and is now in custody, Saleh Ibrahim Mabrouk, who was expelled from Britain seven days after Fletcher’s murder but was allowed to return to visit the UK in 2000; a year after Britain restored diplomatic relations with Libya. Mabrouk subsequently fled to Britain and claimed political asylum following the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. He is also suspected of money laundering offences. Two other Libyan nationals – a woman (wife; Camilla Othman) in her 40s and a man (son; Osama Saleh Ibrahim) in his 30s – were also arrested on suspicion of money laundering. However a decision was announced in May 2017 that for reasons of “national security” the murder suspect, Saleh Ibrahim Mabrouk, would not be taken to court. Senior policing sources told The Telegraph that the case against Mabrouk was dropped after a decision taken at the “highest level”. John Murray, a police officer who held WPC Fletcher as she laid dying outside the Libyan embassy in 1984, said the decision to give Mabrouk asylum was “scandalous”. Murray said it added to his conviction that Mabrouk had been an agent for the British intelligence services at a time when the UK Government was attempting to bring Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s regime back into the fold after years as a terrorist pariah state: “If he is a liaison between Libya and MI6 that would explain why he has got asylum.”
This is just speculation but could it be that Mabrouk was one of the Libyan diplomats who was secretly a member of AL Burkan or NFSL inside the Libyan’s People’s Office in St James Square London, during the shooting of Yvonne Fletcher, but was mysteriously let out of the country as what the Channel 4 ‘Dispatches’ episode uncovered with an unnamed suspect?
• Sections of ‘Libya in the Crosshairs: 25 years of Gaddafi’ (Libyen im Fadenkreuz – 25 Jahre Gaddafi) 1994: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/z-netz.datenschutz.spionage/IN 8WFgMRFYI
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