The Libyan Job: Insiders Used War to Steal Priceless Artifacts
“I cannot say who did it,” said Ahmed Buzaian, an archaeology professor at Benghazi University, who was part of an outside group that investigated the crime scene. “But they knew exactly what was inside.”
What happened, according to the official story, strikes of Harry Houdini meets Ocean’s Eleven. At some point in late March — only a month after rebels in Benghazi had evicted the forces of Col. Muammar Qaddafi and not long after NATO began airstrikes in support of the rebels — a group of thieves broke into the National Commercial Bank of Benghazi, likely from the adjacent building that housed the secret police and that protesters torched at the beginning of the revolution.
Once inside the bank lobby, said Osama El-Ketaf, head of the bank’s legal office, they drilled directly into the vault through a little more than two feet of steel-reinforced concrete. The hole, he said, was big enough for a very skinny adult or a child. In the vault were a series of safes and chests, and power tools were used to tear the containers apart. Inside were nearly 8,000 gold, silver and bronze coins — along with maybe 300 rings, necklaces, bracelets and medallions and another 40 or so bronze and ivory figurines. All of them were unearthed over the first half of the last century in five Greco-Roman cities in northeastern Libya. Taken during the Italian retreat of its former colony in World War II, the trove was returned in 1961, and placed into the vault.
“There was a large, old-fashioned safe and a normal-size safe,” El-Ketaf said. “They sawed through the hinges of one, maybe using a circular saw. We found an extension cord leading from the building next door to the hole. They cut through the back of the other safe.” Then they ferried the ancient artifacts to the surface.
European Court censures Italy over African migrants
The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Italy violated the rights of Eritrean and Somali migrants by sending them back to Libya.
The 13 Eritreans and 11 Somalis were among a group of about 200 people who left Libya on three boats in 2009. Two of the 24 have since died.
The court ordered Italy to pay each migrant in the case 15,000 euros (£13,000; $20,000) in damages.
Libya takes next step towards drafting new constitution
Libya’s interim government has proposed a draft law for electing an assembly to draft a new constitution — a first step to setting up a new government after the ouster of Muammar Gaddafi.
The draft, published on Monday night on the website of the ruling National Transitional Council, would bar former members of Gaddafi’s regime from running in the election. It would even ban anyone who got a degree based on academic research on the Green Book — Gaddafi’s rambling political manifesto that laid out his theory of government and society declaring Libya a “republic of the masses”.
Libya is facing serious challenges to build state institutions from scratch after toppling Gaddafi’s 42-year dictatorship. The interim government must set rules for the transition to democracy and forge some sort of national reconciliation among the huge numbers of Libyans who were integral parts of former regime.
Amnesty: Libyan rebels may be guilty of war crimes
…”Members and supporters of the opposition, loosely structured under the leadership of the National Transitional Council (NTC) … have also committed human rights abuses, in some cases amounting to war crimes, albeit on a smaller scale,” the Amnesty report said.
It said opposition supporters “unlawfully killed” more than a dozen Gadhafi loyalists and security officials between April and early July. And just after the rebels took control of eastern Libya, the report said, angry groups of rebel supporters “shot, hanged and otherwise killed through lynching” dozens of captured soldiers and suspected mercenaries, with impunity.
Mohammed al-Alagi, a justice minister for Libya’s transitional authorities said that describing the rebels actions as war crimes was wrong.
” They are not the military, they are only ordinary people, ” al-Alagi said. While rebels have made mistakes, he aknowledged, they cannot be described as “war crimes at all.”
In addition, the report said both sides stirred up racism and xenophobia, causing sub-Saharan Africans to be increasingly attacked, robbed and abused by ordinary Libyans.
“In February, there was this rumor about Gadhafi using black people as mercenaries; that’s wrong,” Nicolas Beger, director of the Amnesty International European Institutions office, told Associated Press Television News in Brussels on Monday. “But the NTC has not done a lot to curb that rumor and now there is a lot of retaliation against sub-Saharan Africans. Whether they were or they weren’t involved with the Gadhafi forces, they are at real risk of being taken from their work or their homes or the street to be tortured or killed.”
Beger also said abuses were continuing under the new government.
“We have even spoken to guards who admit that they use force,” he said. “They say, ‘Yeah we use force in order to get confessions, in order to force people to hand in their weapons.’ So this really needs to be controlled. This is one of the priorities that the new authorities have to really get a clear act on.”
Daughter Gadhafi said was dead apparently lives
TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) — Since the rebel takeover of Tripoli, evidence has been mounting that Moammar Gadhafi may have lied about the death of his adopted baby daughter Hana in a 1986 American airstrike.
The strike hit Gadhafi’s home in his Tripoli compound, Bab al-Aziziya, in retaliation for the Libyan-sponsored bombing of a Berlin nightclub earlier that same year that killed two U.S. servicemen. At the time, Gadhafi showed American journalists a picture of a dead baby and claimed it was his adopted daughter Hana — the first public mention that she even existed.
Diplomats almost immediately questioned the claim. But Gadhafi kept the story alive through the years.
Then, when investigations into the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing pointed to a Libyan hand in the attack, some theorized that Gadhafi had ordered it to avenge Hana’s death in the U.S. airstrike.
But when Libyan rebels took over Tripoli and Bab al-Aziziya last week, they found a room in Gadhafi’s home with Hana’s birth certificate and pictures of a young woman with Hana written on the back, possible indications that she lived well beyond infancy. A Tripoli hospital official surfaced, saying Hana worked for him as a surgeon up until the rebels came to town.
And on Tuesday, Swiss officials confirmed that Hana’s name had briefly appeared earlier this year on a Swiss government document listing the names of senior Libyan figures targeted for sanctions.
Many Libyans believe Hana was never killed and talked about her existence openly.
Libyan rebel leader to meet Sarkozy in Paris
PARIS (AP) — The head of Libya’s opposition government is heading to France for talks Wednesday with President Nicolas Sarkozy, pushing for a role in post-war Libya even though longtime leader Moammar Gadhafi’s whereabouts remain unknown.
Sarkozy will meet in the evening with Mahmoud Jibril, head of the Libyan rebels’ acting Cabinet, for talks on “the situation in Libya and the international community’s actions to support the political transition to a free and democratic Libya,” according to a statement from Sarkozy’s office.
Sarkozy, who championed the costly NATO airstrike campaign against Gadhafi’s forces despite a stalemate in recent months, lauded the oft-criticized military alliance.
“The tenacity of the allied forces paid off,” he told a Cabinet meeting Wednesday, according to government spokeswoman Valerie Pecresse.
Tripoli’s $400 hotel is prison to journalists
Journalists talk among themselves as gun-battles continue around the Rixos hotel in Tripoli, Libya, Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2011. Dozens of journalists remain trapped inside this hotel as forces
'Gaddafi ready to go', says France
Widespread discussions were being held between Tripoli and other countries to end the crisis in Libya but there were no full-scale negotiations, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé said on Tuesday.
“Everybody is in contact with everybody. The Libyan regime is sending messengers everywhere, to Turkey, New York, Paris. There are contacts but it’s not a negotiation proper at this stage,” Juppé said on France Info state radio.
“Emissaries are telling us Gaddafi is ready to go, let’s talk about it,” he said, without saying who the emissaries were, and he repeated calls for Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to step down.
“The question is no longer about whether Gaddafi goes but when and how,” Juppé said.
Rebels In Libya's Western Mountains Face Shortages
…The problem is that there are too many mouths to feed, he says. Zintan has become a hub: Fighters are congregating here, as are refugees from other areas, plus the local population already in residence.
“We are suffering from an extremely serious food crisis here,” Mohammed says.
Drinking water is also in short supply in many areas, as is medicine.
At a pharmacy in Zintan, a man walks in and asks for Panadol, a brand of painkiller.
Pharmacist Masoud Abdul Salaam says he doesn’t have any. He doesn’t have what the next few customers ask for, either.
He says he hasn’t been able to get stocks in since the uprising began; he’s just selling whatever he has left. People with serious illnesses — diabetes, high blood pressure — aren’t finding the medications they need, he says. “We have nothing,” he says.
And the fuel pumps aren’t working, either. Fuel is also brought in on the backs of pickup trucks — in large 100-liter plastic containers.
It’s sold for 50 dinars for 20 liters — a tenfold price increase since the rebellion began. As a result, most people can’t afford to use their cars.
But Col. Juma Ibrahim, a senior commander of the military council in Zintan, says what he needs most is not guns: “Water, fuel, food, shoes, clothes — many things,” he says.
U.N. envoy talks to Libya about transition
UNITED NATIONS, July 10 (Reuters) - The U.N.’s special envoy for Libya has held talks with Libya’s prime minister and foreign minister, and raised ideas about managing a transition in the country, a statement from U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon’s office said on Sunday.
Ban’s Special Envoy for Libya, Abdul Elah Al-Khatib, traveled to Tripoli on Saturday and talked with prime minister Al-Baghdadi Ali Al-Mahmoudi and foreign minister Abdelati Obeidi.
“He underscored the need for a political solution to the crisis that spares the Libyan people further suffering and meets their legitimate demands and aspirations for a democratic future,” the statement said.
He raised ideas about managing a transition in Libya and listened to the government’s views about the impact of sanctions and NATO operations, the statement said.
Al-Khatib will brief Ban and the U.N. Security Council on Monday about his ongoing efforts, the statement said.
Ban also spoke with Libya’s prime minister by telephone on Thursday about the need to end the current fighting in the North African nation.
NATO warplanes have been bombing Libya under a U.N. mandate to protect civilians in the country. Muammar Gaddafi has rejected any suggestion that he give up power and he has described the NATO campaign as an act of colonial aggression aimed at stealing Libya’s oil.
UN Focuses on Rape as Weapon of War After Libyan Woman’s Plight
It took a video going “viral” of a Libyan woman being dragged from a Tripoli hotel — shouting that she’d been raped for two days by 15 men — to put a face and name to a weapon of war that dates back at least to the founding of ancient Rome.
Defying social norms that can turn rape victims into outcasts, Iman al-Obeidi went public with her story. Her allegations of torture at the hands of soldiers loyal to Muammar Qaddafi spread fast via Facebook and Twitter.
“Iman is publicly hailed as a hero in Benghazi, and there are discussions about changing attitudes,” Arafat Jamal, the United Nations refugee agency’s co-coordinator for Libya, said in an interview from Benghazi.
The worldwide attention given to Obeidi’s plight helped secure the 29-year-old law graduate safe passage to Romania and shine a spotlight on a horror that dates back to the earliest armies and continues in war zones such as the Democratic Republic of Congo.
…The one-year-old United Nations women’s agency, UN Women, unveils today its first report drawing attention to sexual violence against women as the International Criminal Court investigates allegations of mass rapes in Libya.
“Very significant advances in international law in the past two decades have, for the first time, made it possible to redress sexual violence crimes,” according to 165-page report by the agency led by former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet. “However, prosecutions are rare.”
Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaaim said the ICC “functions as a European foreign policy vehicle”.
“It is a political court which serves its European paymasters,” he said, adding: “Our own courts will deal with any human rights abuses and other crimes committed in the course of conflict in Libya.” Libya hits back over Gaddafi arrest warrant
Libya: Muammar Gaddafi subject to ICC arrest warrant
The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi, accusing him of crimes against humanity.
The court had grounds to believe he had ordered attacks on civilians during Libya’s four-month uprising, it said.
The Hague-based court also issued warrants for two of Col Gaddafi’s top aides - his son Saif al-Islam and intelligence chief Abdullah al-Sanussi.
Thousands of people are believed to have been killed in the conflict.
Anti-Gaddafi forces said on Monday they had launched a new push towards Tripoli, with heavy fighting near the strategic town of Bir al-Ghanam, to the south-west of capital.
The rebel defence minister told the BBC that forces opposed to Col Gaddafi may also make a move on the capital from the east.
