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TRIPOLI, Libya Libya won't turn into an extremist Islamic country, its interim leader assured the European Union's top diplomat on Saturday, adding that the formation of a new government of experts is to be completed in the coming week.
Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, chairman of the National Transitional Council, caused a stir in the West last month when he said Islamic Shariah law would be the main source of legislation in the new Libya and that tenets violating it would be nullified.
At a news conference with EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, he addressed those concerns. "We will not be an extremist Islamic country," he said. "Our Islam is moderate."
Other NTC members have said Abdul-Jalil had expressed his personal views on the role of Shariah law. They noted that a constitution, which would address the role of religion in Libya, will only be written next year.
Ashton told a women's conference in Tripoli that Libya's women should make sure their rights are enshrined in the future constitution, calling for gender-equality in the male-dominated country.
"The European Union wants to be with you on this journey, to try and help overcome the political and social barriers, to help ensure your role in shaping your future," Ashton said.
Abdul-Jalil said women would play a role in Libyan politics and business and that they would be represented in the interim government that is now being formed and will run Libya until a national assembly is elected by June. He said the 63-member NTC has four female members, citing it as an example of the political participation of women.
The recently appointed prime minister, Abdurrahim el-Keib, is to present the list of names of the new ministers to the NTC in the coming week, Abdul-Jalil said Saturday.
Ministers would be chosen based on expertise, not tribal considerations, he said.
The NTC chief was evasive when asked about growing concerns about the uncontrolled ownership of weapons. Since the end of the eight-month civil war that toppled the Gadhafi regime, rival anti-Gadhafi militias have clashed repeatedly.
On Saturday, two former fighters from the coastal city of Zawiya, some 30 miles (50 kilometers) west of Tripoli, were killed in a clash with a rival militia from a nearby town, said Mukhtar al-Akhdar, commander of an armed group that was not involved in the confrontation. Saturday's deaths brought to four the number of people killed in the dispute over the past two days. The fighting was the latest of a series of violent confrontations between militias jockeying for position.
El-Keib, the prime minister, has said he could not disarm fighters until he has prepared alternatives, including jobs and training. Abdul-Jalil seemed to affirm the slow approach Saturday, noting that 75 percent of those carrying weapons are unemployed. "We will provide real opportunities of employment. We will support them," he said.
Ashton opened an EU office in Tripoli and said her visit was meant to show support for the post-Gadhafi Libya. "We hope to be here for many years as your partner," she told Abdul-Jalil.
In addition to having a penchant for Condoleezza Rice, his crew of female bodyguards and his Ukrainian nurse, it turns out that Muammar Gaddafi also had a thing for Viagra.
According to The Sunday Times, Faisal, a 29-year-old who served as the leader's chef and servant for seven years (he applied the dictator's makeup and dyed his hair), said that Gaddafi took so many of the little blue pills that a nurse once warned him that he needed to take it down a notch.
All of this Viagra was apparently necessary for his voracious sexual appetite.
From The Sunday Times, via The Australian:
"There were four or sometimes five women each day," Faisal said. "There were so many. They had just become a habit to Gaddafi. They would go into his bedroom, he would have his way with them and then he would come out, like he had just blown his nose."
Gaddafi, who was killed last month near his hometown of Sirte, reportedly hired Faisal after the dictator spoke at Tripoli University, where the young man was studying law, The Australian reports.
In April, the U.S. envoy to the United Nations said that some Gaddafi loyalists had been given Viagra to assist in the raping of women for punishment, according to Reuters. The Associated Press said in June that the office of the chief prosector for the International Criminal Court launched an investigation into the report.
After Gaddafi was deposed from office in August 2011, several of his former bodyguards came forward with allegations of sexual assault. Some of the women alleged that they had been raped by as many as 20 men.
That has followed a two month-long siege and indiscriminate bombardment of a city of 100,000 which has been reduced to a Grozny-like state of destruction by newly triumphant rebel troops with Nato air and special-forces support.
And these massacre sites are only the latest of many such discoveries. Amnesty International has now produced compendious evidence of mass abduction and detention, beating and routine torture, killings and atrocities by the rebel militias Britain, France and the US have backed for the last eight months – supposedly to stop exactly those kind of crimes being committed by the Gaddafi regime.
Throughout that time African migrants and black Libyans have been subject to a relentless racist campaign of mass detention, lynchings and atrocities on the usually unfounded basis that they have been loyalist mercenaries. Such attacks continue, says Bouckaert, who witnessed militias from Misrata this week burning homes in Tawerga so that the town's predominantly black population – accused of backing Gaddafi – will be unable to return.
The Occupy Wall Street movement has now spread throughout the United States, sometimes in the face of serious acts of repression, as in Oakland, California. It has followed in the spirit of the Arab and European movements in demanding an end to special privileges for the richest one per cent, including their ability to more or less buy the US government for purposes of their choosing. What is often forgotten is that the Ben Alis, Mubaraks and Gaddafis were not simply authoritarian tyrants. They were the one per cent and the guardians of the one per cent, in their own societies - and loathed for exactly that.
ZINTAN, Libya -- Moammar Gadhafi's captured intelligence chief is being held at a highly secret location deep in Libya's southern desert because of possible threats to his life, a government spokesman said Monday.
Abdullah al-Senoussi, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands and by France, is being held in the city of Sabha by revolutionary fighters who captured him on Sunday, said Hmeid al-Etabi, a local spokesman for Libya's new leadership. But the prisoner's precise location must be kept secret, he said.
"The revolutionaries have created a total media blackout on his whereabouts because so many people want him dead," al-Etabi told The Associated Press.
Fighters from another faction in Libya's western mountains are holding the other high-level detainee captured over the weekend, Gadhafi's son Seif al-Islam, whose convoy was swarmed by militiamen in the southern desert on Saturday. They are also keeping him in a secret location and refusing to hand him over to national authorities in Tripoli.
The inability of the National Transitional Council to have either detainee brought to the capital has added to doubts about its control over the fractured country after the fall of Gadhafi's 42-year rule in August and his capture and death last month.
Seif al-Islam and al-Senoussi are both wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, on charges of crimes against humanity for the brutal crackdown on dissent as the uprising against the regime began in mid-February and escalated into a civil war.
Libyan authorities, however, have said they will try Seif al-Islam at home, even though they have yet to establish a judicial system. They have not said whether they might be willing to extradite al-Senoussi, who was captured to the south of the city of Sabha, 400 miles (650 kilometers) south of Tripoli.
Al-Senoussi, Gadhafi's brother-in-law, was also one of six Libyans convicted in absentia and sentenced to life in prison in France for the 1989 bombing of a French passenger over Niger that killed all 170 people on board.
The French government said Monday it wants al-Senoussi to be brought to France. French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said his government was in talks with "relevant jurisdictions" to ensure that he is held to account.
The prosecutor at the Netherlands-based ICC, Luis Moreno Ocampo, is to travel to Libya this week for discussions on where the trial of Seif al-Islam will be held.
The court's spokesman, Fadi El Abdallah, said Sunday that Libya would have to convincingly lay out its arguments that it will have a solid legal system capable to giving him a fair trial.
Seif al-Islam was once the face of reform in Libya and led his father's drive to emerge from pariah status over the last decade, but he staunchly backed his father in his brutal crackdown on rebels.
Al-Senoussi also helped direct efforts to quash the rebellion.
Reflecting the confusion over the two prisoners, Libya's interim prime minister, Abdurrahim el-Keib, said at a news conference Monday that he was not even 100 percent sure of al-Senoussi's capture.
"Before I confirm that to you I need to confirm for myself that he was really captured," he told reporters after meeting with the United States' ambassador to the U.N.
Ambassador Susan Rice was visiting Tripoli for talks that were expected to include the capture of the two men.
The director-general of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Yves Daccord, said the group is in talks with authorities in Libya to visit detainees including Seif al-Islam. He told reporters in Geneva that the ICRC expects to soon be able to visit him.
Seif al-Islam is being held in the small town of Zintan in Libya's western mountains by the fighters who seized him on Saturday. The fighters had tracked him for two days to the southern desert and flew him back to Zintan, 85 miles (150 kilometers) southwest of Tripoli.
On Sunday, the fighters holding Seif al-Islam posted a video of him on YouTube. In the clip, he appeared in good health and said an injury to his hand was the result of a NATO airstrike a month ago that struck his convoy in Wadi Zamzam, about 90 miles (140 kilometers) southeast of Tripoli. He said 26 people were killed in the strike.
Saif al-Islam, Colonel Gaddafi's son and the heir apparent, has been captured, according to officials from the National Transitional council (NTC).
Gaddafi was reportedly arrested in the town of Obari, near Sabah in the south of Libya by militia forces. Reports suggest that Saif and his colleagues were ambushed.
According to Reuters, the European Union has urged Libyan authorities to make sure Gaddafi stands trial at the international criminal Court (ICC).
The 39-year-old captive is wanted by the ICC for crimes against humanity; however the NTC has yet to confirm whether Gaddafi will be handed over to international authorities or made to stand trial in Libya.
Luis Moreno Ocampo, a prosecutor for the ICC said: "The good news is that Saif al-Islam is arrested, he is alive, and now he will face justice."
Marek Marczynski of Amnesty International also urged the NTC to transfer Gaddafi to the court in the Netherlands:
"The ICC has an arrest warrant out for him and that is the correct thing to do. He must be brought before a judge as soon as possible," he said. "It matters for the victims. What they need to see is true justice. They need to know the truth about what happened."
However, Libya's Information Minister Mahmoud Shammam reacted to Saif's capture by calling him an outlaw who "should be tried in front of the Libyan Court, by Libyan people and by Libyan justice".
A picture of Gaddafi apparently inured appeared on Facebook shortly after reports of his capture. Saif's fingers are believed to be bandaged from wounds sustained a month ago in an air strike.
He is expected to be transferred to the mountain town of Zintan until the NTC decide his fate. Three armed aides were captured alongside Gaddafi.
Reports suggest that the son of former intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi, who is also wanted by the ICC, was part of the group arrested.
Across the desert state, Libyans took to the streets to celebrate Saif's arrest.
The news comes a month after Saif's father, Muammar Gaddafi, was caught and lynched in the town of Sirte.
Speaking to Reuters, Justice Minister Mohammed al-Alagy confirmed: "We have arrested Saif al-Islam Gaddafi in (the) Obari area."
ZINTAN, Libya -- Moammar Gadhafi's son and one-time heir apparent will be tried in Libya and not handed over to the International Criminal Court even though the country's new rulers have yet to set up a justice system, the information minister said on Sunday.
The Libyan people want to see Seif al-Islam Gadhafi tried at home for the crimes he committed against the Libyan people, said the minister, Mahmoud Shammam.
Al-Senoussi's capture comes a day after Gadhafi's son Seif al-Islam was caught trying to flee Libya to Niger. Both men are wanted by the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
ZINTAN, Libya (AP) - Moammar Gadhafi's son and one-time heir apparent will be tried in Libya and not handed over to the International Criminal Court even though the country's new rulers have yet to set up a justice system, the information minister said on Sunday.
The Libyan people want to see Seif al-Islam Gadhafi tried at home for the crimes he committed against the Libyan people, said the minister, Mahmoud Shammam.
Seif al-Islam, captured over the weekend, is wanted by the Netherlands-based ICC on charges of crimes against humanity.
"The ICC is just a secondary court, and the people of Libya will not allow Seif al-Islam to be tried outside," Shammam told The Associated Press on Sunday.
ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo told the AP Saturday that he will travel to Libya on Monday for talks with Libya's National Transitional Council on where the trial will take place.
Ocampo said that while national governments have the first right to try their own citizens for war crimes, his primary goal was to ensure Seif al-Islam has a fair trial.
Shammam said the NTC will discuss its decision with Ocampo during his visit.
"It will take time for the trial to happen but this is natural," he said.
Human Rights Watch called for Seif al-Islam to be promptly turned over to the International Criminal Court in a statement, citing the apparent killings in custody of his father and brother Muatassim on Oct. 20 as "particular cause for concern."
Seif al-Islam was captured in the southern Libyan desert early Saturday morning by revolutionary fighters from the town of Zintan, 85 miles (150 kilometers) southwest of Tripoli. He was flown back to Zintan where he remains in custody.
Well we know one thing, the West did not get involved to save civilians
That has followed a two month-long siege and indiscriminate bombardment of a city of 100,000 which has been reduced to a Grozny-like state of destruction by newly triumphant rebel troops with Nato air and special-forces support.
And these massacre sites are only the latest of many such discoveries. Amnesty International has now produced compendious evidence of mass abduction and detention, beating and routine torture, killings and atrocities by the rebel militias Britain, France and the US have backed for the last eight months supposedly to stop exactly those kind of crimes being committed by the Gaddafi regime.
Throughout that time African migrants and black Libyans have been subject to a relentless racist campaign of mass detention, lynchings and atrocities on the usually unfounded basis that they have been loyalist mercenaries. Such attacks continue, says Bouckaert, who witnessed militias from Misrata this week burning homes in Tawerga so that the town's predominantly black population accused of backing Gaddafi will be unable to return.
If the Libyan war was about saving lives, it was a catastrophic failure | Seumas Milne | Comment is free | The Guardian
The ICC is not just looking at the crimes of pro Gaddafi's but of NATO and the NTC
ICC to investigate NATO and NTC crimes in Libya « compliancecampaign
so let's get to what this was about M O N E Y as usual. Massive oil deal for France and the UK which paid £300m on the campaign is likely to make £500b on reconstruction - not a bad deal, I would say.
However this article from AlJazzera may just have hit the nail on the head
The Occupy Wall Street movement has now spread throughout the United States, sometimes in the face of serious acts of repression, as in Oakland, California. It has followed in the spirit of the Arab and European movements in demanding an end to special privileges for the richest one per cent, including their ability to more or less buy the US government for purposes of their choosing. What is often forgotten is that the Ben Alis, Mubaraks and Gaddafis were not simply authoritarian tyrants. They were the one per cent and the guardians of the one per cent, in their own societies - and loathed for exactly that.
How neoliberalism created an age of activism - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
You never know the people may end up getting the last laugh in the end after all.
It has been more than two and a half years since Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told to Israeli President Shimon Peress face, You (Jews) know well how to kill. Prime Minister Erdoğan has also declared more than a few times that the main obstacle to peace in this part of the world is Israel, once calling the Jewish state a festering boil in the Middle East that spreads hate and enmity. In this holy month of Ramadan full of blood on Muslim territories, lets try to identify who are the ones who know well how to kill.
As the Syrian death count clicks every day to come close to 2,000, the Turkish-Kurdish death count does not stop, already over 40,000 since 1984, both adding to the big pool of blood called the Middle East. Only during this Ramadan, the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKKs, death toll has reached 50 in this Muslim Kurds vs. Muslim Turks war. This excludes the PKK casualties in Turkey and in northern Iraq due to Turkish military retaliation since they are seldom accurately reported.
Sudan is not in the conventional Middle East, so lets ignore the genocide there. Lets ignore, also, the West Pakistani massacres in East Pakistan (Bangladesh) totaling 1.25 million in 1971. Or 200,000 deaths in Algeria in war between Islamists and the government in 1991-2006.
But a simple, strictly Middle East research will give you one million deaths in the all-Muslim Iran-Iraq war; 300,000 Muslim minorities killed by Saddam Hussein; 80,000 Iranians killed during the Islamic revolution; 25,000 deaths in 1970-71, the days of Black September, by the Jordanian government in its fight against the Palestinians; and 20,000 Islamists killed in 1982 by the elder al-Assad in Hama. The World Health Organizations estimate of Osama bin Ladens carnage in Iraq was already 150,000 a few years earlier.
In a 2007 research, Gunnar Heinsohn from the University of Bremen and Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, found out that some 11 million Muslims have been violently killed since 1948, of which 35,000, (0.3 percent) died during the six years of Arab war against Israel, or one out of every 315 fatalities. In contrast, over 90 percent who perished were killed by fellow Muslims.
According to Mssrs. Heinsohn and Pipes, the grisly inventory finds the total number of deaths in conflicts all over the world since 1950 numbering around 85 million. Of that, the Muslim Arab deaths in the Arab-Israeli conflict were at 46,000 including 11,000 during Israels war of independence. That makes 0.05 percent of all deaths in all conflicts, or 0.4 percent of all Arab deaths in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
In another calculation ignoring small massacres like the one that goes on in Syria and other deaths during the Arab Spring, only Saddams Iraq, Jordan, the elder al-Assads Syria, Iran-Iraq war, the bin Laden campaign in Iraq, the Iranian Islamic revolution and the Turkish-Kurdish conflict caused 1.65 million Muslim deaths by Muslims compared to less than 50,000 deaths in the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1950, including fatalities during and after Operation Cast Lead which came after the Heinsohn-Pipes study. For those who dont have a calculator ready at their desks, allow me to tell: 50,000 is three percent of 1.65 million.
Golda Meir, the fourth prime minister of Israel, or rather the Mother of Israel, had a perfectly realistic point when she said that peace in the Middle East would only be possible when Arabs love their children more than they hate us.
TRIPOLI, Libya Libya's new leaders said Tuesday that some prisoners held by revolutionary forces have been abused, but insisted the mistreatment was not systematic and pledged to tackle the problem.
The acknowledgment comes a day after the U.N. released a report a detailing alleged torture and ill treatment in lockups controlled by the forces that overthrew dictator Moammar Gadhafi. The report says that Libyan revolutionaries still hold about 7,000 people, many of them sub-Saharan Africans who are in some cases accused or suspected of being mercenaries hired by Gadhafi.
Libya's new leaders, who received the backing of the U.S., France, Britain and other countries in their fight against Gadhafi, are eager to assure the world of their commitment to democracy and human rights. Interior Minister Fawzy Abdul-Ali acknowledged that abuses have occurred but said the new government is trying to eliminate them.
"We are trying our best to establish a legitimate system that is authorized to make arrests, detain and interrogate people," he told The Associated Press. "We are trying to minimize the possibilities of violations taking place."
Abdul-Ali said the government plans to create special security units under the authority of the central government that will handle prisoners. Leaders are working to bolster "the authority of the new government all across the country," he said.
Responding to the U.N. report, Deputy Prime Minister Mustafa Abushagur also acknowledged there are problems with detainees.
"Are there illegal detentions in Libya? I am afraid there are," Abushagur told a news conference. He said any abuses have been committed by militias not yet controlled by central authorities.
Libya's new leaders have struggled to stamp their authority on the country since toppling Gadhafi's regime. One of the greatest challenges still facing the leadership is how to rein in the dozens of revolutionary militias that arose during the war and now are reluctant to disband or submit to central authority.
Abushagur also denied some news reports claiming that Libyan leaders are arming rebels in Syria.
"We are with the Syrian people but we are not going to send fighters or arms," he said.
Also Tuesday, dozens of people with relatives who went missing in Libya's recent civil war rallied in front of the main government building to demand that authorities speed up the search for their loved ones.
Most of the missing were fighters, but there are also civilians among them. There are an estimated 20,000 people missing, according to the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo.
Libya: Prisoner Abuse By Revolutionary Forces Acknowledged
I can only hope that these tribes are able to work in a partnership that does not extend to dissolving it and killing each other in order to be the Muslim tribe that is Subservient to Allah whilst all other Muslim tribes (in Libya) are subservient to them.
That's their book. It follows.
Every 20 - 40 years? Lather, rinse and repeat.
Libya: Prisoner Abuse By Revolutionary Forces Acknowledged
Libya: Prisoner Abuse By Revolutionary Forces Acknowledged
I can only hope that these tribes are able to work in a partnership that does not extend to dissolving it and killing each other in order to be the Muslim tribe that is Subservient to Allah whilst all other Muslim tribes (in Libya) are subservient to them.
That's their book. It follows.
Every 20 - 40 years? Lather, rinse and repeat.
Democracy? I would love to see it gain a foothold here. I see what is happening in Iraq and I doubt it though.
It's not a nice place for an optimist to view from.
Libya: Prisoner Abuse By Revolutionary Forces Acknowledged
Libya: Prisoner Abuse By Revolutionary Forces Acknowledged
I can only hope that these tribes are able to work in a partnership that does not extend to dissolving it and killing each other in order to be the Muslim tribe that is Subservient to Allah whilst all other Muslim tribes (in Libya) are subservient to them.
That's their book. It follows.
Every 20 - 40 years? Lather, rinse and repeat.
Democracy? I would love to see it gain a foothold here. I see what is happening in Iraq and I doubt it though.
It's not a nice place for an optimist to view from.
You can't really have demoracy when Shariah Law is what you based your constitution on, at this point all I'm hoping for is a nation that is semi friendly towards the west that stays away from terrorism, thats it.
Libya: Prisoner Abuse By Revolutionary Forces Acknowledged
Democracy? I would love to see it gain a foothold here. I see what is happening in Iraq and I doubt it though.
It's not a nice place for an optimist to view from.
You can't really have demoracy when Shariah Law is what you based your constitution on, at this point all I'm hoping for is a nation that is semi friendly towards the west that stays away from terrorism, thats it.
I don't think either of us will get what we would hope for and my hope would be Democracy as that raises people up.
You can't really have demoracy when Shariah Law is what you based your constitution on, at this point all I'm hoping for is a nation that is semi friendly towards the west that stays away from terrorism, thats it.
I don't think either of us will get what we would hope for and my hope would be Democracy as that raises people up.
I would love for Libya to have democracy and establish a separation between mosque and state, but that will never happen in a million years.
I don't think either of us will get what we would hope for and my hope would be Democracy as that raises people up.
I would love for Libya to have democracy and establish a separation between mosque and state, but that will never happen in a million years.
That doesn't mean that a democratic system can't be established.
My limited knowledge of Malaysia and Indonesia is that they have Islam as their state religions but they are also democracies.
MEXICO CITY Mexico said Wednesday that a son of the late Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi and three relatives had plotted to sneak into Mexico under false names and take clandestine refuge at a posh Pacific coast resort.
The elaborate plan to bring al-Saadi Gadhafi to Mexico allegedly involved two Mexicans, a Canadian and a Danish suspect, all of whom have been detained, Interior Secretary Alejandro Poire said.
He did not reveal which relatives had planned to accompany Al-Saadi Gadhafi, who is known for his love of professional soccer and run-ins with police in Europe.
The plot was uncovered by Mexican intelligence agents in early September as al-Saadi was fleeing Libya shortly after his father's ouster. He never made it to Mexico, but did reach the Western African country of Niger, where he has been living.
The plotters allegedly jetted into Mexico, opened bank accounts and bought properties meant to be used as safe houses in several parts of the country, including one at a resort on Mexico's Pacific coast.
"The large economic resources which this criminal organization has, or had, allowed them to contract private flights," Poire told a news conference.
Poire said the leader of the plot was a Canadian woman he identified as Cynthia Vanier. He said she had been detained on Nov. 10 and is being held, along with three other suspects, under a form of house arrest on suspicion of using false documents, human smuggling and organized crime.
Poire said Vanier "was the direct contact with the Gadhafi family and the leader of the group, and presumably was the person in charge of the finances of the operation.
The plot also allegedly involved a Mexican woman who lived in the United States, who Poire said served as the liaison to obtain the falsified Mexican identity documents.
A Danish man was "the logistic liaison" for the plan, Poire said. He said the alleged conspirators also traveled to Kosovo "and several Middle Eastern countries."
"The activities of the criminal organization in our country included the falsification of official documents, the opening of bank accounts with false documents (and) the purchase of real estate that was intended, among other things, to serve as a residence for the Gadhafi family at a house located in the zone of the Bahia de Banderas," just north of the resort of Puerto Vallarta, Poire said.
The Mexican officials made no mention of Moammar Gadhafi himself being involved in the plan, and Poire did not say which relatives might have planned to accompany the son to Mexico. The elder Gadhafi was ousted from power in late August and was captured and killed in Libya on Oct. 20.
Gary Peters, the director of Ontario, Canada-based Can/Aust Security & Investigations International Inc., said in a telephone interview that he had worked as al-Saadi's North America security chief for several years and confirmed that Gadhafi had planned to travel to Mexico because "he was interested in buying property there in Punta Mita."
Al-Saadi had never been there before and probably read about it in a magazine, Peters said. "It's a pretty well-known place. It's a highfalutin place."
The resort features private villas, five-star hotels and a golf course. The resort's website, Puntamita.com, describes it as "an inviting seaside playground, a natural magnet for aquatic adventures. The sparkling waters, pristine beaches, coral reef and occasionally rocky coast inspire a host of delightful experiences."
Peters told The Associated Press he knew Vanier and confirmed that her role was to get travel documents for Gadhafi's son, but he said the arrangements were legitimate, as far as he knew.
"It wasn't smuggling. I don't understand how they're saying it was smuggling," he said.
The plan, Peters said, "was to help him get there on humanitarian rights." Asked if that meant he might have intended to file an asylum claim, Peters said "I can't really comment on it at the moment. Cindy's in jail now so I don't know what's going on down there."
"I don't know where these documents were coming from; that was all Cindy's area. I was just doing security," Peters said.
Reporting from Tripoli, Libya Weary of continuing gunfire in the streets of the capital, Libya's interim government has given notice to out-of-town militias to hand in their weapons and leave Tripoli in order to help steer the country toward civilian rule.
Militias have until Dec. 20 to leave, said Abdul-Rafik Bu Hajjar, head of the Tripoli municipal council, threatening to ban all traffic except vehicles from the Interior and Defense ministries if the militias fail to comply. His order has the backing of the new prime minister, Abdel-Rahim Keeb.
Rebel groups from across Libya stormed Tripoli in August, in a final, successful assault on longtime leader Moammar Kadafi. Having transformed government buildings and opulent homes of former Kadafi confidants into brigade "headquarters," the militias now seem reluctant to depart.
Armed groups from the cities of Misurata and Zintan are among the most powerful remaining in the Libyan capital. As night falls, members have engaged in internecine feuds, gunfire and bombings.
There is major concern that the militias will become the muscle for political factions increasingly divided along Islamist and secular lines. Already, newly named secularist Defense Minister Osama Jueli has said he intends to keep a militia, particularly men from his hometown of Zintan, on the streets of the capital until a credible police force emerges.
"It's the duty of the Ministry of Interior to establish security and establish a police force to take over from the revolutionaries who are in control," he said. "These will not be withdrawn until a police force is established; to be sure, this is what I am aiming for."
But the presence of the Zintan brigades and other militias is not welcomed by the Tripoli Military Council's Qatar-backed Islamist leader, Abdel-Hakim Belhaj, who for months has armed and paid higher salaries to men he considers loyal to him, forming a private militia.
Scores of Tripoli residents Wednesday protested the continuing lawless behavior of remaining militias.
The attorney general of Libya's new government said Wednesday that armed men had dragged him from his car in broad daylight in Tripoli and threatened his life if he didn't free one of their friends from jail. Abdel-Aziz Hassady said he escaped only by snatching a gun from one of the attackers and pointing it at another's head until he was able to get into a car and escape.
Recently, The Times has witnessed other rebels taking "justice" into their own hands. The men had captured suspected Kadafi loyalists and locked them in tunnels built below the home of one of Kadafi's sons, Mutassim.
Speaking anonymously, a Tripoli telecommunications company employee said he was similarly detained after a street scuffle in which he broke a rebel fighter's nose.
"They [a rebel gang] came to my house at night to take me away. There were a dozen cars and a pickup truck with an antiaircraft gun mounted on it," he said. "They accused me of being a Kadafi supporter, and before I even started the court proceedings for breaking the man's nose, they took me to their brigade house and kept me there for two weeks of interrogation."
Personal relationships and feuds often take precedence over law books, the arrestee said.
"The brother of an ex-girlfriend was in the brigade that took me. He hates me. Every day he would come to my cell and promise I would never be released. They are working without a system, they don't know what they do, there is no strategy, they are just collecting people. There are a lot of people arrested without trial."
LONDON A legal action charity says the head of Tripoli's military council is suing Britain and its security forces for their alleged role in his rendition in 2004.
London-based group Reprieve says Abdel-Hakim Belhaj and his wife were handed over to U.S. authorities for rendition to Libya in 2004, when they tried to seek asylum in Britain.
It says the couple, who then lived in Beijing, were forced on planes that took them to what was believed to be a secret U.S. prison where they were abused. The couple were then imprisoned in Libyan jails.
Sapna Malik, a lawyer representing Belhaj and his wife, says it appeared Britain "was responsible for setting off this torturous chain of events."
Abdel Hakim Belhaj, Libya Rebel, Suing UK Over Alleged Role In Rendition
LONDON A legal action charity says the head of Tripoli's military council is suing Britain and its security forces for their alleged role in his rendition in 2004.
London-based group Reprieve says Abdel-Hakim Belhaj and his wife were handed over to U.S. authorities for rendition to Libya in 2004, when they tried to seek asylum in Britain.
It says the couple, who then lived in Beijing, were forced on planes that took them to what was believed to be a secret U.S. prison where they were abused. The couple were then imprisoned in Libyan jails.
Sapna Malik, a lawyer representing Belhaj and his wife, says it appeared Britain "was responsible for setting off this torturous chain of events."
Abdel Hakim Belhaj, Libya Rebel, Suing UK Over Alleged Role In Rendition
...One cannot get around what [Thomas] Jefferson heard when he went with John Adams to wait upon Tripolis ambassador to London in March 1785. When they inquired by what right the Barbary states preyed upon American shipping, enslaving both crews and passengers, Americas two foremost envoys were informed that it was written in the Koran, that all Nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon whoever they could find and to make Slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise. (It is worth noting that the United States played no part in the Crusades, or in the Catholic reconquista of Andalusia.)
Jefferson Versus the Muslim Pirates by Christopher Hitchens, City Journal Spring 2007
bigfuckingnarcissist1775 should immediately go over to Libya and show the new government exactly where all the functioning nukes are. He's the only one who still thinks they are there somewhere, so he must know where they are hidden.
