TIME TO CALL IN A FEW FAVOURS?

  Saif al-Islam - Photo: Ismail Zitouni/Reuters

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son / spawn of Muammar Gaddafi, was captured yesterday near the southern Libyan oil town of Obari, as his armed companions were trying to smuggle him out of the country. The fact that he threw in the towel unlike his old man is currently being held in custody means that he might avoid an immediate and violent retribution for his crimes.

Oddly enough this news, as has been noted by the Independent on Sunday (20.11.11) may make some former grandees a tad twitchy. Saif al-Islam was Gaddafi’s heir and was feted in the West in his time. As a keeper of the regimes secrets and someone who was in the thick of brokering Gaddafi’s deal with the West his survival could be described in some circles as awkward.

Tony Blair, Lord Mandelson and other high rollers such as Oleg Deripaska and Nat Rothschild have all got links to Saif al-Islam. What may make this even more interesting is if he decides to blow the lid on the lot in court and call character witnesses, something that would be more difficult for those involved to avoid any trial takes place in the Hague.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has a warrant out for Saif al-Islam arrest for crimes against humanity which could make things interesting. So far the Libyans as of yesterday were pretty determined that he would be put on trial in his own country to start with. The ICC is in contact with the Libyan Justice Ministry and one of its prosecutors would now fly to Tripoli for talks.

Mahmoud Shammam, the Libyan Information Minister, said: "This is the final chapter of the Libyan drama. We will put him on trial in Libya and he will be judged by Libyan law for his crimes." A guilty verdict and sentence of death in Libya would upstage any possible proceedings at The Hague and could lead to a number of UK based individuals breathing a deep sigh of relief - I wonder if any 'favours' will be called in? Watch this space!

THUS SHOULD DIE ALL TYRANTS...

He won't be missed...save by his friends

The news that the Libyan ex-leader Col Muammar Gaddafi has been killed after fleeing an assault on his home town of Sirte will I suspect lead to the shedding of few tears for his passing. He may be missed by members of his family and his friends but by few other people. There will be more tears from the relatives of his victims and their surviving family members. Gaddafi may not have dodged the NATO bullets but he has successfully avoided a day in court at the Hague on War Crimes charges. Hopefully the National Transition Council will once its fully in-charge will publish any recovered paperwork relating to the supply or arms to the previous regime and hopefully have a full and public investigation into just who supplied the Libyan dictator with his weapons over the long and brutal years of his rule.

INTERESTING TIMES

We live in interesting and fast moving times - today the Con Dem Foreign Secretary, William Hague said the UK will recognise the Libyan rebel council as the "sole governmental authority", and then promptly expelled all the Gaddafi-regimes diplomats. The Libyan charge d'affaires was summoned to the Foreign Office beforehand and told that he and other diplomats must leave.

The UK has rightly (in my opinion) asked the National Transitional Council to appoint a new diplomatic envoy. Recognition followed similar earlier moves by the US and France. Oddly enough the UK Government had previously stated that it recognised "countries not governments".

So now we have two Libya's and two Libyan governments. We have come along way very fast (diplomatically) not that long ago the former PM Tony Blair and other Western Leaders were busy snuggling up the repressive Libyan leader and his spawn.

Here's hoping that what we are seeing here is Western recognition of the wind of change that's blowing through the Arab world. And here's hoping that Gaddafi (and his ilk) and the rest of the repressive bunch end up in Court and after due process spend a seriously long time in goal answering for their crimes.

When Saddam went far too much was swept under the carpet (the Kurds amongst many others never did get their day in court) and we never did find out which Western Governments (and the rest) and which companies had been quietly breaking the sanctions because after all he was 'our boy'.

Heaven forbid that the current Libyan crisis drags on and Gaddafi continues to cling on to power in and around Tripoli. No doubt there may be calls for an arms embargo which would harm any prospects of an outright opposition success as with Bosnia. I mean like Gaddafi does not have enough stock piled already, no doubt previously sold to him at cost by British Arms dealers (under New Labour and the Con Dems)...oops..

And if it's not asking too much while we are at it lets have a long hard impartial look at just who's been profitably tooling up the forces of repression around the globe and shine some light on the UK's at times dubious foreign policy and exactly what decisions have been and are being made on our name?

Eman al-Obedi

The Libyan authorities must thoroughly investigate the case of a woman who said she had been raped by forces loyal to Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi, Amnesty International said today.

“Eman al-Obeidi’s allegations are stomach-churning. The Libyan authorities must immediately launch an independent and impartial investigation and bring those responsible to justice if the allegations are well-founded,” said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Director 


“It is extremely disturbing that Eman al-Obeidi was forcibly dragged away by Libyan security officials when she tried to speak to journalists. The authorities must say where she is now and guarantee her safety and well-being. If she is being detained, she should be released immediately."


"The Libyan authorities have a long record of silencing those who dare speak out against human rights violations. It is all the more worrying that they did not hesitate to do this, using heavy-handed methods, despite the presence of the international media."

Eman al-Obedi was detained on Saturday after bursting into a Tripoli hotel where international journalists had gathered and saying she had been raped.

(Source: Amnesty International) http://www.amnesty.org/en

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Sign the international petition here: http://www.avaaz.org/en/free_iman_al_obeidi/?cl=998180754&v=8753

A WIND OF CHANGE?

Small stones can start large avalanches, opposition to Muammar Gaddafi and his murderous repressive regime is not new, it has a long history both inside and outside of Libya. Not that former PM Tony Blair and other Western Leaders who were busy snuggling up the repressive leader and his spawn would have noticed, but courageous Libyans defying the repressive Gaddafi regime took to the streets not a month ago, but more than two years ago. They risked torture and death sentences and their protest largely passed unnoticed by most of the world, a small group of families began to hold weekly demonstrations in Benghazi, the city that has become the epicenter of the uprising that swept across Libya.

In less than three months Gaddafi has gone from being the West's best mate to billy no mates. The UN Security Council has twice in three weeks done the right thing, initially by referring Libya to the International Criminal Court, then, by authorizing military force to protect civilians from Muammar al-Qaddafi's crazed wrath. Qaddafi is in many ways the perfect stage villain complete with an iffy dress sense, madness and way over-the-top threats to "show no mercy" to the people of Benghazi, along with his regional meddling and megalomaniac ideas, left him few friends or defenders.

Now What's even more amazing aside from the fact that China and Russia decided not to vote or even to abstain in the UN, is the fact that the Arab League (which has long promised much and delivered little for the Arab peoples) has also played an key role by abandoning its usual position of opposition to Security Council action against some of it's more repressive members. Previously the league has watched silently as Sudan's Omar al-Bashir committed crimes against humanity in Darfur, somewhat less recently, Saddam Hussein (Iraq) massacred Shia and Kurds, and Syria's Hafez al-Asad destroyed the town of Hama.

Now the question are the winds of change wafting through the Middle East and North Africa or is the ground literally crumbling beneath the feet of a whole host of iffy and repressive regimes - with popular dissent and demonstrations in Algeria, Syria, Yemen and Bharain - where next people may well wonder? What's embarrassing for Western leaders in particular is that they now find that many of the despots they have feted because they brought 'security and stability' to the region (and also lucratively armed to the teeth) are now busy repressing their own people in what appears to be a series of increasingly bloody and brutal (and hopefully futile) attempts to stay in power.

Gaddafi and friend (AFP / Getty)

Western leaders are 'discovering' that 'their boys' are a pretty grim and repressive bunch of (hopefully) no hopers. I suppose that we should all be grateful in that at least we have been spared the embarrassing suggestion that they did not no what they were like or what they were doing. Certainly the former New Labour Government and no doubt the Con Dem's spent plenty of time being nice to Gaddafi regime (the sight of Peter Hain (Labour MP for Neath) defending a long line of arms sales to Libya recently on BBC Question time comes to mind). Now the people are taking to the streets throughout the region, risking their lives for freedom, democracy and human rights against autocratic leaders that have long denied them for so long.

Here's hoping what we are seeing is the wind of change and here's hoping that Gaddafi (and his ilk) and the rest of the repressive bunch end up in Court and after due process spend a seriously long time in goal answering for their crimes. When Saddam went far too much was swept under the carpet (the Kurds amongst many others never did get their day in court) and we never did find out which Western Governments (and the rest) and which companies had been quietly breaking the sanctions because after all he was 'our boy'.

And while we are at it lets have a long hard look at just who's been profitably tooling up the forces of repression around the globe and shine some light on the UK's foreign policy and exactly what decisions have been and are being made on our name? Now this wave of revolution has been fuelled by the courage of ordinary people who are prepared to stand up and be counted, aided and abetted by Facebook - the blocking of which by repressive regimes is a key sign of unrest and dissent- incidentally I wonder if Facebook is blocked in Cuba, Venezuela, Zimbarbwe and Iran all of whom have expressed their support for Gaddafi?

ONE MORE THING…

There are a couple of key issues surrounding the release of the convicted Lockerbie /Pam AM flight bomber – one of which is whether of not he was even involved in perpetrating the atrocity. Syrian / Iranian involvement in the Lockerbie bombing has long been mooted – but the focus shifted to Libya during the run up to the First Gulf War – as the US and its Allies needed the Syrian’s on board - as well as Syrian troops on the ground with the Allied Armies - to swing the UN vote and liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation as well as passivity on the part of the Iranian’s who were no friend of Saddam’s Iraq.

What makes this relevant is that during the planned debate in the Scottish Parliament next week Christine Grahame, the SNP MSP for South of Scotland, is aiming to name a Syrian exile currently living under US protection in Washington DC as the true mastermind of the Lockerbie bombing, under parliamentary privilege. Grahame said the man had been named in Megrahi's appeal documents as a relative of one of the first leading suspects for the attack, the Syrian terrorist Ahmed Jibril of the pro-Palestinian Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command.

Even when you dismiss the cheap point scoring attempts being made by New / Old Labour and their Lib Dem coat holders next week’s debate could be interesting…

SILENCE IS GORDON

During the Troubles in Northern Ireland, Libya supplied guns and explosives to the IRA, and the families of their victims want the country to face up to its responsibilities. Now Relatives of IRA terrorist victims have once again renewed their calls for compensation from Libya following the release of the Lockerbie bomber.

The relatives are calling on the Libyan leader to demonstrate the same compassion shown to Abdelbaset Ali Al Megrahi; the terminally-ill bomber was released from a Scottish prison last week. Families of victims killed by Libyan weapons believe their hand has been strengthened by Megrahi's release, which has caused a political and diplomatic row on both sides of the Atlantic.

Relatives have called on Prime Minister Gordon Brown to support the families in their quest. Libya was once a sponsor of worldwide terrorism, including support for the IRA, but its leaders and the country and has come in from the cold. Back in 2003, Libya took responsibility for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, which claimed 270 lives, mostly American. It also abandoned efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction. Five years later, Col Gaddafi reached a final compensation agreement with the US over Lockerbie and other bombings.

What was that Gordon? The sound of silence perhaps…would not want to upset the lucrative trade and energy deals would we…