(GLOBALRESEARCH) The Lynching of Muammar Gaddafi

The Lynching of Muammar Gaddafi
by Thierry Meyssan
Global Research, October 29, 2011
Voltaire Network - 2011-10-21

For 42 years, Muammar al-Gaddafi protected his people against Western colonialism. At present, he has joined Omar al-Mukhtar in the pantheon of Libya’s great national heroes.

On Thursday, 20 October 2011, at 13h30 GMT, the Libyan National Transitional Council announced the death of Muammar el-Qaddafi. Though confused, initial reports appeared to indicate that a convoy of cars seeking to leave besieged Sirte was blocked and partly destroyed by NATO fire. Survivors took shelter in drainage pipes. Wounded, Gaddafi was reportedly captured by the Tiger brigade of Misrata tribe and lynched.

The body of the "Guide" of the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya was not preserved in his hometown of Sirte, or taken to Tripoli, but transported by the Misrata as a trophy to their namesake city.

The Misrata Tribe, which had long been reluctant to choose sides and is virtually absent from the CNT, will ultimately have penetrated Tripoli after its destruction by NATO, and will have lynched Muammar al-Gaddafi after the bombing of his convoy by NATO. It has even moved his body in his town to celebrate his triumph. In July, the "Guide" had cursed the Misrata, urging them to leave for Istanbul and Tel Aviv, alluding to the Turkish Jewish origins of the tribe which later converted to Islam.

A barrage of pre-scripted comments was instantly unleashed by the Atlanticist media to demonize Muammar el-Gaddafi, thereby obscuring the barbaric circumstances of his death.

The main Coalition leaders welcomed the death of their enemy as marking the end of "Operation Unified Protector." In doing so, they have implicitly admitted that its objective was not to implement Security Council Resolution 1973, but to overthrow a political system and to kill the leader, even if the assassination of a serving head of State is strictly prohibited by U.S. law and universally condemned.

In addition, the lynching of Muammar al-Gaddafi shows NATO’s reluctance to turn him over to the ICC which would not have been in a better position to sentence him for crimes against humanity than the Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia which could not prove Slobodan Milosevic guilty, despite two years of prosecution.

In the deluge of mud spilled by the Western media to tarnish his memory, the same false accusations are repeated over and over, showing in fact that the media hold very little incriminating evidence that could have been used against him.

A case in point is the La Belle discotheque bombing in Berlin (5 April 1986, three killed), which was used as a pretext by the Reagan administration to bomb Gaddafi’s palace and kill his daughter (April 14, 1986, at least 50 dead). At the time, German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis (the same one who two decades later would rig the investigation into the assassination of Rafik al-Hariri) relied on the testimony of Eter Mushad to indict a Libyan diplomat and his accomplice Mohammed Amair. However, German television channel ZDF subsequently discovered that Mushad Eter was not only a false witness but also a real CIA agent, while bomb planter Mahammed Aamir was a Mossad agent [1].

Another example is the Lockerbie bombing (21 December 1988, 270 killed): the investigators identified the owner of the suitcase containing the bomb and the timer thanks to the testimony of a Maltese shopkeeper who had sold the pair of trousers also located in the booby-trapped suitcase. At that point, the Scottish justice system brought charges against two Libyan agents, Abdel Basset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, while the Security Council took sanctions against Libya. In the end, to get the sanctions lifted, Gaddafi agreed to extradite the two agents (the first was sentenced to life imprisonment and the second was acquitted) and pay $ 2.7 billion in compensation, while continuing to proclaim his complete innocence. Subsequently, in August 2005, the chief Scottish investigator declared that the main piece of evidence, the bomb timer, had been planted at the crime scene by a CIA agent. Then, the expert who had analyzed the timer for the court admitted he had manufactured it himself before the CIA "dropped it off." Finally, the Maltese shopkeeper admitted having received $ 2 million for bearing false witness. The Scottish authorities decided to review the case, but the health of Abdel Basset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi did not allow it.

The current disinformation campaign also includes an installment on the lifestyle of the deceased, classified as sumptuous, and the amount of his stashed-away Pharaonic fortune. But all those who approached Muammar al-Gaddafi, or who simply visited his family home and residence after they were bombarded can attest that he lived in an environment equal to that of the middle class in his country, far from the flashy style of Planning Minister Mahmoud Jibril. Similarly, none of the states that for months have been tracking Gaddafi’s hidden fortune has been able to find it. Any money that was seized belonged to the Libyan government and not to the "Guide".

On the other hand, the media have failed to mention the only international arrest warrant against Muammar al-Gaddafi, issued by Interpol before the NATO offensive. He was accused by the Lebanese justice of having disposed of Imam Moussa Sadr and his companions (1978). This media oversight can be explained by the fact that the kidnapping was sponsored by the United States who wanted to get rid of the Shi’a clergyman before allowing Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, also a Shi’a Muslim, to return to Iran, to prevent Sadr from spreading the Ayatollah’s revolutionary influence to Lebanon.

The Atlanticist media have also overlooked the criticism that anti-imperialist Resistance organizations, and indeed ourselves, addressed at Muammar al-Gaddafi concerning his frequent compromises with Israel.

For my part, I can attest that, until the Battle of Tripoli, the "Guide" had continued to negotiate with Israeli envoys in the hope of buying Tel Aviv’s protection. But I must also attest that, despite my strong reservations about his international policy, and the complete file about me in this regard that was given to him in July by the French DCRI in an attempt to have me arrested, Muammar al-Gaddafi gave me his trust and asked me to help his country assert its rights at the United Nations [2] - a behavior which one would hardly expect from a tyrant.

Nor have the Atlanticist media ever mentioned my condemnation of Libya’s interference in French political life, including the illegal financing of the presidential election campaigns of Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal. The "Guide" had in fact authorized his brother-in-law Abdallah Senoussi to corrupt the two leading candidates in exchange for an amnesty pledge or for putting pressure on the French justice system to close his criminal record [3].

But above all, the Atlanticist media have failed to mention the major achievements of the "Guide": the overthrow of the puppet monarchy imposed by the Anglo-Saxons, the removal of foreign troops, the nationalization of hydrocarbons, the construction of the Man Made River (the largest irrigation project in the world), the redistribution of oil revenues (he turned one of the poorest in the world into the richest in Africa), generous asylum to Palestinian refugees and development aid on an unprecedented scale to the Third World (Libya’s development aid was more important than all the G20 states put together).

The death of Muammar el-Qaddafi will change nothing at the international level. The important event was the fall of Tripoli, bombarded and captured by NATO - undoubtedly the worst war crime of this century - followed by the penetration of the Misrata tribe to control the capital. In the weeks that preceded the Battle of Tripoli, the overwhelming majority of Libyans took part, Friday after Friday, in anti-NATO, anti-CNT and pro-Gaddafi rallies. Now, their country has been destroyed and they are governed by NATO and its CNT puppets.

However, the death of the "Guide" will have an enduring traumatic effect on Libya’s tribal society. By killing the leader, NATO destroyed the incarnation of the principle of authority. It will take years and much more violence before a new leader will be recognized by all the tribes or the tribal system is replaced by another form of social organization. In this sense, the death of Muammar al-Gaddafi opened a period of Iraqization or Somaliazation in Libya.

Thierry Meyssan is a prominent French intellectual, founder and chairman of Voltaire Network and the Axis for Peace Conference. His columns specializing in international relations feature in daily newspapers and weekly magazines in Arabic, Spanish and Russian. His last two books published in English : 9/11 the Big Lie and Pentagate.

Notes

[1] Investigation conducted by Frontal magazine, broadcast by ZDF on 28 August 1998.

[2] Editor’s note: I accepted the mission as an activist, without any remuneration whatsoever.

[3] Abdallah Senoussi had been sentenced in France in absentia for the explosion aboard flight UTA Flight 772 which occurred on 19 September 1989 in the midst of the Chadian war, killing 171 people.