Exit the Colonel (33 page)

In early January—almost a month and a half before the Libyan uprising started—Khamis Gaddafi cut short his trip to the US. On January 15, he wrote a letter to the CEO of weapons manufacturer General Dynamics, complaining that “promised munitions had not arrived,”
⁶
an indication that he, and one must presume the Gaddafi clan, was preparing for the worst. The close relatives of certain high-placed individuals said that by the third week of Tunisian protests, they were convinced “Libya's next.”
⁷
In interviews with
Asharq Al Awsat
, Dr. Fathi Baja recounted a meeting on February 14 with exiled journalist Mahmoud Shammam (the future spokesman for the National Transitional Council), Ali Tarhouni (the NTC's future finance minister), and other Libyan colleagues in Morocco, where they were attending a conference. Baja predicted that on the day Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down, Libya would likely see a repeat of the 2006 Benghazi riots, but not more: “[T]he people would go into the streets, the security forces would confront them, and things would die down after a day or two. I didn't expect it to continue because the people are not ready for killings after [the]
buslaim
[Abu Selim] massacre].”
⁸

Fathi Baja said Ali Tarhouni disagreed, saying that he felt something deeper was happening, even though “we all expected it would be bloody.” This was particularly the case after Gaddafi had mocked the Tunisian and Egyptian popular uprisings.
⁹
Baja noted that Al Jazeera—and, to a lesser extent, the US-Congress-funded Al Hurra (“Freedom” in Arabic) Satellite TV channel—played a key role in informing and rallying the Libyan people.
¹⁰
According to the American Broadcasting Board of Governors, Al Hurra's value lies in “presenting in-depth discussions that are not addressed in the Arabic-language media, such as human rights and freedom of speech and religion.”
¹¹

Individuals suspected of disloyalty or connections to dissidents abroad reported being under close surveillance as early as February 6 and 7.
¹²
A noted Libyan painter, Mohammed Bin Lamin, the brother of a London-based
dissident, had just returned from an art exhibition in Managua, Nicaragua, when he was picked up by Libyan intelligence and taken to Abu Selim prison, where he was held and tortured for eight months, until he was liberated by rebel forces in the final assault on Tripoli. In an interview with a Nicaraguan newspaper, Bin Lamin said some five hundred like him had been arrested and of that number perhaps only a hundred twenty survived.
¹³

The regime, somewhat belatedly, increased censorship of Libya-focused foreign news websites such as
Libya Al-Youm
,
Al-Manara
,
Jeel Libya
,
Akhbar Libya
,
Libya Al-Mustakbal
, and
Libya Watanouna
, on January 24, 2010. The next day, Gaddafi ordered YouTube videos of continuing and growing unrest in Benghazi, protests by families of Abu Selim victims, blocked.
¹⁴

Jamal al Hajji, a journalist and political commentator, was one of the first—if not the first—to call for local protests in late January for which, according to Amnesty International, he was arrested on February 1.
¹⁵
On February 5, Ibrahim Sahad, the secretary general of the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL), for many decades the principal seat of Libyan opposition abroad, issued a “call to action” against Gaddafi, helping to organize anti-Gaddafi protests in Washington, DC; Doha, Qatar; and various European capitals, to attract international media attention to a “prospective” Libyan revolt. “We knew,” Sahad said, “we likely had a single shot, a limited window in which to cripple the regime—if it failed, the blowback from the regime would be decisive. We would not have a second chance.”
¹⁶
Sahad dates NFSL preparations to the moment Tunisia's Ben Ali had been deposed. He and others were determined to compel the international press “not to ignore Libya,” as it had ignored or distorted “seminal” events in Libya's recent history, the 1996 Abu Selim massacre and the 2006 Benghazi riots.
¹⁷
According to Sahad, the NFSL had been training groups within the Jebel Nafusa just prior to the February explosion, and had sent members across the Tunisian-Libyan border to support rebels in the western mountains at the start of the conflict.

The external opposition website
Libya Al-Youm
reported that Taqi al Din al Chalawi and Abdel Fattah Bourwaq, who together ran the local news site
Irasa
, had been arrested February 16, along with blogger Mohammed Mismari, after he sent dispatches to Al Jazeera and BBC Arabic. Idris Mismari, a Benghazi-based journalist and colleague of various other intellectuals and professionals upon whom Saif Al Islam had relied to help implement his reform program, called reporters at Al Jazeera in Doha to exhort them to send a crew to Libya, as “something huge was going down.” Internal security
promptly picked him up at home and drove him to Tripoli, where he was allegedly tortured, with a large group of others. Mismari was left for dead, revived, and then asked to recant on public television.
¹⁸
Buzaid Dorda, the former “technocrat-prime minister-turned-head of external intelligence,” was said to have attempted to defuse this particular incident, by apologizing to Mismari for the poor treatment—as if it had all been a mistake.
¹⁹

While Western social media has been recognized as an assisting force in mobilizing the masses—particularly the youth—during this period, in Libya credit was always given more directly to traditional media, Al Jazeera broadcasts in particular, and cellphone texting, as the numbers with access to Facebook, for example, were still relatively small. In Egypt, the role of social media appears to be being revised downward, for similar reasons, as “Almost 80% of the people in Egypt had cellphones, relatively few access to Facebook.”
²⁰
Activists had access to Facebook, which facilitated their communication with one another, but also made it easier for their movements to be tracked by governments with sophisticated monitoring software.

Credible sources in Benghazi maintained that in early February, as the first stirrings of revolt were underway, Musa Kusa (now foreign minister) assembled Gaddafi's security forces and instructed them explicitly to prevent people from congregating in large groups. In Libya, Kusa was to have said, there would be no Tahrir Square. Kusa allegedly oversaw meetings in Tripoli of the
kasshaf
(revolutionary boy scouts), and Revolutionary Guards and Revolutionary Committees—instructing them how to disperse and repel street mobs. Simultaneously, the regime began to release criminals from jails on the condition that they bear arms against the protestors. As a last-ditch palliative, Gaddafi offered grants of $800 per household to cover food expenses, a 150 percent salary increase to those working in the public sector, and a doubling of the effective minimum wage.
²¹
It was far too little, too late. Following the example of Tunisia and Egypt, small groups of Libyan dissidents, some inside the country, some outside, called for a “Day of Rage” on February 17. The timing was significant, as this was the anniversary of the anti-Gaddafi riots of 2006. In anticipation of more actions, Saif Al Islam announced the regime would release 110 eastern-origin prisoners held for their connections to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG).
²²
Muammar Gaddafi allegedly met with a group of senior activists, telling them they would be “held responsible for any ensuing chaos.”
²³
Gaddafi sent a variety of unlikely envoys to Benghazi. In addition to Senussi's and Saif 's men, there was the unfortunate presence of Saadi Gaddafi, who had already done his
share to rile resentment among Benghazi residents during the infamous soccer slayings of 1996, in which his bodyguards had fired on spectators.

An audibly nervous Saadi Gaddafi spoke on Benghazi radio on February 17 to try to calm the situation with promises of money and development assistance for the eastern regions, to develop a proper airport and other infrastructure for the region (allegedly $24 billion worth).
²⁴
Saadi's statement was an explicit admission that Benghazi was, in fact, in terrible shape. He promised that the regime “meant it” this time:

On the evening of February 15, Benghazi military security (Gaddafi's men) responded, at least in part, to one of several Facebook “calls to action” by arresting Fathi Terbil, one of the lawyers representing the families of the Abu Selim victims. Until then, Terbil had continued to represent a contingent of the families and enjoyed a degree of protection due to his “official” involvement with Saif Al Islam. Abdullah Senussi had arrived in Benghazi earlier on the 15th, by some accounts to arrest Terbil, by other accounts to order those holding him to release him immediately.
²⁶
Terbil is widely viewed as a hero for his actions both before and during the revolution, and in particular for pushing the case of the Abu Selim families. Some prominent Benghazi residents agree, but fault Terbil and others—before Terbil's arrest—for allegedly agreeing to a proposal put forth by Saif, i.e., that if they would help calm the situation in Benghazi, he (Saif) would make sure they had a role in writing a constitution for Libya, and that he (Saif) would speed certain other political reforms.
²⁷
Even if that had been the case, Terbil might have reasoned that some concessions were preferable to a bloodbath. His arrest, however, and the popular reaction to it, quickly changed the situation on the ground irrevocably.

Terbil was held for only a few hours; the security apparatus released him at 9:30 p.m. Later, in a scene reminiscent of the rooftop protests by Iranians against their regime in the wake of the (unsuccessful) 2009–2010
Green Revolution in Iran, Benghaziites screamed from apartment buildings and rooftops. There was shooting in the streets, and rocks being thrown at government premises. Eyewitnesses described a sense of mixed rage and fear. Until then, the protests had been predominantly peaceful, with no deep organization and no unified calls for other than basic reforms. Abdel Salam al Mismari, a lawyer and one of Terbil's humanitarian colleagues (not to be confused with Nouri Al Mismari in the previous chapter), claimed he and others used Facebook to discuss the kinds of placards and slogans protestors would use, and whether and at what point they would call for Gaddafi to step down.
²⁸

Subsequent to Terbil's arrest by varying accounts, thirty to sixty young men, joined by members of the Abu Selim families (perhaps a total of a hundred fifty people)
²⁹
appeared at the
Mudiriyyat al Amn
, the interior security offices in the Hwari section of town, chanting, “Wake up, wake up Benghazi, this is the day you've been waiting for.” The protestors proceeded to Maidan Al Shajara (Tree Square, in the city center), where they were joined by yet others.
³⁰
Baja noted that news of Terbil's arrest spread like wildfire and as groups of revolutionary youth moved toward city hall, then Pepsi Street (named for a bottling plant), and then on to Gamal Abdel Nasser Street.
³¹

The morning of February 16 was calm. Many Benghaziites went to work as usual. Asma al Fitouri, author of a Libyan account of the stirrings of revolution, described how the people of Benghazi had been ruminating on the events of the previous day and night, and as the afternoon approached, there were spontaneous protests in Maidan Al Shajara, which were more “insistent, adamant, and courageous.”
³²
When these spilled out into Gamal Abdel Nasser Street, the regime spared no force in putting down the crowds. There were many casualties.
³³

News of what had happened thus far in Benghazi on the 15th and 16th spread to other cities in the east. Clashes with government forces that left four dead and eighty injured in Tubruk and Al Beida triggered larger street protests.
³⁴
In Mismari's view, it was this combination of rapid escalation of interlocking movements against the heady background of the events in Tunisia and Egypt that allowed the people to “break the barrier of fear.”

Baja further described the demonstration of solidarity in front of the Benghazi courthouse on February 16: “[There] I found Abdelsalam al Mismari and Jamal Bilnour. A group of lawyers went with them into the meeting. Things [were] very random, not well organized.” Baja stressed
that the intention at this point “was not to create a revolution” (in line with assertions that there were negotiations under way between Saif and his former reformist allies).

On the 17th, the awaited “Day of Rage,” witnesses described armored vans driving through Benghazi, barreling through makeshift roadblocks, as groups of residents congregated on the street corners downtown, perhaps thirty at the end of every block, watching what was unfolding before them.
³⁵
Amateur video shows groups of “yellow hats” (mercenaries, a mixture of revolutionary committee members and imported Africans, who identified each other by wearing yellow hard hards) in groups, attacking protestors with knives, guns, and cleavers.

Mismari says Abdullah Senussi, Gaddafi's head of internal security, asked him to help to stop the protests, all the while denying that there was any violence: he had not heard of any shootings in Souk al Hout (the Fish Market), nor had he any knowledge of the protests and killings in Al Beida. He denied the bloodbath in Benghazi. Mismari said he told Senussi “we will remain until our demands are met.”
³⁶
Next, someone claiming he represented Saif Al Islam came to the courthouse and asked: “What will it take for the protests to stop? We want a compromise.” Mismari said the group's demands were categorical: