Exit the Colonel (45 page)

The question of what to do with Gaddafi when and if he was captured was something to which both the NTC and various bodies within the US government (and presumably, the EU and NATO) had given some advance thought, with the idea of trying to avert some of the mistakes of Iraq. There was similar dissent; many on the ground felt that a trial would be too much distraction from the pressing matter of recovery and reconstruction; others questioned whether Libya's legal system could ensure a fair trial. At the same time, many saw the ability to deal with Gaddafi and his family humanely and according to a procedure as a mark of order and a new respect for rule of law.

Given that those within Tripoli connected to Gaddafi had been increasingly hunted down and pursued in previous weeks—not to mention what happened to Gaddafi himself—as well as the supercharged and chaotic nature of the battleground and the rebels themselves—mainly youth under the age of twenty-five—made this outcome unlikely.

Many grudgingly gave Abdeljalil credit for managing conflict until this point. However, disputes within the NTC and between the NTC and those outside its sphere were rife. Mahmoud Jibril was criticized for being out of the country for large periods during late spring and summer, and for making the liberation announcement from Benghazi, not from Tripoli. Many felt this implied that Benghazi was somehow superior to Tripoli (even though Jibril himself was from the west). One citizen noted that he could understand that Tripoli may not have been safe at this point, “but if it's not safe, they should not be declaring the country liberated.”
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Disputes within the NTC, and between Jalil and Jibril, culminated in Jibril's announcement that he would resign as interim prime minister once Libya was “liberated.”
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Along with this statement and the actual resignation came complaints that he could no longer be effective, that his orders and indeed those of the NTC as a whole carried no impact. Jibril said,

As time moved forward, and the NTC continued to be unable to provide the services expected of a national government, from meeting government payroll to making sure those without food, water, electricity, and medical assistance had what they needed, tempers flared. Militias within the various regions—from Tripoli to Zintan in the West to Benghazi in the East—which were formed from a mixture of
thuwwar
, regional and neighborhood watch associations, and fortified by a liberal supply of stray weapons, began to assert increasing control. The cities and regions of Misurata, Zintan, Tarhouna, to cite prominent examples, became almost islands unto themselves, with their own governments and standing armies—Misurata, in particular, started to take on the air of a medieval city, with access and egress tightly controlled: anyone not able to prove connection to the city (as during the Lebanese civil war, access between regions was controlled by checkpoints and code words) was denied entry, or detained. As the militia and regions amassed more control, they increasingly served as their own judges and juries, going after suspected collaborators. As the months went on, the NTC would be dogged by accusations that it was not doing enough to rein in these militias, as organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International collected evidence of rebel-instigated torture on a reasonably wide scale, or rebel “cleansing” of areas under their control of those known or believed to have been directly associated with the Gaddafi regime. A well-publicized report published by Amnesty International in February 2012 labeled the militias “out of control,” accusing of a myriad of human rights abuses, including rape and murder.
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Some of the mid-level regime associates still present in Libya during the Liberation were able to buy their way out of the country, applying for and receiving asylum in various European countries. Others, many of whom had never been involved in atrocities, found themselves on local hit lists.
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Some of the worst revenge attacks took place in the vicinity of Sirte, where militias from Misurata and other regions most savagely hit by loyalist forces, razed entire city blocks in acts of collective punishment (the parallels with Gaddafi's past tactics are obvious).

In the months following Gaddafi's death, rebels discovered the bodies of fifty-three loyalists in the vicinity of Sirte, their hands tied behind their backs, suspected to have been killed by anti-Gaddafi fighters.
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African workers and migrants trapped in Libya suffered greatly in the months after February 17. Many were summarily executed purely for the color of their skin, suspected of being among those African mercenaries Gaddafi
hired to wage war on his own people.
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A video circulated on YouTube showing rebels taunting a group of black Africans being held in a cage.
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According to Human Rights Watch, rebel forces staged revenge attacks on the neighboring town of Tawergha, where many residents were allegedly sympathetic to or assisted loyalist fighters in their six-month siege of Misurata. These attacks forced nearly thirty thousand Tawerghan residents to flee their homes.
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In a case that attracted little attention outside Libya, Salma Al Gaeer, a cousin of Gaddafi, a PhD pharmacologist, and one of the first recipients of the US State Department International Visitor Fellowship (IV)—one of the few to receive such fellowships solely on her own merits—was shot and killed while trying to shield her adopted son from close-range rebel fire as she and others attempted to leave Libya through Tunisia. In the wake of Liberation, one heard testimonials from individuals whose lives were, to varying degrees, “accidentally” tied to the Gaddafis, i.e., they had been married off or were clan members, but were not known and had not the resources to attempt to protect themselves from hits ordered by former neighbors and friends.

The militias themselves were not the only threat to public order. As Azza Maghur, a prominent Tripoli lawyer, put it, there are the “freedom fighters, freedom fighters with guns, and then there are the people who are not freedom fighters, but have guns. And there are lots of them.”
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Many violent criminals had been released by the regime in the early days of the conflict to fight alongside the loyalists, and others broke free in prison rebellions both before and during the fall of Tripoli. Informal criminal associations, some under the guise of freedom fighters or avengers, roamed the city acting on tips.
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As of late January, there was still pro-Gaddafi fighting in one of the last cities to be put down, Bani Walid.
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On January 23, there were resignations and demonstrations against the NTC, and Abdeljalil warned of a looming “bottomless pit” of internecine strife.
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On February 26, there were rumors that Khamis was, if wounded, still alive and directing insurgency elements.
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The administrative chaos in Libya and fractious decision-making processes and fuzzy rings of authority framed the urgent need for the NTC to implement not more reform, but a foundation for judicial process and security
within the country. Human Rights Watch pleaded with Libya's interim government and its international supporters to “make it urgent priority to build a functioning justice system and begin legal reform that protects human rights after Muammar Gaddafi.”
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Of the Gaddafi clan, it appears that the Leader's youngest, Saif Al Arab, along with three of Gaddafi's grandchildren, were among the first to be killed, allegedly by a NATO strike against Gaddafi's compound on May 1, 2011, though there are conflicting reports as to what happened.
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There had been early rumors that Saif Al Arab had been spotted in a rebel protest in Benghazi, with rebel elements intimating he may have been “stage killed” back in Tripoli, to serve Gaddafi propaganda, with three of Gaddafis grandchildren thrown in for good measure to discourage any other “defections.” This is complete hearsay, as there is nothing obvious in Saif Al Arab's background that would suggest a defection was in his character or inclination. But given the more credibly documented stories of a similar nature, the possibility cannot be dismissed. We know the regime exhumed bodies of adults and children alike to place by NATO strike sites, and an attempt to claim NATO was itself killing civilians, not protecting them. (There were, of course, civilian casualties from NATO strikes, these have been confirmed, even as NATO has been highly criticized for not launching a thorough investigation into the circumstances of the known collateral casualties.) Khamis was rumored to have been killed several times during the uprising, most recently in fighting in Tarhouna in late August 2011 (Abdullah Senussi was alleged to have been killed in the same fighting—a rumor that also proved false).
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On November 18 an armed rebel division from Zintan captured Saif Al Islam in the southern desert, allegedly as he was close to crossing the border to Niger. (His brother Saadi had turned up in Niamey, Niger, more than a month earlier and was at the time of writing still being held under “observation” by the Nigerian government). Saif 's Zintani guards appear to have cut the middle and index fingers from Saif 's right hand—the same fingers he shook at viewers during his infamous September 20 speech. Saif 's captors flew him to Zintan, where at the time of writing he remains sequestered, as the ICC, the NTC, and the Zintan militias wrangled over his fate. Gaddafi's infamous head of Internal Security, Abdullah Senussi—whose hand was
apparent in most of the major state-sponsored atrocities of the previous two decades, was apprehended by Mauritanian officials mid-March 2012, as he arrived on a flight from Casablanca to Nouakchott, where at the time of writing, he also remained under state detention. (Mauritania is not a signatory to the ICC.)
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Fred Abrahams of Human Rights Watch is to date the only foreigner to interview Saif after his capture. Abrahams had followed Saif 's interactions with Human Rights Watch in the years prior to the Revolution, had not met Saif previously but noticed tensions within Saif. On the one hand, he said Saif responded to him with courtesy and the self-assurance of someone accustomed to being in power. He also had the look of someone who steadfastly refused to acknowledge the severity of his situation. Saif asked Abrahams to have HRW look into the situation of ten thousand or so loyalists being held by the new government. Abrahams recounted that Saif spoke as if he were still in a position of authority. At the same time, he said he noted a marked change in intensity once Saif 's captors were asked to leave the room. Saif held up his partially severed, bandaged fingers, and pointed to his teeth, indicating he was in pain. Abrahams said he felt as though occasionally Saif would lapse from a brave, even relaxed front, to someone who looked very much frightened, “completely lost.” Generally, Zintani militia leaders supported Abraham's observations, saying that Saif was in “good shape” mentally and physically, but “for the most part, still clinging to his previous convictions . . . and grandiloquence.”
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Shukri Ghanem, the most visible and vocal of Saif 's aides, former Prime Minister, and NOC head, was the first high-level casualty of Saif's reform circle. Ghanem defected to the rebel side in May 2011—long after the first waves—and moved to Vienna, where he had started an energy consulting group. Ghanem was found drowned in the Danube on the morning of April 29, 2012—the NTC was at the time in the process of trying to summon him back to Tripoli for questioning related to an investigation into corruption in foreign oil contracts during his tenure. As NOC head, and a key figure in Saif 's entourage, Ghanem had unusual access to the mechanics of the oil-related contracts and associated money flows. While foul play was not indicated, there were many who presumably would have had an interest in this information not being made public.
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Ghanem's concerns over being pressured by Mu'tassim to transfer money into his personal accounts had been reported in cables released through Wikileaks, and articles in the Pan Arab press. Meanwhile, Musa Kusa,
who for years was pegged as the mastermind behind Pan Am 103, but whose involvement was downgraded in the media in line with his role in negotiating the Libyan-West rapprochement, found asylum in Doha, Qatar.

On May 20, 2012, the Libyan most directly associated in Western minds with Lockerbie, Abdelbasset al Megrahi, died in his home in Tripoli, almost three years—not three months as predicted—after his release on compassionate grounds by Scottish authorities, who continued to insist that prospective UK energy deals had absolutely nothing to do with his release. (The latest scandal involved attempts by British Gas, not BP, to facilitate Megrahi's release in exchange for forward movement on contracts.)
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The NTC continued to promise to work with US and European investigators to try to unravel the many remaining mysteries surrounding Libyan involvement in the Lockerbie bombing. It is likely that key pieces of the story died with Megrahi—and Gaddafi—though there was never any indication he was willing to offer any clarity into his role and who his direct handlers were, even after the regime had fallen. One month before Megrahi's death, Al Jazeera aired a documentary entitled “Case Closed,” purporting to offer evidence that would exonerate Megrahi—this amounted to little more than rephrasing of the argument that evidence collected by Maletese witnesses had been tainted—charges that had been made previously. NTC head Abdeljalil had insisted early on in the Revolution that Gaddafi had personally ordered the Pan Am attack.
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