Libya's leader Gadhafi defiant to end

BEN HUBBARD/KARIN LAUB, 08/22/11TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) — In flowing brown Bedouin robes and black beret, hailed as the "king of kings of Africa," the aging dictator swept up onto the global stage, center front at the United Nations, and delivered an angry, wandering, at times incoherent diatribe against all he detested in the world.

In that first and only appearance before the U.N. General Assembly, in 2009, Moammar Gadhafi rambled on about jet lag and swine flu, about the John F. Kennedy assassination and about moving the U.N. to Libya, the vast desert nation he had ruled for four decades with an iron hand.

As dismayed U.N. delegates streamed out of the great domed hall that autumn day, a fuming Gadhafi declared their Security Council "should be called the 'Terror Council,'" and tore up a copy of the U.N. charter.

The bizarre, 96-minute rant by Libya's "Brother Leader and Guide of the Revolution" may now stand as a fitting denouement to a bizarre life, coming less than two years before Gadhafi's people rose up against him, before some in that U.N. audience turned their warplanes on him, before lieutenants abandoned him one by one, including the very General Assembly president, fellow Libyan Ali Treki, who in 2009 glowingly welcomed his "king" to the New York podium.

As rebels swarmed into Tripoli late Sunday and his son and one-time heir apparent Seif al-Islam was arrested, Gadhafi's rule was all but over, even though some loyalists continued to resist.

More than any of the region's autocratic leaders, perhaps, Gadhafi was a man of contrasts.

He was a sponsor of terrorism who condemned the Sept. 11 attacks. He was a brutal dictator who bulldozed a jail wall to free political prisoners. He was an Arab nationalist who derided the Arab League. And in the crowning paradox, he preached people power, only to have his people take to the streets and take up arms in rebellion.

For much of a life marked by tumult, eccentricities and spasms of violence, the only constants were his grip on power — never openly challenged until the last months of his rule — and the hostility of the West, which branded him a terrorist long before Osama bin Laden emerged.

The secret of his success and longevity lay in the vast oil reserves under his North African desert republic, and in his capacity for drastic changes of course when necessary.

One spectacular series of U-turns came in late 2003. After years of denial, Gadhafi's Libya acknowledged responsibility for the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jumbo jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people. Libya agreed to pay up to $10 million to relatives of each of the victims, and declared it would dismantle all of its weapons of mass destruction.

The rewards came fast. Within months, the U.S. lifted economic sanctions and resumed low-level diplomatic ties. The European Union hosted Gadhafi in Brussels. Tony Blair, as British prime minister, visited him in Tripoli, even though Britain had more reason than most to detest and fear him.

Then, in February, amid a series of anti-government uprisings that swept the Arab world, Gadhafi unleashed a vicious crackdown on Libyans who rose up against him. Libyan rebels defied withering fire from government troops and pro-Gadhafi militia to quickly turn a protest movement into a rebellion.

Just days after the uprising against him began, Gadhafi delivered one of his trademark rants on Feb. 22 from his Tripoli compound, which was bombed by U.S. airstrikes in the 1980s and was left unrepaired as an anti-American display.

Pounding a lectern near a sculpture of a golden fist crushing a U.S. warplane, he vowed to hunt down protesters "inch by inch, room by room, home by home, alleyway by alleyway." The televised speech caused a furor that helped fuel the armed rebellion against him and it has been since mocked in popular songs and spoofs across the Arab world.

In March, the U.N. authorized a no-fly zone for Libya and "all necessary measures" to prevent Gadhafi from attacking his own protesting people. NATO airstrikes followed against Libyan military targets and included one attack that killed Gadhafi's youngest son on April 30.

Gadhafi was born in 1942 in the central Libyan desert, the son of a Bedouin father who was once jailed for opposing Libya's Italian colonialists. The young Gadhafi seemed to inherit that rebellious nature, being expelled from high school for leading a demonstration, and disciplined while in the army for organizing revolutionary cells.

In 1969, as a mere 27-year-old captain, he emerged as leader of a group of officers who overthrew King Idris' monarchy. A handsome, dashing figure in uniform and sunglasses, he took undisputed power and became a symbol of anti-Western defiance in a Third World recently liberated from its European colonial rulers.

During the 1970s, Gadhafi embarked on far-reaching reforms.

A U.S. air base was closed. Some 20,000 Italians were expelled in retaliation for the 1911-41 occupation. Businesses were nationalized. Gadhafi proclaimed a "popular revolution" and began imposing "peoples' committees" as local levels of government, topped by a "Peoples' Congress," a kind of parliament. He declared Libya to be a "Jamahiriya" — a word connoting "republic of the masses."

He led a state without a constitution, instead using his own idiosyncratic book of political philosophy — the "Green Book." He took the military's highest rank, colonel, when he came to power and called himself the "Brother Leader" of the revolution.

"He aspired to create an ideal state," said North African analyst Saad Djebbar of Cambridge University. "He ended up without any components of a normal state. The 'people's power' was the most useless system in the world, turning revolutionaries into a force of wealth-accumulators."

Like many dictators intent on ensuring they have no rivals, Gadhafi had no clear system of succession. But he was believed to be grooming his British-educated son, Seif al-Islam, to succeed him. Now that son is under arrest and, like his father, wanted by the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands for crimes against humanity during the bloody crackdown on dissenters.

Gadhafi took pleasure in saying out loud what other leaders would only think, frequently berating the Arab League for its inability to act in the Israeli-Palestinian and Iraqi conflicts.

But while he enjoyed speaking out on the world stage, he did not tolerate people speaking out in Libya. His government allowed no organized opposition.

In 1988, he declared he was releasing political detainees and drove a bulldozer through the wall of a Tripoli prison. But in reality his regime remained totalitarian.

Gadhafi did spend oil revenue on building schools, hospitals, irrigation systems and housing on a scale his Mediterranean nation had never seen.

"He did really bring Libya from being one of the most backward and poorest countries in Africa to becoming an oil-rich state with an elaborate infrastructure and with reasonable access by the Libyan population to the essential services they required," said George Joffe of Cambridge University.

But although Libya was producing almost 1.6 million barrels of crude per day before the civil war, about a third of its roughly 6 million people remain in poverty. Gadhafi showered benefits on parts of the country, such as the capital Tripoli. Meanwhile, eastern Libya, ultimately the source of February's rebellion, was allowed to atrophy.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Gadhafi increasingly supported groups deemed terrorist in the West — from the Irish Republican Army to radical Palestinians and militant groups in the Philippines.

A 1984 incident at the Libyan Embassy in London entrenched his regime's image as a lawless one. A gunman inside the embassy opened fire on a demonstration by anti-Gadhafi demonstrators outside, killing a British policewoman.

The heat had been rising, meanwhile, between the Reagan administration and Gadhafi over terrorism. In 1986, Libya was found responsible for a bombing at a Berlin discotheque frequented by U.S. troops in which three people died. America struck back by sending warplanes to bomb Libya. About 40 Libyans were killed, including Gadhafi's adopted baby daughter.

In 1988, a Libyan agent planted the bomb that blew up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie. The next year, another Libyan set a bomb that blew up a French airliner over Niger in west Africa.

The West was outraged, and years of sanctions followed.

Joffe said Gadhafi's involvement in terrorism was the "major mistake" of his career.

"Whoever was directly responsible for (the 1988 and 1989 attacks), the consequence was that Libya found itself isolated in the international community for almost a decade and, in that isolation, it suffered considerable economic loss."

During the same period, Gadhafi embarked on a series of military adventures in Africa, invading Chad in 1980-89, and supplying arms, training and finance to rebels in Liberia, Uganda and Burkina Faso.

In 2002, Gadhafi looked back on his actions and told a crowd of Libyans in the southern city of Sibha: "In the old days, they called us a rogue state. They were right in accusing us of that. In the old days, we had a revolutionary behavior."

His first outward signal of change came in 1999, when his government handed over for trial two Libyans charged with the Lockerbie bombing. In 2001, a Scottish court convicted one, an intelligence agent, and sentenced him to life imprisonment. The other was acquitted.

Libyan officials denied the government was involved. But in August 2003, 20 months later, Libya accepted state responsibility in a letter to the U.N. It had also apologized for the London policewoman's murder, allowing it and Britain to renew diplomatic ties, and the Security Council lifted its sanctions.

A bigger surprise came in December 2003 when Britain's Blair announced that Gadhafi had acknowledged trying to develop weapons of mass destruction but had decided to dismantle the programs under international inspection.

What caused Gadhafi's turnaround is debatable. Some maintained he was afraid his regime would be toppled like the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. But Djebbar and Joffe both say negotiations on weapons of mass destruction had begun even before 9/11.

Gadhafi wanted sanctions lifted and an end to American hostility to ensure his regime's survival, Joffe said. In 2006 the Bush administration rescinded its designation of Libya as a state sponsor of terrorism.

By early 2011, however, as Tripoli responded violently to anti-government protests, U.S. and other sanctions were being reimposed on Libya's leaders and Gadhafi family members, among them his wife, Safia, and several of their eight children, including sons Hannibal, head of Libya's maritime transport company; Saadi, special forces commander and Libya's soccer federation head, and Mohammed, Libya's Olympic chief.

Gadhafi said he met Safia, then a teenage nursing student, while recuperating from an appendectomy after taking power in 1969. He soon divorced his first wife and remarried. Their only daughter, Aisha, became a lawyer and helped in the defense of Saddam Hussein, Iraq's toppled dictator, in the trial that led to his hanging.

Gadhafi's flamboyance and eccentric lifestyle were always the subject of lampooning in America and elsewhere.

He had a personal escort known as the Amazonian guard — young women said to be martial-arts experts who often carried machine guns and wore military-style uniforms with matching camouflaged headscarves.

A 2009 U.S. diplomatic cable released by the website WikiLeaks cited Gadhafi's heavy reliance on a Ukrainian nurse — described as a "voluptuous blonde" — and his intense dislike of staying on upper floors of buildings, aversion to flying over water, and taste for horse racing and flamenco dancing.

He donned garish military uniforms with braids and huge, fringed epaulettes, or colorful Bedouin robes and African-patterned clothing, along with sunglasses and fly whisks. His hair grew scruffy and he sported a goatee and scraggly mustache.

In his first televised appearance after protests broke out in Libya, he appeared with an umbrella and a cap with earflaps. Four months later, dodging NATO bombs in Tripoli, addressing loyalists by telephone from a hidden location on June 17, Gadhafi sounded defiant still, the old "Brother Leader," but hoarse, agitated, embattled — and perhaps seeing the end.

"We don't care much for life," he declared. "We will not betray the past and the sacrifices, or the future. We will carry out our duty until the end."

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Libyan rebels take most of Tripoli

KARIN LAUB, 08/22/11

TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) — Euphoric Libyan rebels took control of most of Tripoli in a lightning advance Sunday, celebrating the victory in Green Square, the symbolic heart of Moammar Gadhafi's regime. Gadhafi's defenders quickly melted away as his 42-year rule crumbled, but the leader's whereabouts were unknown and pockets of resistance remained.

State TV broadcast Gadhafi's bitter pleas for Libyans to defend his regime. Opposition fighters captured his son and one-time heir apparent, Seif al-Islam, who along with his father faces charges of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands. Another son was under house arrest.

Click photo to view more images. (AP/Alexandre Meneghini)

"It's over, frizz-head," chanted hundreds of jubilant men and women massed in Green Square, using a mocking nickname of the curly-haired Gadhafi. The revelers fired shots in the air, clapped and waved the rebels' tricolor flag. Some set fire to the green flag of Gadhafi's regime and shot holes in a poster with the leader's image.

The startling rebel breakthrough, after a long deadlock in Libya's 6-month-old civil war, was the culmination of a closely coordinated plan by rebels, NATO and anti-Gadhafi residents inside Tripoli, rebel leaders said. Rebel fighters from the west swept over 20 miles (30 kilometers) in a matter of hours Sunday, taking town after town and overwhelming a major military base as residents poured out to cheer them. At the same time, Tripoli residents secretly armed by rebels rose up.

When rebels reached the gates of Tripoli, the special battalion entrusted by Gadhafi with guarding the capital promptly surrendered. The reason: Its commander, whose brother had been executed by Gadhafi years ago, was secretly loyal to the rebellion, a senior rebel official Fathi al-Baja told The Associated Press.

Al-Baja, the head of the rebels' political committee, said the opposition's National Transitional Council had been working on the offensive for the past three months, coordinating with NATO and rebels within Tripoli. Sleeper cells were set up in the capital, armed by rebel smugglers. On Thursday and Friday, NATO intensified strikes inside the capital, and on Saturday, the sleeper cells began to rise up.

President Barack Obama said Libya is "slipping from the grasp of a tyrant" and urged Gadhafi to relinquish power to prevent more bloodshed.

"The future of Libya is now in the hands of the Libyan people," Obama said in a statement from Martha's Vineyard, where he's vacationing. He promised to work closely with rebels.

By the early hours of Monday, opposition fighters controlled most of the capital. The seizure of Green Square held profound symbolic value — the plaza was the scene of pro-Gadhafi rallies organized by the regime almost every night, and Gadhafi delivered speeches to his loyalists from the historic Red Fort that overlooks the square. Rebels and Tripoli residents set up checkpoints around the city, though pockets of pro-Gadhafi fighters remained. In one area, AP reporters with the rebels were stopped and told to take a different route because of regime snipers nearby.

Abdel-Hakim Shugafa, a 26-year-old rebel fighter, said he was stunned by how easy it was. He saw only about 20 minutes of gunbattles as he and his fellow fighters pushed into the capital at nightfall.

"I expect Libya to be better," said Shugafa, part of a team guarding the National Bank near Green Square. "He (Gadhafi) oppressed everything in the country — health and education. Now we can build a better Libya."

In a series of angry and defiant audio messages broadcast on state television, Gadhafi called on his supporters to march in the streets of the capital and "purify it" of "the rats." He was not shown in the messages.

His defiance raised the possibility of a last-ditch fight over the capital, home to 2 million people. Government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim claimed the regime has "thousands and thousands of fighters" and vowed: "We will fight. We have whole cities on our sides. They are coming en masse to protect Tripoli to join the fight."

But it seemed that significant parts of Gadhafi's regime and military were abandoning him. His prime minister, Al-Baghdadi Al-Mahmoudi, fled to a hotel in the Tunisian city of Djerba, said Guma el-Gamaty, a London-based rebel spokesman.

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Gadhafi's regime was "clearly crumbling" and that the time to create a new democratic Libya has arrived.

It was a stunning reversal for Gadhafi, who earlier this month had seemed to have a firm grip on his stronghold in the western part of Libya, despite months of NATO airstrikes on his military. Rebels had been unable to make any advances for weeks, bogged down on the main fronts with regime troops in the east and center of the country.

Gadhafi is the Arab world's longest-ruling, most erratic, most grimly fascinating leader — presiding for 42 years over this North African desert nation with vast oil reserves and just 6 million people. For years, he was an international pariah blamed for the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jumbo jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people. After years of denial, Gadhafi's Libya acknowledged responsibility, agreed to pay up to $10 million to relatives of each victim, and the Libyan rule declared he would dismantle his weapons of mass destruction program.

That eased him back into the international community.

But on February 22, days after the uprising against him began, Gadhafi gave a televised speech vowing to hunt down protesters "inch by inch, room by room, home by home, alleyway by alleyway." The speech caused a furor that helped fuel the armed rebellion against him and it has been since mocked in songs and spoofs across the Arab world.

As the rebel force advanced on Tripoli on Sunday, taking town after town, thousands of jubilant civilians rushed out of their homes to cheer the long convoys of pickup trucks packed with fighters shooting in the air. One man grabbed a rebel flag that had been draped over the hood of a slow-moving car and kissed it, overcome with emotion.

Akram Ammar, 26, fled his hometown of Tripoli in March and on Sunday was among the rebel fighters pouring back in.

"It is a happiness you can't describe but also some fear. It will take us time to clear the entire city. I expect a long time for Libyans to get used to the new system and the new democracy," he said, dressed in camouflage pants and black shirt and sporting the long beard of a conservative Muslim. "But in the end it will be better."

The rebels' leadership council, based in the eastern city of Benghazi, sent out mobile text messages to Tripoli residents, proclaiming, "Long live Free Libya" and urging them to protect public property. Internet service returned to the capital for the first time in six months.

The day's first breakthrough came when hundreds of rebels fought their way into a major symbol of the Gadhafi regime — the base of the elite 32nd Brigade commanded by Gadhafi's son, Khamis. Fighters said they met little resistance. They were 16 miles from the big prize, Tripoli.

Hundreds of rebels cheered wildly and danced as they took over the compound filled with eucalyptus trees, raising their tricolor from the front gate and tearing down a large billboard of Gadhafi. From a huge warehouse, they loaded their trucks with hundreds of crates of rockets, artillery shells and large-caliber ammunition.

One group started up a tank, drove it out of the gate, crushing the median of the main highway and driving off toward Tripoli.

The rebels also freed more than 300 prisoners from a regime lockup, most of them arrested during the heavy crackdown on the uprising in towns west of Tripoli. The fighters and the prisoners — many looking weak and dazed and showing scars and bruises from beatings — embraced and wept with joy.

"We were sitting in our cells when all of a sudden we heard lots of gunfire and people yelling 'God is great.' We didn't know what was happening, and then we saw rebels running in and saying 'We're on your side.' And they let us out," said 23-year-old Majid al-Hodeiri. He said he was captured four months ago by Gadhafi's forces crushing the uprising in his home city of Zawiya. He said he was beaten and tortured while under detention.

From the military base, the convoy sped toward the capital.

Mahmoud al-Ghwei, 20 and unarmed, said he had just came along with a friend for the ride .

"It's a great feeling. For all these years, we wanted freedom and Gadhafi kept it from us. Now we're going to get rid of Gadhafi and get our freedom," he said.

The uprising against Gadhafi broke out in mid-February, and anti-regime protests quickly spread. A brutal regime crackdown quickly transformed the protests into an armed rebellion. Rebels seized Libya's east, setting up an internationally recognized transitional government there, and two pockets in the west, the port city of Misrata and the Nafusa mountain range.

Gadhafi clung to the remaining territory, and for months neither side had been able to break the other.

In early August, however, rebels launched an offensive from the Nafusa Mountains, intending to open a new, western front to break the deadlock. They fought their way down to the Mediterranean coastal plain, backed by NATO airstrikes, and captured the strategic city of Zawiya.

Rebel fighters who spoke to relatives in Tripoli by phone said hundreds rushed into the streets in anti-regime protests in several neighborhoods on Sunday.

"We received weapons by sea from Benghazi. They sent us weapons in boats," said Ibrahim Turki, a rebel in the Tripoli neighborhood of Tajoura, which saw heavy fighting the past two days. "Without their weapons, we would not have been able to stand in the face of the mighty power of Gadhafi forces."

Thousands celebrated in the streets of Benghazi, the rebels' de facto capital hundreds of miles to the east. Firing guns into the air and shooting fireworks, they cheered and waved the rebel tricolor flags, dancing and singing in the city's main square.

When rebels moved in, the regime unit guarding the capital, known as the Mohammed Megrayef battalion, surrendered and its commander ordered its troops to put down their arms. Al-Baja, the rebel official, said that the commander, Barani Eshkal, had secretly defected earlier to the rebels, embittered by the 1986 execution of his brother, who had joined a coup attempt against Gadhafi.

Eshkal also pointed out to the rebels the hiding place of Gadhafi's son Seif al-Islam in a hotel, al-Baja said. Rebel chief Mustafa Abdel-Jalil in Benghazi confirmed to the AP that the rebels captured Seif but refused to give details.

In the Netherlands, the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, said his office would talk to the rebels on Monday about Seif al-Islam's transfer for trial. "It is time for justice, not revenge," Moreno-Ocampo told the AP.

Seif al-Islam, his father and Libya's intelligence chief were indicted earlier this year for allegedly ordering, planning and participating in illegal attacks on civilians in the early days of the violent crackdown on anti-regime protesters.

Another son, Mohammed, was under house arrest. Mohammed, who is in charge of Libyan telecommunications, appeared on the Arabic satellite channel Al-Jazeera, saying his house was surrounded by armed rebels.

"They have guaranteed my safety. I have always wanted good for all Libyans and was always on the side of God," he said. Close to the end of the interview, there was the sound of heavy gunfire and Mohammed said rebels had entered his house before the phone line cut off.

Hadeel Al-Shalchi in Cairo contributed to this report.

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