(Reuters) – Former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi died of wounds suffered on Thursday as fighters battling to complete an eight-month-old uprising against his rule overran his hometown Sirte, Libya’s interim rulers said.
His killing, which came swiftly after his capture near Sirte, is the most dramatic single development in the Arab Spring revolts that have unseated rulers in Egypt and Tunisia and threatened the grip on power of the leaders of Syria and Yemen.
“He (Gaddafi) was also hit in his head,” National Transitional Council official Abdel Majid Mlegta told Reuters. “There was a lot of firing against his group and he died.”
Mlegta told Reuters earlier that Gaddafi, who was in his late 60s, was captured and wounded in both legs at dawn on Thursday as he tried to flee in a convoy which NATO warplanes attacked. He said he had been taken away by an ambulance.
There was no independent confirmation of his remarks.
An anti-Gaddafi fighter said Gaddafi had been found hiding in a hole in the ground and had said “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot” to the men who grabbed him.
His capture followed within minutes of the fall of Sirte, a development that extinguished the last significant resistance by forces loyal to the deposed leader.
The capture of Sirte and the death of Gaddafi means Libya’s ruling NTC should now begin the task of forging a new democratic system which it had said it would get under way after the city, built as a showpiece for Gaddafi’s rule, had fallen.
Gaddafi, wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of ordering the killing of civilians, was toppled by rebel forces on August 23 after 42 years of one-man rule over the oil-producing North African state.
NTC fighters hoisted the red, black and green national flag above a large utilities building in the center of a newly-captured Sirte neighborhood and celebratory gunfire broke out among their ecstatic and relieved comrades.
Hundreds of NTC troops had surrounded the Mediterranean coastal town for weeks in a chaotic struggle that killed and wounded scores of the besieging forces and an unknown number of defenders.
NTC fighters said there were a large number of corpses inside the last redoubts of the Gaddafi troops. It was not immediately possible to verify that information.
In light of Barack Obama’s total neglect of the issues important to Ethiopians in the U.S., we need to switch our support to Herman Cain, whose family and social values are not only in line with most Ethiopians, but also he seems to be willing to overhaul the U.S. foreign policy to {www:disfavour} genocidal dictators such us Meles Zenawi. I like to hear your comments. – Elias Kifle
Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Many people obey simply because the cost of not doing so seems at that moment to be more trouble than it is worth. Some also declare that they have no more interest in or association with politics. Nonviolent movements need to find ways to show the public that indifference actually contributes to their oppression and the erosion of individual liberties… [Read more. Also watch video here.]
Yet another shameful drama is currently taking place involving Al Amoudi’s {www:concubine}s (የጭን ገረዶች) who misrepresent themselves has officials of the Ethiopian Sports Federation in North America (ESFNA). During the past couple of days, the concubines have been holding a meeting in Virginia. They called it a board meeting, but as soon as it started, the participants begun showering each other with insults and kicking each other from the meeting. Founding members who came to the meeting to help rescue ESFNA, which has been completely taken over by a gang of Al Amoudi-hired thugs during the past five years, were {www:unceremoniously} expelled. The cause of the fighting that has been taking place in ESFNA is to show who is a more loyal servant to the drunkard Saudi billionaire Al Amoudi and get some crumbs from him. It’s disappointing that VOA sends a reporter to cover this embarrassing spectacle that only brings shame to the Ethiopian community in North America, while ignoring other Ethiopian events that positively portray our community in the U.S.
Putting the rights of land holders — and in this country these are almost all small and impoverished farmers and herders — at the center of the discussion enables us to bring in the state and the question of governance since embedded in the concept of land rights are relations of power between the state on the one hand and individuals and communities on the other. The land transfers that have taken place on an unprecedented scale in the last ten to twelve years has brought to the surface several issues of public concern. First, it is the first time in this country that so much land — perhaps as much as a million hectares at present and expected to increase substantially in the coming years — has been put in the hands of foreign investors. Total transfers from the late 1990s to the end of 2008 to both domestic and foreign capital reaches almost 3.5 million hectares according to the database compiled by MOARD (2009a). The significance of this is that the state is now redefining the {www:agrarian} structure of the country as well as the future course of agricultural production in a manner that will increasingly marginalize the rural population. Secondly, since, by law, the state has juridical ownership of the land and in contrast peasant farmers and pastoralists have the right of use only, it is the state which in effect has been responsible for land grabbing: it has used its statutory right of ownership to alienate land from those who have customary rights and rights of longstanding usage, and transferring it, without consultation or consent, to investors from outside the communities concerned as well as from outside the country itself. The {www:commercialization} of land has served as a political advantage to the state since it enhances its power vis-à-vis rural communities, and leads to the greater concentration of authority in the hands of public agents and local administrators. The presence of large farm operations with their modern technologies in rural communities will be a constant reminder of the danger hanging over small farmers and pastoralists and their way of life… [read more]
