(Reuters) – The Arab League said on Wednesday it could impose a “no fly” zone on Libya in coordination with the African Union if fighting continued in the north African state, Secretary-General Amr Moussa said on Wednesday.
“The Arab League will not stand with its hands tied while the blood of the brotherly Libyan people is spilt,” Moussa said.
One of the steps it could take would be to enforce a “no fly” zone in cooperation with the African Union, he said.
The Arab League has suspended the membership of Muammar Gaddafi’s government in protest at its crackdown on protesters who have risen up
(AP) — Opposition forces pushed back an attack by the Libyan dictator’s forces trying to retake a key coastal oil installation in a topsy-turvy battle Wednesday in which shells splashed in the Mediterranean and a warplane bombed a beach where rebel fighters were charging over the dunes. At least five people were killed in the fighting.
The assault on the Brega oil port was the first major regime counteroffensive against the opposition-held eastern half of Libya, where the population backed by mutinous army units rose up and drove out Gaddafi’s rule over the past two weeks.
The Gaddafi forces initially re-captured the oil facilities Wednesday morning. But then a wave of opposition citizen militias drove them out again, cornering them in a nearby university campus where they battled for several hours until the approximately 200 Gadhafi loyalists fled, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene.
Soon after sunrise Wednesday, a large force of Gaddafi loyalists in around 50 SUVS, some mounted with machine guns, descended on opposition-held Brega, 460 miles (740 kilometers) east of Tripoli along the Mediterranean. The force caught a small opposition contingent guarding the site by suprise and it fled, said Ahmed Dawas, an anti-Gaddafi fighter at a checkpoint outside the port.
The pro-Gaddafi forces seized the port, airstrip and the oil facilities where about 4,000 personnel work, as regime warplanes hit an ammunition depot on the outskirts of the nearby rebel-held city of Ajdabiya, witnesses said.
Midmorning, the opposition counter-attacked. Anti-Gaddafi fighters with automatic weapons sped out of Ajdabiya in pickup trucks, heading for Brega, 40 miles away (70 kilometers) away. Dawas said they retook the oil facilities and airstrip. Other witnesses reported regime forces were surrounded by rebels. The sound of screaming warplanes and the crackle of heavy gunfire could be heard as the witnesses spoke to The Associated Press by phone.
By the afternoon, the regime fighters fled the oil facilities and holed up in a nearby university campus, where they came under siege by anti-Gaddafi fighters, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene.
Machine gun and automatic weapons fire rattled in the air, and shells lobbed from the campus went over the anti-Gaddafi side to splash in the Mediterranean.
At one point, a warplane from Gaddafi’s airforce swooped overhead and an explosion was heard. A witness said it struck an empty stretch of dunes near the battle, sending a plume of sand into the air but causing no injuries in an apparent attempt to intimidate the anti-Gaddafi side.
But opposition citizen militias poured into the battle, arriving from Ajdabiya and armed with assault rifles. They moved through the dunes along the beach against the campus next to a pristine blue-water Mediterranean beach. Those without guns picked up bottles and put wicks in them to make firebombs.
At least five opposition fighters were killed in the fighting, their bodies covered with sand thrown up by shells bursting in the dunes. Angry crowds gathered around them at Brega’s hospital, chanting, “The blood of martyrs will not go in vain.”
In the late afternoon, the pro-Gaddafi force fled the campus, and opposition fighters were seen combing through the university buildings. Automatic gunfire was still heard in the distance, but it appeared the regime troops were withdrawing. The campus grounds and dunes between it and the beach were littered with casings and shells.
In Ajdabiya, people geared up to defend the city, fearing the pro-Gaddafi forces would move on them next. At the gates of the city, hundreds of residents took up positions on the road from Brega, armed with Kalashnikovs and hunting rifles, along with a few rocket-propelled grenade launchers. They set up two large rocket launchers and an anti-aircraft gun in the road. But by the evening, there was no sign of attack there.
Brega and nearby Ajdabiya are the furthest west points in the large contiguous swath of eastern Libya extending all the way to the Egyptian border that fell into opposition hands in the uprising that began Feb. 15. Ajdabiya is about 90 miles (150 kilometers) from Benghazi, Libya’s second largest city and the nerve center of the opposition.
The launching of an investigation by the Int’l Criminal Court (ICC) into charges of crimes against humanity in Libya is a hopeful sign that the international community will no longer tolerate dictators who brutalize their people. The ICC must be made aware that Ethiopia’s tyrant Meles Zenawi has been committing similar atrocities for the past 20 years.
(CNN) — The International Criminal Court is opening an investigation into the situation in Libya, the office of the court’s prosecutor said in a statement Wednesday.
“Following a preliminary examination of available information, the prosecutor has reached the conclusion that an investigation is warranted,” the statement said.
Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo plans to present Thursday “an overview of the alleged crimes committed in Libya” since February 15, when the protests in that country started, the statement said.
Libya is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, meaning the Libyan government does not recognize the court’s authority. But the United Nations Security Council referred the matter to the court, giving it “jurisdiction” over the situation in Libya, the statement said.
The court focuses on what it considers “the most serious crimes of concern to the international community.”
No possible charges or violations were listed in the statement.
(Reuters) — The Security Council on Saturday imposed sanctions on Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and his family, and referred Libya’s crackdown on anti-government demonstrators to the ICC.
Once the prosecutor has gathered sufficient evidence, the next step would be for the prosecutor to present his case to ICC judges, who will need to decide whether or not to issue arrest warrants.
Libya was one of a handful of states worldwide that refused to sign up to the ICC’s founding Rome statute, but because the case was referred by the Security Council, its nationals can be prosecuted as the ICC now has jurisdiction.
The winds of change that is sweeping through the Middle East and North Africa cannot be stopped by Meles Zenawi and his thugs. As the African saying goes, “No one can stop the rain.”
No amount of wind bagging about economic growth, divide and rule tactics, and state terrorism will prevent 80 million Ethiopians from demanding their liberty, human dignity, democratic rights, and a better life in their own country.
The time has now come for us to say, “Enough is Enough!” Beka! Gaye! Bass! Yiakel!
Ethiopians shall unite, rise up and take control of their destiny. They stand as one — from the rural villages to the cities and the Diaspora — to remove Meles Zenawi’s Woyanne junta. 20 years of dictatorship is enough! 20 years of massacres… 20 years of corruption… 20 years of abuse of power is enough… 20 years of mismanagement, misrule is enough!.
Meles Zenawi has been a cause of death and destruction. During the last 20 years tens of thousands of people have perished. His security forces have committed crimes against humanity and Genocide in Gambela, the Ogaden region and elsewhere in the country. His abysmal human rights records are well documented by the Department of State, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Ethiopian Human Rights Council, the United States Congress and the European Parliament. There is an overwhelming prima-facie evidence for the United Nation’s Security Council to refer the matter to the International Criminal Court.
In 2010 he conducted a fake election, hired a lobby firm in the United States, and claimed that he won a whopping 99.6% of the seats in the rubber stamp parliament. His wicked macroeconomic policy has resulted in hyperinflation, massive devaluation, bank looting, rampant youth unemployment, spiraling cost of living, grinding poverty, and forced migration. His disastrous agricultural policy, despite the so-called big push by the West, is unable to feed the ever-growing population of the country. By the end of 2010 close to 10% of the population is living on food aid. Food aid has been used for political purposes.
Furthermore, Meles is selling the country’s virgin lands to foreigners by evicting poor peasants from their ancestral land, resulting in major land grab, environmental catastrophe and human displacement. Meles has created a landlocked country that is inhabited by more than 80 million people. That is why we, the Global Civic Movement for Change in Ethiopia have resolved that the 20 years of brutal rule of Meles Zenawi must end.
We call upon all Ethiopian civil society organizations, churches, mosques, schools and universities, professionals, business people, laborers and civil servants, the youth, men and women to rise up in nonviolent resistance as their brothers and sisters have done in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya to remove the Meles regime.
We call upon members of the Ethiopian Defense Forces, the police and security services to stand with the people and protect them from the Meles dictatorship. We make a special call to them to refrain from using deadly force against their brothers and sisters in the same way as their counterparts in Tunisia and Egypt have done.
We call upon all Ethiopian civic organizations world wide to engage in consultations with all democratic forces inside and outside of Ethiopia and provide moral and materiel assistance to bring about democratic change in Ethiopia.
On February 27, 2011, Jon Swaine, penned a piece in the Telegraph entitled, ‘“Libya: African mercenaries ‘immune from prosecution for war crimes.’” As the title indicates, Swaine seems to be concerned about the UN Security Council’s lack of specific call for inquiry into the actions of the “mercenaries” from Algeria, Ethiopia, Tunisia and other African countries. Ethiopian Review strongly believes that the participating African regimes, rather than the soldiers, that must face international justice for crime against humanity in Libya.
It is incumbent upon the United Nations Security Council to broaden its call for investigation by including the African regimes that are at the center in the ongoing carnage in Libya against defenseless civilians.
In the case of Ethiopia, the vast majority of soldiers join the army for economic reasons. Currently the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) rules Ethiopia under the disguise of the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), headed by dictator Meles Zenawi. It is a group that runs Ethiopia as its fiefdom, more like the Moammar Gadhafi and his cohorts. The Ethiopian army and security forces take orders directly from Meles Zenawi.
In violation of the international law, Zenawi’s regime ordered the deployment of soldiers to Libya to take part in the assault against civilians — the soldiers are simply carrying out a mission.
It is vital for the United Nations Security Council to ask the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate Zenawi’s regime’s participation in war crimes in Libya. In fact, once ICC begins its inquiry into this matter, it can expand its case to include other war crimes that had been committed by Meles Zenawi’s regime in Somalia between 2006 and 2009.
We firmly believe that the United Nations Security Council must set a precedent to demonstrate its commitment to have zero tolerance for regimes that are exporting terror globally. We hope for a swift action.
(The Telegraph) — According to the European Union, 80 per cent of Libya’s oilfields are now under the control of the opposition forces.
For the first time in over a week, oil was shipped from the eastern port city of Tobruk, deep in territory that has fallen to a civilian-led insurrection that has styled itself the Free Libya movement.
A tanker carrying 700,000 barrels of crude oil sailed for China, with a second bound for Italy due to leave in the next 48 hours.
Such quantities may be trifling when compared the vast amount of oil in the world’s waterways at any one time, but the resumption of Libyan exports has already done much to soothe international concern.
Oil prices have soared since the turmoil in Libya began nearly a fortnight ago, raising fears of a major setback to the faltering global economic recovery, but the cost of a barrel of Brent crude fell for the first time in days in response to the news.
That any oil is leaving Libya is little short of miraculous.
Officials involved in setting up a Libyan National Council, a de facto provisional government headquartered in the second city of Benghazi, conceded that oil production had fallen by as much as 50 per cent.
But they said they were determined to fulfil Libya’s international obligations, while ensuring that domestic demand – vital for the success of the revolt – is also met.
“The main reason to keep the oil flowing is that the crisis will be much worse, both for the international community and for us if we don’t,” said Idris al-Sharif, an official affiliated with the new authority in eastern Libya said.
Further proving the magnitude of the task ahead of the rebels, elements of the Libyan air force still loyal to Col Gaddafi bombed Ajdabiya, 100 miles south of Benghazi, striking ammunition dumps in the town.
The job of ensuring continued production and exportation in “Free Libya” has fallen to the state owned Arabian Gulf Oil Company, which ousted its pro-Gaddafi director Abdulwaris Sa’ad and now answers to the rebel leadership.
But all proceeds from oil exportation still go to the main National Oil Company in Tripoli, long the source of much of Col Gaddafi’s revenues.
Much of the oil is locked in long-term contracts, but officials in Benghazi said they hoped that they hoped to begin discussions with the international community on how to divert revenues from Tripoli to Benghazi once the national council is fully operational.
“There are various options we can look at, including the creation of escrow accounts to halt the flow of money to the regime,” one said.
In a sign that idealism has given way to realism, officials said they had abandoned plans to punish Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian leader, for his perceived support of Col Gaddafi by withholding oil. Italy depends on Libya for a quarter of its oil imports.
With Libya dependent on Italian refining technology, essential for its domestic market, any decision to exclude Italy could hurt the revolutionary cause.
Salam al Mismam, an executive at the Tobruk oil refinery, confirmed that work had resumed on ensuring that supplies to Italy were despatched as quickly as possible.
