Siege of Bani Walid: Foreign fighters, phosphorus bombs and nerve gas

The besieged Libyan city of Bani Walid has been plunged into chaos. SW the former Gaddafi regime stronghold is under attack by militias bolstered by foreign mercenaries, and they used banned weapons like white phosphorous.

­The sources denied reports of the last few days that Bani Walid was retaken by the Libyan government. Residents said that militia forces have continued their assault, while preventing the refugees who fled from reentering the city. 

A man who claimed his relatives are trapped inside the besieged city spoke with RT, saying, “There is no food; there is nothing to support the life of people. And the militia does not allow anyone to come back to their homes.”

“They are demolishing homes with machinery and tanks. There is no communication or internet so people are not able to connect with each other,” the source said. He is currently in Egypt, and refuses to reveal his identity over fears of personal safety.

He believes the real reason for the inoperable communications is that many people have been killed inside Bani Walid by the forces besieging the city and now they are trying to prevent information about the killings to be leaked outside. 

The militia attackers have claimed they are battling ‘pro-Gaddafi’ forces, but the source slammed that motive as a “lie and a dirty game.”

“They use foreign snipers, I think from Qatar or Turkey, with Qatar covering all the costs,” he said. He claimed that a ship with weapons and other equipment recently docked in the port city of Misrata, where the assault on Bani Walid is allegedly being directed.

“There is no government in Libya. Groups of militia control everything. They don’t care about Libya, they don’t care about the nation,” he said, adding allegations that the majority of militia fighters have dual citizenship or passports from other countries.

“We ask the envoy [Special Representative] of the Secretary-General of the United Nations [for Libya] Mr. Tarik Mitri – where is he now?” he said. “Where is the United Nations? Where is the EU? Where is the Human Rights Watch? We ask for an intervention now as soon as possible – please!”

In an October 23 UN session, the US blocked a statement on the violence in Bani Walid drafted by Russia, which condemned the ongoing conflict in the city and calling for a peaceful resolution.

Witnesses claim militia used chemical weapons in Bani Walid

“I can confirm that pro-government militias used internationally prohibited weapons. They used phosphorus bombs and nerve gas. We have documented all this in videos, we recorded the missiles they used and the white phosphorus raining down from these missiles,” Bani Walid-based activist and lawyer Afaf Yusef told RT.

“Many people died without being wounded or shot, they died as a result of gases. The whole world needs to see who they are targeting. Are they really Gaddafi's men? Are the children, women and old men killed – Gaddafi's men?” Yusef said.

The forces attacking Bani Walid have been ordered to use “all means necessary” in their assault on the city. “To all parasites and leaches, a message to all of them across Libya, wherever they are: Whoever you are, however strong you are, and whoever your back is – the revolution should win,” a militant said in the TV report.

Looming humanitarian catastrophe in Bani Walid

The humanitarian situation outside Bani Walid is reportedly nearly as dire as that within the besieged city. Those who managed to flee the violence now find themselves stranded on the desert roads outside the city.

Thousands of Bani Walid residents have reportedly tried to reenter the city, but were stopped at makeshift militia checkpoints composed of pickup trucks armed with mounted machine-guns.

“Look at the people over there, they got a gun and they’re shooting at people with it,” a Bani Walid resident said, pointing in the direction of a checkpoint. He claimed that those who fled the city had been forced to stay in the desert for more than a week.

“Where is the government?” he said.

'War crime': Gaddafi, his son and over 60 loyalists executed by rebel fighters – HRW

Libyan rebels abused and mass murdered Colonel Gaddafi, his son Mutassim, and 66 loyalists, after their capture a year ago, Human Rights Watch says. It calls for an investigation and prosecution of those responsible for what they slam as war crime.

The 50-page report "Death of a Dictator: Bloody Vengeance in Sirte" details the last hours of Muammar Gaddafi’s life on October 20, 2011, when he was caught trying to leave the city with his remaining supporters.

HRW admits difficulty in reconstructing the final days of Libya’s ex-leader since “he was surrounded by a small circle of trusted confidants and bodyguards, most of whom were killed in the attempted escape from Sirte,” stated the report.

The report relies heavily on interviews with Mansour Dhao, a senior security official and head of the pro-Gaddafi People's Guard, and other surviving witnesses of the event. The interviews took place in Libya two days after Gaddafi’s death.

Capture, abuse, murder

Gaddafi is said to have fled Tripoli with a handful of his trustful men in the end of August to his hometown of Sirte, where he “spent most of his time reading the Koran and praying,” Dhao told HRW.

“His communications with the world were cut off. There was no communication, no television, no news,” he added.

On October 20, Gadaffi’s son Mutassim deemed the situation unsafe and organized a 50-vehicle convoy for all to flee the city in the morning. The convoy consisted of 250 people, including civilians who supported Gaddafi.

As the cars were trying to make their getaway they were struck by a NATO air-fired missile, which exploded next to the car carrying Gaddafi. In defense, the convoy turned on to a dirt road, but was pinned down by militia fighters and then further bombed by NATO fighter jets.

After the bombings Gaddafi, accompanied by 10 other people, including his bodyguards, tried to take shelter by a drainage pipe, but was once again attacked by militia.

One of Gaddafi’s bodyguards reportedly threw three grenades at the rebels, but one of the grenades hit a cement wall and bounced back, injuring Gaddafi and leading to his capture.

“As soon as the militia fighters had custody of Gaddafi, they began abusing him. Blood was already gushing from the shrapnel wound in his head. As he was being led to the main road, a militiaman stabbed him in his anus with what appears to have been a bayonet, causing another rapidly bleeding wound,” described the report.

Video clips taken of the capture suggest that after enduring abuses Gaddafi was shot by militia fighters.

Report suggests that rebels took “bloody revenge” against Gaddafi and his loyal supporters in light of the eight-month civil war.

An HRW team on the ground counted that 103 pro-Gaddafi supporters died during that escape. Half of those were killed by NATO bombings, and the other half was either killed in combat or executed.

On top of that, 140 Gaddafi loyalists were taken prisoner, but instead of being transferred to prison authorities, 66 of them were executed in a nearby hotel.

Gaddafi’s son Mutassim was also captured alive, according to YouTube videos taken by his captors. However, by the afternoon of the same day, Mutassim was dead with a large new wound in his throat, suggesting he was murdered, HRW concluded.

“The throat wound thus must have been inflicted after the videos of a captured Mutassim were recorded, strongly indicating that he was killed in the custody of his captors just hours after he was detained.”

HRW points out that “these killings apparently comprise the largest documented execution of detainees committed by anti-Gaddafi forces during the eight-month conflict in Libya. The execution of persons in custody is a war crime.”

Libya’s powerless authority

HRW also accuses Libyan transitional government of lack of control and unity for failing to properly investigate and prosecute those responsible for the killings in Sirte, a year after the incident.

“To some extent, the failure of Libya’s authorities to investigate shows their continuing lack of control over the heavily armed militias, and the urgent need to bring Libya’s numerous militias under the full control of the new authorities.”

UN and International Criminal Court (ICC) have already been calling upon Libya to investigate Gaddafi’s death back in October 2011.

ICC had spoken out that there were strong indications Gaddafi was killed in custody, yet it left things be by letting Libya to investigate on its own.

Libya announced it had created a committee to look into circumstances of death. However, there has not been a proper update into the investigation in just under a year.

Back in January, Gaddafi’s daughter Aisha hired Nick Kaufman, an Israeli lawyer, to convince the International Criminal Court to investigate the full circumstances of her father’s death, arguing that time for a proper probe is running out.

“[The investigation] would involve forensic analysis of the crime scene, ballistic analysis of the crime scene, it would involve taking detailed statements from objective and independent witnesses,” Kaufman told RT. And with time memories deteriorate, people forget, and evidence goes missing.

Yet Aisha’s efforts failed to yield results.

When HRW contacted Libya government imploring them to take action, local authorities stated that all murders were the result of Gaddafi regime’s “dictatorship” and that rebels were defending themselves. However, they failed to account for those evident executions.

Moscow warns NATO on itchy trigger finger in Syria

A US Army marksman scopes for insurgent ambushes as fellow infantrymen attached to the 2nd platoon, C-Coy. 1-23 Infantry based at Zangabad foward operating base in Panjwai district go about looking for bomb traps made from IED's during a dawn operation at Naja-bien village on September 23, 2012.

The Foreign Ministry has called on NATO and Middle East countries not to devise pretexts for military intervention in Syria.

Russia has expressed concern that some provocation could occur at the Turkish-Syrian border that may give NATO the green light to intervene in Syria.

"In our contacts with our partners both in NATO and in the region, including on international forums, we have called on them not to look for pretexts in order to carry out a [military] operation," Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov told reporters on Tuesday in Moscow.

In such a scenario, NATO would be obliged to intervene in the conflict to defend Turkey, a NATO member.

Gatilov said Russia is equally wary of establishing any sort of “humanitarian corridors or buffer zones,” which may be used to draw NATO and other regional powers into the conflict.

The government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been struggling to maintain its grip on power amid a militant challenge by the political opposition. While many Western countries have disavowed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and taken sides with the rebels, Moscow is calling for both sides of the conflict to accept the Kofi Annan Plan, recognize a ceasefire and enter into peace talks.

This is not the first time Moscow has warned its NATO partners against interfering militarily in the affairs of sovereign states.

Last year, Russia, which was among five countries that abstained from a UN Security Council vote for the enforcement of a no-fly zone in Libya.

Moscow said such action would lead to large-scale military involvement in the country.

These concerns were eventually validated when it became obvious that NATO was targeting forces loyal to former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who was murdered at the hands of a mob immediately after being found.

Last month, the violence returned full circle to Libya when the US Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens was killed following a wave of anti-American protests triggered by the release of an anti-Islam film.

Russia is concerned that by interfering in the affairs of foreign states, NATO is forced to build alliances with motley groups whose affiliation is largely unknown.

In Syria, there is evidence that Al-Qaeda has hijacked the opposition movement, and this is a scenario that could lead to disastrous consequences in the event of a NATO military operation.

Russian Media RT - ‘US will think twice before supporting Islamic radicals’

The recent outbreak of violent anti-American protests in the Muslim world will make US politicians think twice before supporting Islamic radicals, political analyst and ex-jihadist Tawfik Hamid said in an interview with RT.

­The US has funded Islamists groups throughout the world for decades, and the death of the American ambassador to Libya is just one more example of how militants backed by radical Islamic ideology will eventually turn their weapons against their patrons in Washington.

In this light, Hamid believes that the idea of toppling Syria’s President Bashar Assad and replacing him with rebels known to have connections to Al-Qaeda should no longer seem like such a winning idea to the West.

­RT: What do you think of the events in the Arab world right now?

Tawfik Hamid: I see an expression of radicalism in the form of attacking embassies and killing ambassadors, and expressing this violence in the radical ways of thinking that proliferated in the last few decades in the Muslim world. It is expressing itself in this form as it also expressed itself in Afghanistan in beheading people. But that is a different kind of violence. It is based on the same thinking of accepting the use of violence to suppress others, and preventing them from saying their opinion or preventing them from saying things that you perceive as insulting.

RT: Do you think it is happening especially in the countries that have gone or are still going through transition?

TH: The general underlying cause is religious principles, that whoever says a bad word against the Prophet Muhammad must be killed, which is not in the Koran but it is one of the mainstream beliefs in some Islamic books. Also, the excess of love for Prophet Muhammad makes Muslims feel that [in case of] any insult towards him, they have the responsibility to defend him. Especially according to Islamic traditional teaching that sinners go to hell, and that the Prophet Muhammad is the one who will intercede to bring them from hell to paradise. It is not gold that will do this, it is the Prophet Muhammad’s intercession. So, there is an excessive emotional feeling toward the Prophet Muhammad because of this.

This is an underlying factor. But there are local reasons as well, in Egypt for example. In Egypt, you have the role model of Essam Sharaf, one of the former Prime Ministers after the revolution, who actually celebrated the young man who took the flag of the Israeli embassy and burned it while a mob surrounded the embassy. Instead of punishing him and considering him a criminal for such an act, for attacking the Israeli embassy, [Essam Sharaf] actually celebrated him in the media. This is providing a very bad role model.

In Libya, the situation is different: You have many well-trained radicals who have military power in their hands, who can make the decision to attack the embassy based on the movie [the US-made anti-Islamic movie ‘Innocence of Muslims’], or based on a prior arrangement.

RT: A lot of people, even US officials, are saying that this was a pre-planned attack and that the film may have nothing to do with this. Do you agree to this?

TH: It is a possibility, I cannot deny that it is one of the possibilities. But also, there is the possibility that this movie incited excessive hatred and a desire to use violence against the US. And [an attack] could then be easily implemented, because there are well-trained fighters with weapons, even artillery. So, it is not that difficult, if you have been fighting Gaddafi for more than a year, to take weapons and go attack the embassy. Both possibilities are valid.

RT: The groups that attacked the US embassy were funded and trained by the US – in some cases – during the revolution in Libya. Do you think that the US did not see this coming? Especially after what happened in Afghanistan back in 1970s to 1980s, and now we see the results with the Taliban?

TH: I think people do not learn from history very well. It is one of the problems of humans: They don’t learn from history and they follow advice without really going into enough depth of understanding of culture and mindset, the religious things. Some of these [Libyan] radicals who were probably supported by NATO may have access to such weapons, because when Gaddafi’s government and the whole system collapsed they had easy access. Really, there is a big problem in dealing with Middle East issues.

RT: Do you think the US expected the democracy that they were promising to Libyans and Egyptians and other nations in the Arab world, that this will be the result of the democracy they were promising?

TH: Obviously not. You see [US Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton, for example, clearly saying that ‘how can this happen in the country that we helped to get freedom?’ They are really shocked. The Americans and NATO helped them expecting that they will reciprocate by at least showing some liberties and respect for others, at least for America. But they underestimated the threat of radical Islam – as they did in Iraq. And the main factor in this threat is ideology. If you don’t deal with this ideology, you cannot win this game.

If you focus on two things, democracy and military power, it is like if someone who knows how to change a tire of a car thinks that fixing a complex electronic component of the car can be done by changing tires. No, it will not. You need to go to a completely different dimension here. That is to deal with religious ideology, whether you admit it or not – you have to deal with it.

RT: Especially because a lot of people were telling the US [the militants] are with Al Qaeda. In your articles you do talk about this.

TH: I’m one of the people who clearly stated that if you want to implement a democracy – avoid the ‘sudden democracy’ syndrome. It will bring the Islamists to power, and we will suffer

RT: Would you say that the US simply does not understand the nature of the Arab world? The fact is, the democracy they wanted to impose is a complete failure right now.

TH: There are [American] people who understand, and people who do not understand, and it depends on the balance of powers in certain times in history when the decisions are being taken. Unfortunately I don’t think the decisions taken here are very correct.

RT: Do you think the US will change its strategy in the Arab world and the countries going through transitions, in light of what is going on?

TH: Yes, absolutely. For example, there will be many voices that will start questioning if removing [Syrian President Bashar] Al-Assad is a good idea or not. Supporting the rebels can ultimately bring extreme radicals [to power in Syria], who will become enemies to America and attack it. It doesn’t work the way people think. The Libyan example of the killing of the ambassador in such a way, and the spread of the reaction in several Islamic societies, will make many people think twice before supporting rebels against Al-Assad. I cannot say it will be a game change in this respect, but I can say it will make many people think twice about the issue of supporting the rebels against Al-Assad.

RT: But will they actually make decisions that are different from those made before? Will they reconsider their strategy?

TH: It is likely; there is a 60 percent possibility that decisions may have some changes or modifications, especially now that the Syrian issue is hot. I know it was a policy to remove Al-Assad but I think with the Libyan issue it will make the voices of the people, who were against Assad’s removal, more prominent and better heard.

But it is very hard to guarantee an outcome, because it depends on different powers and ultimate intentions; it is not something where you can easily say ‘it will change’.

RT: How do you see relations between the US and the countries that are going through transition, Libya and Egypt in particular, especially after the latest protests?

TH: It will certainly create a new way of thinking in relations with these people. I think it might affect [American] donations that go to Egypt. The [US] Congress is supposed to allow $1 billion donations to support Egypt. I believe many people in Congress will think twice whether this is appropriate, without having guarantees from [current President of Egypt Mohamed] Morsi that he will really respect the values of democracy. The problem is that many societies understand democracy as just a ballot, while the West understands democracy as transparency, freedom of speech and respect for minorities. There are two completely different understandings of the same word. In the West, it is understood as these values, but elsewhere in the world it is understood as the majority suppressing the minority and dominating everything.

RT: If Congress is going to reconsider its aid to Egypt for preconditions – isn’t that another form of conditions the Arab world is sick and tired of, and the reason for the protests?

TH: I think if you’re giving donations, you have a full right to put conditions on it, because it is extremely unwise to give someone donations and at the end they will promote an ideology of hatred to you that can ultimately cause you damage. So, when the US is giving someone donations on that high level, it is fair to insist on certain conditions.

RT: Would you say the US will start working on its relations with the Arab world, with the peoples instead of governments?

TH: I think they will become more aware of fighting radical ideology, they cannot just ignore it. It is not simply a military solution, or using democracy to solve the problem.