AND HIS AFRICAN FRIENDS….MONSTERS ALL….see note please
http://newafricaanalysis.co.uk/index.php/2011/03/gaddafi-a-penchant-for-war-crimes/
Gaddafi: A penchant for war crimes
This is the monster that George W. Bush and Condoleeza Rice legitimized. Shame on them….rsk
Charles Taylor, Foday Sankoh, Blaise Compaoré, Ibrahim Bah, Idriss Deby,Mugabe
The world is well aware of the atrocities committed by Colonel Gaddafi on his own people both in recent weeks and over his 40 year reign in the North African country. Yet, it is the sight just outside the city of Benghazi where his World Revolutionary Centre (WRC) was located that saw the start of some of his worst crimes across the continent and the globe.
The centre, at its height in the 80’s when Gaddafi was at his, was a training ground for violent dissidents who have gone on to wreak havoc, predominately across West Africa. The subversive activities, and the deadly and pernicious atrocities committed by the centre’s alumni in several countries still wreak division and political instability. Douglas Farah, senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Centre in Virginia, USA, described the WRC as the ‘Harvard and Yale of a whole generation of African revolutionaries, many of them the continent’s most notorious tyrants.’
Charles Taylor, Foday Sankoh, Blaise Compaoré, Ibrahim Bah and Idriss Deby were just a few to graduate from the WRC. They formed a powerful association that relied on the backing of Gaddafi to carry out their baneful activities. It was a criminal network that was centred on the exploitation of minerals including diamonds for the personal wealth of these individuals.
Bah, who assisted in getting both Taylor and Compaoré to power, is known to have fought with Islamic militants in Afghanistan as well as with Hezbollah in Lebanon. It is he who had contacts in the illicit diamond trade. And he made the others extremely wealthy in return for their support and arms for his violent campaigns, particularly with Sankoh’s Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone.
In ‘87, troops loyal to Blaise Compaoré assassinated Thomas Sankara, the President of Burkina Faso, to pave the way for Compaoré to take power. As Head of State he supplied Sankoh’s RUF throughout the civil war in Sierra Leone. A 2002 UN investigation found he had breached various arms embargos in supplying arms to both Charles Taylor in Liberia and the RUF. He remains in power today still allied with Colonel Gaddafi.
His and Gaddafi’s support for Sankoh’s RUF, which committed grave atrocities as they slaughtered, maimed and mutilated hundreds of thousands in a bid to control the diamond mines throughout the decade long Civil War, is indisputable. Nicholas Kumjian, the prosecuting lawyer in Charles Taylor’s trial at The Hague for his involvement in the Sierra Leone conflict admits; ‘the involvement of Moamer Kadhafi and Blaise Campaore (in Sierra Leone) has been proven.’
The Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was established to address the violations committed throughout the civil war to promote healing and reconciliation and aid the victims. It also recognises the detrimental role Gaddafi played in perpetuating the conflict; voicing dismay over Gaddafi’s visit to the country and warm reception he received from former President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah in ‘07.
The TRC has called for reparations to be made by Gaddafi in recognition of his role in that conflict. They called for money to be paid by Libya to the victims of the war just as they had done with the victims of other nations who have borne the brunt of Gaddafi’s terror. In ’04 Libya paid $170 million to the relatives of the French victims of a UTA French airliner bombing in 1989, which was blamed on Gaddafi.
Further terrorist actions from Libya on other western nations have been met with similar compensatory payments. In ’04 $3 billion was paid by Libya to the relatives of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing (the biggest single terrorist attack ever in the UK). As of yet Sierra Leone has received some bags of rice and a few buses in terms of reparations for the thousands killed, and the hundreds of thousands more maimed and displaced throughout the 11-year-long war.
This is despite the TRC having found a letter of thanks from the RUF to Gaddafi for a gift of $500,000. It is an admittedly small amount of money, but one that links Gaddafi to those who committed vast war crimes in that West African country. On top of this he has flaunted various arms embargos to support fledgling dictators in the region. Whilst Taylor was placed under a UN travel ban and faced sanctions for his role in the diamonds for weapons trade, Gaddafi continued to supply him with shipments of weapons.
Gaddafi’s active role in Sierra Leone, which saw him try to establish a satellite state under Sankoh’s RUF, has led many to question why he is not alongside Charles Taylor in The Hague. As well as Kumjian’s testimony to his involvement, Taylor’s defence lawyer Courtney Griffiths, has questioned; ‘why is Colonel Moamer Gaddafi not in the dock?’ There is sufficient evidence for him to be facing trial for the war crimes that he perpetrated. After all, the RUF was a movement that was trained in Libya and financed by Gaddafi and his allies in Liberia and Burkina Faso.
The American David Crane, the Chief Prosecutor on Taylor’s case from ’02 to ’05, believes the answer is political. He claims to have ‘named and shamed’ Gaddafi in his indictment but the threat of Western powers withdrawing the Court’s funding prevented him indicting Gaddafi for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Having opened Libya up to western oil and business investments so vastly in the last few years it is little wonder western powers were not keen to push for him standing trial. Needless to say Sierra Leone and its victims were not privy to the same investment opportunities.
Although never being at the WRC Robert Mugabe remains one of Gaddafi’s closest allies in the continent. The Zimbabwean President has benefitted from direct Libyan donations and subsidized oil shipments, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars. It is these sorts of brutal regimes that Gaddafi has bolstered and continues to support.
However with the uprising in Libya and UN resolution 1973 to protect civilians and the opposition, the international community now has the opportunity to rectify their deliberate oversight and inaction and insist Gaddafi is made to answer for his crimes both domestically and abroad. The chaos he has spread across West Africa cannot be allowed to go unpunished.
It is therefore vital that this action is not allowed to become a protracted drawn out conflict that leaves the country split in two and allows Gaddafi to maintain power to carry out further atrocities within and without his borders. It is equally important that this is not a Western led intervention that would curtail the momentum of the opposition forces but rather bolster it to assume full ownership. The longer the conflict lasts the more Gaddafi will be able to portray himself as the victim of imperial attacks. But essentially Gaddafi cannot be allowed to remain in power to spread further fear and terror across the continent. There are already too many African conflicts that bear his hallmarks.
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