http://www.libyaherald.com/?p=15731
Congress dismisses Abushagur
By George Grant.
The Congress voted to dismiss the prime minister-elect by a sizeable margin this evening, Sunday.
Tripoli, 7 October:
The National Congress has voted overwhelmingly to dismiss Prime Minister-elect Mustafa Abushagur in a vote of no confidence held this evening.
125 Congress members voted to sack Abushagur, whilst 44 voted to keep him and 17 abstained. 186 members were in attendance for the vote.
Just a few hours earlier, the prime minister-elect submitted an emergency cabinet for Congressional approval and delivered an impassioned speech calling for unity at a time of national crisis.
He submitted just ten names for government posts, down from the 28 proposed in his initial submission on Wednesday, not including himself.
Having briefly broken session, the Congress reconvened early this evening to consider how to proceed in reaction to Abushagur’s new submission. Rather than moving straight to a vote on whether or nor to approve the government list, however, members of Congress motioned for a vote of confidence on the prime minister-elect himself.
Congress members have thus far reached no conclusion on what procedure should now be followed to find a replacement for Abushagur, nor has any potential candidate yet emerged.
This evening, there were moves to agree a motion enabling Congress to select one of its own number to become prime minister as part of an emergency government.
“We are going to debate what to do about the government tomorrow, and the question of whether the prime minister should be from inside or outside Congress will be central to that”, said Suleiman Zubi, an independent congressman from Benghazi.
Zubi was amongst those members who voted to keep Abushagur, but insisted the vote to dismiss him did not represent a crisis. “We hope that we will be able to agree on a new government in the next few days”, he said.
“Today we made the right decision”, said Mohammed Umran Morgham, a Justice & Construction party member for Tripoli Centre who voted to dismiss Abushagur.
“When he submitted his first cabinet, he couldn’t stay and fight for his decision for even half an hour. As soon as people started protesting, he left, which shows a weak character and somebody who doesn’t stick to his decisions”.
Morgham said he did not have a preferred candidate to replace Abushagur, nor had he made his mind up over whether the next prime minister should be chosen from amongst Congress members or not. “I am open to any suggestion that can make Libya work”, he said.
Other congressmen complained that Abushagur’s initial lineup had contained an unacceptable number of former-regime members, others without the requisite qualifications, and raised fundamental questions about the prime minister-elect’s political judgement.
In spite of the remarkably relaxed mood inside Congress this evening, today’s vote opens up the prospect of a political vacuum at a time of acute uncertainty on a number of fronts in Libya.
Thousands of government forces continue to lay siege to the former Qaddafi stronghold of Bani Walid, with the prospect of an attack being launched in the next few days still a real possibility.
In the east, there are concerns of some form of unilateral action by the United States in response to the fatal US consulate attacks of 11 September, with the authorities thus far making limited progress in their efforts to bring the culprits to justice.
There are also concerns about insecurity in the south, and the ongoing process of militia disarmament nationwide.
Meanwhile international businesses have already voiced their concern that the lack of political certainty raises the prospect of reduced investment in the Libyan economy in the near-term.
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http://www.libyaherald.com/?p=15735
Juma El-Gamaty kidnapped and threatened by Kaakaa brigade
By George Grant.
Juma El-Gamaty has accused the Kaakaa brigade of being behind the abduction. (Photo: George Grant)
Tripoli, 7 October:
One of Libya’s most prominent political figures was kidnapped yesterday by a renegade militia operating in the west of Tripoli.
Juma El-Gamaty, who leads the Taghyeer Party, was dragged from his car at gunpoint in Hay Al-Andalous by a gang of assailants from the Kaakaa brigade, having left for home together with colleague, Husni Al-Agil, at around 23:00.
The brigade, which hails from Zintan but also operates in Tripoli, is said to be renowned for criminal activity and has made several unauthorised arrests in the past.
“We were on our way home and found ourselves surrounded by five cars full of armed people wearing civilian clothes”, Gamaty told reporters today.
“They dragged us out of the car, put me in the back of a van and put my friend in another car. They blindfolded me, took my mobile phones and drove me to what looked like a farm or some sort of headquarters”.
Brandishing the cloth used to blindfold him, Gematy recalled how he was struck on the head by his kidnappers and driven from location to location before being dropped in a field on the outskirts of the capital.
Before leaving him, Gematy said his kidnappers warned him that he had got off lightly and that next time would be far worse.
“I found myself at sort of farm in the darkness”, he said. “I saw lights about 300 yards away and walked towards them until I reached a road where two men who were driving past saw me and offered to help.
“I asked them where I was and they told me I was in Sidi Salim, very close to the airport road. I asked them to take me to the nearest checkpoint, and it was there that I realised that the news of my kidnapping was out and everybody knew what had happened”.
He was then told that one of the kidnappers had already been arrested and was being held at Tripoli’s Metiga airbase. “Sure enough when we got there we identified him as one of the kidnappers. In front of us he admitted that this whole operation was organised by a man called Al-Harezi from the Kaakaa brigade in west Tripoli.”
Speaking to the press today, Sunday, El-Gamaty said he was very grateful to be alive and see his family again but he was not going to be scared into silence. He was more determined than ever to expose those militias who had descended into crime. “As the people of Libya, we have to take these people on” he said if the country is to have institutions, a constitution and the rule of law.
“If we don’t then our government will be in big jeopardy.”
He had been targeted, he said, because two weeks ago he appeared on TV condemning them and, as result, people had demonstrated demanding they be disbanded. “They are angry I talked loudly. They wanted to scare and silence me.”
Libya’s is in danger if such criminals are not cracked down on hard, El-Gamaty said. “We’re at a crossroads.” Either strong arm tactics are used and the militias are disbanded and their members forced to join the army or “the transition to democracy will be in great danger”.
Rejecting any suggestion that Mahmoud Jibril was involved in the assault, he said the only people responsible was those involved in the kidnapping. “I hold them responsible and I demand the government and security institutions bring them to justice as soon as possible.”
According to his colleague, Husni Al-Agil, the incident had an element of farcical chaos about it. After being seized, he tried to fight with assailants. He then managed to open the car door and get away. “The kidnappers, confused, actually reversed their car into another vehicle.”
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http://www.libyaherald.com/?p=15716
The US consulate attack: the facts, the questions
By Chris Stephen.
Significant questions remained unanswered about the fatal attack on the US consulate in Benghazi on 11 September.
Benghazi, 7 October:
Last week under a bright blue sky, half a dozen land cruisers escorted by a police motorcade arrived outside the gates of the abandoned US consulate in Benghazi.
FBI agents spilled out and three snipers took up positions on the roof of the burned-out villa. More than one Benghazi resident wondered where all that security had been when it was needed.
US Congress will on Wednesday question the chief of security for the consulate on why, given a string of previous attacks on diplomatic targets in Benghazi, security had not been tightened to resist the assault that killed ambassador Chris Stevens and three of his officials.
The build up
Attacks on foreign missions burst into life in Benghazi in April when a bomb was thrown at a UN convoy. In May, a rocket hit the office of the International Committee of the Red Cross and on 6 June a bomb exploded outside the US consulate.
Then on 11 June, a rocket struck a vehicle in the convoy of Britain’s Libya ambassador, Sir Dominic Asquith, wounding two security officers, outside the UK consulate.
The UK closed its consulate soon afterwards. On 18 June, gunmen stormed the Tunisian consulate and burned the flag in protest against an art exhibition that had opened in Tunis. In August, the ICRC announced that, after five attacks on its offices in Libya, it was closing bureaus in Benghazi and Misrata.
Throughout the same period Benghazi also saw 14 assassinations of former Qaddafi-era officials.
Security
US embassies around the world are a by-word for security and most are veritable fortresses. Not so the Benghazi consulate.
It consists of a collection of buildings sitting amid bean fields surrounded by a wall in Fuwaihat, a southern suburb of flat farmland dotted with compounds of the wealthy.
The front wall has barbed wire above it, but the back wall has none and is low enough to clamber over with ease. By contrast, the abandoned UK consulate, visible half a mile away across the fields, has 15 foot walls, a watchtower and blast walls made of sandbags stacked in steel cages.
The villa at the centre of the complex has steel doors, grates over all but one of the windows – the one leading to the Safe Room – and two sandbagged emplacements outside. Inside a steel door protects a Safe Room – actually a group of rooms, in which Stevens died of smoke inhalation.
But the Safe Room had a fatal flaw. Such places are intended not to stop an attack but delay it long enough for a relief force to materialise.
There is no central control over Benghazi security, which is shared with haphazard coordination among police, military police, army, various militias and the Supreme Security Council (SSC), the national gendarmerie.
Fawzi Younis Qaddafi, no relation to the former dictator, is commander of the Benghazi SSC, and said he was not told that the ambassador was at the residence beforehand or when a frightened diplomat called to say it was under attack.
The attack
Witnesses agree that the attack on the compound began shortly after 21:30 on 11 September.
Attackers massed at the twin front gates, along a narrow unmade road, and by the twin rear gates, which leads onto the main highway. There were many spectators, as the rear gates are across the street from the fashionable Venezia restaurant. If there was a protest, as Washington at first claimed, then it was by the attackers themselves.
Grenades were thrown over the front wall. Shortly afterwards, an unarmed Libyan consulate guard opened one of the back gates. The group of eight to twelve gunmen standing there shouted at him to get back inside. Shortly afterwards they opened fire at the gate, which has 22 bullet holes. Another five bullet holes show fire being returned from inside.
Seven or eight Americans in the compound bundled themselves into an armoured jeep which drove out, sustaining fire, and made it to the annex, an accommodation compound a mile away by road. Left behind in the villa was ambassador Stevens who had locked himself in the Safe Room.
The biggest mystery for anyone touring the compound is the absence of battle damage. The buildings are charred, along with three embassy pickup trucks, from arson, but there are few bullet strikes. If the attackers entered before the staff had fled, it seems there was no exchange of fire.
A rocket propelled grenade was fired at the double doors of the villa, missing and striking the lintel above. Apparently the shock was enough to force open the doors. But it is unclear if an attempt was made to break into the Safe Room, or if the attackers even knew it was there.
Younis Qaddaffi said his units turned up at the villa but insists he was not told that the ambassador was missing. By then large crowds of the curious had turned up and he decided to leave the scene.
It was those crowds that found Ambassador Stevens, either dead or dying from smoke inhalation, shortly after midnight. Benghazi Medical Centre records him arriving, dead, by private car along with an injured guard around 01:00.
By this time a team of eight U.S. officials, some armed, had been despatched by helicopter from Tripoli. They arrived at 01:30. and went to the annex building.
Then, sometime in the early hours, mortar rounds slammed into the roof of the annex, killing two former navy Seals, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.
According to the two landlords, the annex was not, as some reports claim, a Safe House, being neither secure nor secret. It was where most of Benghazi’s US diplomats lived.
Also killed that night from smoke inhalation was Sean Smith, a foreign service information officer, though again the circumstances of his death have yet to be fully explained.
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