Protests Break Out in the City of Benghazi, Libya
Muammar al-Qaddafi (shyextrovert.com)
The wind of change in the Muslim world seems to have shifted, blowing again over northern Africa, after two tense days in Iran, one of the most important non-Arab Muslim nation in the world, when people asked for the death of the dictator (probably referring to the Ayatollah Khomeini) and of the Islamic republic.
Thus, demonstrations were reported on Wednesday in Libya, the country that has been ruled for forty years by colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi, where people marched in the streets of Benghazi, the second largest city in the country.
The state-run television did not report the incidents, saying however that rallies would be organized on Wednesday in favor of Qaddafi, which reminds of the same type of control applied in Egypt and Tunisia.
Protests in Benghazi (article.wn.com)
According to a privately owned newspaper in Benghazi, a crowd of people armed with gasoline bombs and rocks protested in front of a governmental building, demanding the release of the human rights activists Fathi Turbil, the lawyer representing the families of those killed in 1996, in Abu Salim prison.
There were seven hundred people protesting and they clashed with the police in Shajara Square. It is said that they were rallied by means of internet by exiled opposition. 38 people are reported wounded.
The protests in Libya are very unusual given that the Libyan security apparatus that keeps dissent in check and protects colonel Qaddafi is very well trained and large in numbers.
Reuters quotes a Benghazi resident who said that the unrest in the city was led by the relatives of political detainees
Protests in Benghazi (guardian.co.uk)
incarcerated in the Abu Salim jail, where 1,000 have been slain in June 1996.
The state-run television showed images of the rally in Tripoli, in favor of the president, where the people chanted slogans against Al-Jazeera, who presented detailed reports of the unrest in Egypt and Tunisia, as well as in the other states in the region.
Colonel Qaddafi, once known as a leading figure of the non-aligned movement, along with Fidel Castro, became a symbol of Arab terrorism, after Lockerbie, only to shift back into an exotic and charismatic leader at the African Union, whose “guru” he is in some sort.
He seized power forty years ago, and consolidate it by a series of alliances between tribal leaders.
He is known for his female bodyguards, for living in a tent like a nomad, for being courted by world leaders who wish to get a share of the profits the important oil resources of Libya carry with them.
Qaddafi was attempting, like all the leaders in the region, to build up a dynasty, and his son Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, is seen as a potential successor.
Analysts consider Benghazi as a city with a political and economic dynamic that sets it apart from the rest of the country, and the burst of unrest here is symbolic, in spite of the desire of the leader to create a choreography that would show the popular support on the occasion of the inauguration of a soccer stadium.
