Libya News and Interests

[anatta]

Libya-Tunisia border remains closed
http://www.enca.com/africa/libya-tun...remains-closed


The Libyan authorities closed the Ras Jedir border crossing to traffic, with the exception of ambulances and Libyans returning home

Hundreds of Libyans attempting to leave the country remain stranded on the border between Libya and Tunisia as the border crossing remains closed for the third day in a row, the Libya Herald reported on Wednesday.

The Libyan authorities closed the Ras Jedir border crossing to traffic, with the exception of ambulances and Libyans returning home, after protesters in the nearby Tunisian town of Ben Guerdane prevented Libyan registered vehicles moving in either direction as Libyan customs officials began clamping down on goods being smuggled into Tunisia.

Much of the economy of Ben Guerdane is dependent on the highly profitable smuggling business

[anatta]

Gunmen from so-called the Anti-Terrorism Battalion of Dignity Operation forcibly arrested a patient from one of Tobruk's hospitals on Tuesday, a source from the city confirmed. The source said that the patient, Abdullah Al-Masmari, was one of the many who were displaced from the city of Benghazi to Tobruk and was receiving treatment in the hospital. Al-Masmari was taken by members of the armed group despite his poor health condition to an unknown destination. The source pointed out that the militants justified their actions to hospital staff by saying that “the patient has links to Benghazi Shura Council”.

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The telecommunications company, Hatif Libya, has announced the return of telecommunication services to the western mountain region after a three-day interruption. The company stated on their official Facebook page that its engineers completed maintenance work on the damaged fibre optic cable, which caused interruption in all telephone and internet services, in addition to bank systems.

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Misrata Municipal Council, the Union of Municipalities of the South and the Arab Society for the Transport of Oil and its Derivatives, stated on Wednesday that they adopted an insurance plan to transport fuel and gas from Misrata fuel depots to Jufra and Sebha oil reservoir. They demanded that security and military authorities should shoulder their responsibilities in ensuring that fuel reach its destination to alleviate the suffering of people in the southern region.

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Military officers of the Military Zone of Tobruk have set up a new security center approximately 150 km south of the city on the main Tobruk- Jaghbub road to tackle smuggling operations. The new center was set up after calls from local residents to the Military Zone of Tobruk to end smugglers and human traffickers’ operations in Tobruk- Jaghbub road.
https://www.libyaobserver.ly/inbrief...hu-sep-21-2017

[anatta]

he United Nations on Wednesday launched a new push to bring stability to Libya, which has been ravaged by chaos since the 2011 ouster of longtime leader Moamer Kadhafi.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and a new UN envoy on Libya, Ghassan Salame, met on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly with countries involved with the country’s troubles.

“It is my deep belief that circumstances are now created in a way that allow for a solution to be possible,” Guterres told the meeting.

“I don’t think we can miss this opportunity. I want to ask all of you to commit very strongly to a common effort to make sure that we do everything we can to help our Libyan friends to come together and to find a future of peace, democracy, freedom and prosperity,” he said.

The initiative aims to set up a roadmap that starts with amending a December 2015 deal that set up an interim government of national accord. Despite the agreement, Libya remains divided.

The meeting involved French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Theresa May — whose predecessors led the Western intervention to help oust Kadhafi.

It also brought in Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who supports strongman Khalifa Haftar’s rival Libyan National Army in the country’s east.

Fayez al-Sarraj, the embattled head of the unity government, said that the UN meeting agreed on the need for a government with authority over all of Libya.

“Everyone present reaffirmed that the backdrop for a solution must remain a political one,” Sarraj said in an address afterward to the General Assembly.

He said he asked the UN envoy to “present us with a timeline and a clear message aimed at all those attempting to impede this process.”

“They must understand there is no military solution,” he said.

Guterres said that the United Nations had a series of priorities including ensuring a unified command structure and improving the provision of goods and services to Libyans.

The UN chief also said it was critical to provide support to the mass of migrants who have made the lawless country their launchpad into Europe.

[anatta]

How France Is Making Libya Worse
Macron Is Strengthening Haftar
* I disagree that France is making it worse by bringing Hiftar -he has to be included on any settlement*

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/artic...ng-libya-worse
n July 25, at peace talks in Paris convened by French President Emmanuel Macron, the leaders of Libya’s two main factions—Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj of the internationally recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli and Marshal Khalifa Haftar of the self-styled Libyan National Army, based near the eastern city of Benghazi—verbally agreed to a cease-fire and national elections, to be held “as soon as possible.” The deal has generated positive headlines and served as an early diplomatic achievement for the young French president. But by including Haftar in the talks—despite UN, EU, and NATO backing of the GNA—France is helping transform him from a rogue warlord into a legitimate political actor, thereby encouraging his plans to conquer and rule the country as a whole. The Paris summit is thus unlikely to lead to a near-term solution to the country’s civil war.

RISE OF THE FRENCH HAWKS

Macron’s diplomatic initiative, whose tone and format favored Haftar, is consistent with France’s previous actions in Libya over recent years. Since early 2015, France has assisted Haftar’s coalition by deploying advisers, clandestine operatives, and special forces to eastern Libya while offering little to the GNA. In February, Haftar told a French newspaper that France supports his government “morally and from a security point of view.” (France publicly acknowledged this military support in July 2016, after three French special-forces soldiers were killed in a helicopter crash near Benghazi.)

Haftar’s main champion in Paris is Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian. From 2012 to 2017, Le Drian served as minister of defense for President François Hollande. In that position, he was instrumental in consolidating a shift, begun under Hollande’s predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, away from the restrained foreign policy of President Jacques Chirac (1995–2007) to France’s more assertive and interventionist stance in recent years. When it comes to Africa and the Middle East, Paris has come a long way from the “freedom fries” dovishness of the mid-2000s.

[anatta]

TRIPOLI, Sept. 21 (Xinhua) -- More than 100 migrants have drowned after their boat sank off western Libyan coast, Libyan navy spokesman told Xinhua on Thursday.

Qasem said the migrants drowned while trying to cross towards Europe. Only seven of them survived.

He also said that Libyan navy rescued more than 3,000 migrants of different nationalities by 12 operations off Libyan coast in the past 10 days.

[anatta]

Gen. Haftar

Egypt says it will host 'reorganization' of Libyan army
http://abcnews.go.com/International/...-army-49948849

Egypt said Tuesday it will host the "reorganization" of Libya's army, currently an eastern-based force led by Gen. Khalifa Hifter.

A statement signed by the Egyptian Committee on Libya said that Libyan military officers who met in Cairo recently chose Egypt as a starting point for plans to unify the army.

The group, chaired by Egypt's chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Mahmoud Hegazy, did not say which officials took part in the meeting, or provide further details.

A Libyan officer welcomed the initiative, thanking the Egyptian army "for facilitating such an opportunity for army officers to meet and find common ground."

"The army is open to discussion with all parties excluding terrorist organizations," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to brief reporters. "The army doesn't recognize any unofficial armed group but has opened discussions in the hope that militias will disband and join as individuals."

Egypt has backed Hifter in his conflict with the Tripoli government and associated militias.

The Egyptian statement said the Libyan officers pledge to maintain Libya's territorial integrity and create a modern and inclusive, civil democratic state based on a peaceful transfer of power.


Hifter supporters meanwhile have been gathering signatures to a petition urging him to run the country for the coming four years.

One of the movement's founders, Mohamed Juma, said that a million signatures had been gathered over the past ten days, mostly at physical locations but also electronically. There was no way to independently verify the number of signatures.

Hifter has modeled himself after Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, a close ally who led the Egyptian military's overthrow of an elected Islamist president in 2013 amid mass protests that were preceded by a similar campaign.

[anatta]

thousands of Libyans march for new politician, others oppose
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nati...175254721.html
September 25, 2017 2:08 PM
TRIPOLI, Libya

Nearly 2,000 demonstrators gathered in the Libyan capital on Monday in support of a Swiss-based Libyan businessman who had called for a rally to reject the leadership of both main sides in the divided country.

Basit Igtet has sought political entree in the oil-rich country before and recently gathered thousands of Facebook followers and proposed himself as a potential leader for the country, split between rival militia-backed factions in the east and west.

"No Hifter, no Serraj, Igtet is here," demonstrators chanted, referring to Fayez Serraj, the prime minister-designate of the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli, and Gen. Khalifa Hifter, the commander of Libya's self-styled national army, based in the eastern city of Benghazi.

[dukkha]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...=.9e1de35649ca


then-rebel leader Abdulhakim Belhadj, center, gives instructions to his troops in Tripoli, Libya’s capital, on Aug. 22, 2011.
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Abdulhakim Belhadj has shed his combat fatigues for gray sport jackets and crisp white shirts. He has given up his AK-47 rifle for an election ballot. Once a jihadist and revolutionary commander, he is now a globe-trotting Islamist politician and businessman.

“My thinking of that time is not a reflection of the way I think now,” the compact 51-year-old said, referring to his fighting days in Libya.

But in a war-divided nation, penetrated by the Islamic State and struggling to forge a new identity, Libyans have not forgotten who Belhadj once was.

They remember that he fought alongside Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. They remember that he led the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), an obscure, al-Qaeda-linked militia that the United States branded a terrorist organization. Belhadj was considered so dangerous that he was arrested and interrogated at a secret CIA rendition site in Asia after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Later, he was tortured in a Libyan prison.

Today, as key players in the contest between Islamists and their rivals for the soul of the new Libya, Belhadj and his comrades represent a rare instance of former militants associated with al-Qaeda achieving not just legitimacy but the ability to shape the course of a nation.
Belhadj, leader of the Libyan conservative Islamist al-Watan party and former head of the Tripoli Military Council, speaks to journalists after a session of peace talks between rival Libyan factions in Geneva in August 2015.

“These guys are very involved in the political landscape of running things in Tripoli,” said Claudia Gazzini, senior Libya analyst for the International Crisis Group. The worry for some, she said, is, “Have they really shed their jihadist upbringing?”

The trajectory they followed is a winding — and uniquely Arab — one. The group dates to the battlefields of the Cold War and blossomed under the oppression of Libya’s autocratic leader, Moammar Gaddafi. During the Arab Spring, Belhadj and his comrades played crucial roles in the revolt that led to the strongman’s ouster and killing, six years ago next month.

Now, as he navigates Libya’s regional and tribal schisms, Belhadj enjoys power, influence and wealth. But he remains a widely feared and controversial figure, viewed as a warlord and a terrorist mastermind, even as his supporters paint him as a misunderstood idealist.

“Belhadj represents a threat now and will do so in the future,” said Abdullah Belhaq, a spokesman for Libya’s eastern-based parliament. “He is followed by a number of armed militias, and they will always be against the establishment of a state to safeguard their interests.”


Rendition and torture

I first met Belhadj, a civil engineer by training, in May 2010 in the Libyan capital, Tripoli. He and several LIFG leaders had recently been released from prison under an extremist-rehabilitation program conceived by Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam Gaddafi. In exchange, they vowed to renounce violence and work to discredit al-Qaeda.

Many Libyans and Western diplomats were skeptical. Belhadj and his comrades were among scores of Libyans who had traveled to Afghanistan to fight the occupying Soviet forces. They met bin Laden in a training camp, an LIFG co-founder, Sami al-Saadi, told me at the time. He was impressed, he said, by bin Laden’s “devoutness.”

Belhadj returned to Libya in the early 1990s. There, he launched the LIFG to overthrow Moammar Gaddafi and transform Libya into an Islamic state. A low-level insurgency followed, as well as three failed attempts to assassinate the dictator. By then, Belhadj was known by his nom de guerre, Abu Abdullah al-Sadeq.

Gaddafi’s regime crushed the LIFG, and by the late 1990s Belhadj and his comrades had fled to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they forged alliances with leaders of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, according to Libyan authorities and analysts. Belhadj, while acknowledging the links, denied he was close to either group.

In the months before the 9/11 attacks, bin Laden urged the LIFG to join his efforts to target the United States and its allies. Belhadj balked. His group’s sole mission, he said recently, was to topple Gaddafi, not attack the West — “and I told it to the al-Qaeda leaders.” But the LIFG split over that choice, and some senior members joined bin Laden.

In late 2001, with the Taliban decimated and bin Laden on the run, many LIFG commanders fled the region. Three years later, Belhadj and his pregnant wife were arrested in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and taken to a CIA site in Thailand. Saadi and others were arrested elsewhere in Asia.

They were handed over to the Libyan government.
Gaddafi, once a sponsor of terrorism, had become a counterterrorism ally of the West.

For six years, they were held in the notorious Abu Salim prison in Tripoli. “I was beaten, hung from walls by my arms and deprived of food and sunlight,” Belhadj recalled. He has sued the British government for allegedly playing a role in returning him to Libya.

Human Rights Watch investigators, citing documents unearthed in Libya, corroborated Belhadj’s accounts of the CIA rendition and torture in Abu Salim.

Encouraged by moderate Islamist preachers and the younger Gaddafi, Belhadj and his comrades crafted a 400-page manifesto denouncing al-Qaeda’s beliefs and attacks on Western civilians.

Still, waging jihad against U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan was “a sacred act,” they maintained. “When America invades a country, the insurgency is legal,” Belhadj told me in 2010.

A year later, a violent uprising, echoing similar ones sweeping the Arab world, began. Belhadj and his comrades, with their anti-Gaddafi credentials, were catapulted into leadership roles.

[In Libya, Gaddafi’s rule crumbling as rebels enter heart of Tripoli]
Influence and riches

Belhadj became the commander of the Tripoli Brigade, a rebel militia, and on Aug. 22, 2011, he and his men entered the Bab al-Aziziya compound, Gaddafi’s fortress and nerve center.

For the past several months, they had helped lead the battle against Gaddafi’s forces, aided by NATO airstrikes. On this day, they were close to seizing control of Tripoli, and Gaddafi had fled east.

Belhadj spotted the dictator’s chair and sat in it. “To be sitting in Bab al-Aziziya was something we always dreamed of,” he recalled.

As he got up, he pocketed Gaddafi’s reading glasses. He handed them later, he said, to the father of a man who was tortured and killed in Abu Salim prison.

Belhadj was named the leader of the Tripoli Military Council, the committee in charge of keeping order in the capital after Gaddafi was killed by rebels less than two months later. He would also join the rebels’ Supreme Security Council. Other LIFG members joined Islamist movements and ran religious youth camps, advocating strict Islamic sharia laws.

Saadi founded a political party. Khalid al-Sherif, the deputy emir of the LIFG, was appointed deputy defense minister in two post-Gaddafi governments. He also became an influential figure aligned with the U.N.-backed Government of National Accord, one of three governments vying for control of Libya.

In 2014, Belhadj and other LIFG members backed Libya Dawn, a collection of Islamist militias that briefly seized control of Tripoli and proclaimed their own government. Their actions split public opinion.

“There is deep-seated hostility towards the very idea of political Islam,” said Mattia Toaldo, a Libya analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “It’s a legacy of the Gaddafi regime. He built this distrust of Islamists by saying they were foreign agents in Libya responding to foreign powers and foreign agendas.”

That is precisely how Belhadj’s enemies have portrayed him. Anti-Islamist factions in eastern Libya, including Gen. Khalifa Hifter, whose forces control much of the east, have declared Belhadj a leader of al-Qaeda. Others say he is with the Islamic State. He has denied the allegations.

Today, Belhadj has parlayed his revolutionary connections into vast wealth and influence. Even though he holds no official position in government, his well-armed loyalists wield power in the capital. But because he has moved out of the public spotlight and kept his political and business dealings secret, he remains an enigma to many Libyans.

While some Libyans now view Belhadj as a businessman, others beg to differ. They believe “he’s just pretending to be all about business but he’s still calling all the shots,” said Gazzini, of the International Crisis Group.

Belhaq described Belhadj as exercising immense power largely through ill-gotten money, noting that within two years of his release from prison he owned an airline company. “Where did he get these billions from?” the eastern parliamentary spokesman said.

Belhadj, who now divides his time between Turkey and Tripoli, denies he owns an airline or any large business interests. “Maybe they are confusing me with another man with a similar name,” he said, smiling.
Electoral ambitions

Belhadj resigned from the Tripoli Military Council to launch his own political party, al-Watan, or “Homeland.” He believes in democracy, he said, and ran unsuccessfully for parliament in elections in 2012. He insists he no longer controls a militia. He supports the U.N.-backed government, he said, because “we don’t want to be out of the international community.” In recent months, he has traveled to Switzerland and South Africa to encourage a peace process for Libya.

His followers hope he will run for prime minister if Libya becomes stable enough to hold elections again.

“He’s a hard worker, and he is very transparent,” said Jamal Ashour, a top official in al- Watan. “When you speak with him, his priority is the country.”

His past, though, keeps chasing him.

Salman Abedi, the bomber who killed 22 people at a May concert in Manchester, England, is said to have been radicalized by former LIFG members, including his father. Belhadj said that Abedi’s father was never an LIFG member and called the Manchester attack “a crime.”

In June, Saudi Arabia and three Arab nations placed Belhadj on a list of alleged terrorists backed by Qatar. That came soon after the bloc imposed an economic and transport blockade on the tiny, gas-rich nation, accusing it of financing extremism, which it has denied.


His inclusion on the list, Belhadj said, was politically motivated. Qatar helped finance and arm him and other rebels against Gaddafi. Now, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, part of the Saudi-led bloc, are supporting the anti-Islamist factions in Libya, including Hifter.

“The LIFG ended when we left prison,” Belhadj added. “I am no longer a member of the LIFG mind-set.”

Belhaq remains unconvinced.

“The terrorist actions of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group are still continuing, even if under a different name,” he said. “Belhadj is still playing a role in this, even if he does it from behind a curtain.”

[dukkha]

U.S. airstrikes killed an estimated five Islamic State of Syria and Iraq (ISIS) fighters in Libya, CBS News' David Martin reports.
The fighters were apparently retrieving weapons from a weapons cache. A truck was also destroyed.

the two strikes on Tuesday targeted ISIS fighters about 100 miles southeast of the coastal city of Sirte, the U.S. Africa Command said Thursday.
The U.S Africa Command announced on Sunday the first airstrikes in Libya since President Trump took office in January.
On Sept. 22, U.S. forces conducted six precision airstrikes on a camp 150 miles from Sirte, killing 17 ISIS fighters and destroying three trucks, the U.S. Africa Command said.

[dukkha]

The government’s effort to prove Ahmed Abu Khattala responsible for the September 2012 attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, after days of wrenching testimony by victims, has turned to a witness who for the first time directly implicated him in planning the assault.

A Libyan military commander said in recorded video testimony played to jurors Thursday and set to continue Monday that a year before the terrorist attacks that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, he heard Abu Khattala “incite” dozens of revolutionaries at a meeting in Benghazi by speaking out against an alleged U.S. intelligence post operating out of a diplomatic mission in the city.

The commander, testifying under the pseudonym Khalid Abdullah for his and his family’s safety in Benghazi, added that days before the attacks, Abu Khattala told him of his plan and asked for armed vehicles, which the commander said he took as a message to his roughly 400-man force not to interfere.

The officer’s testimony did not go entirely smoothly for the prosecution, as his credibility, motivation and actions came under harsh challenges from the defense team. In testimony set to be played Monday to the jury, the commander defends Facebook posts that allegedly show his bias and lethal excess against Islamist militants.

The unusual circumstances of his appearance — recorded at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo in July — underscored the security challenges of gathering and presenting evidence amid the bloody civil war in Libya and shifting political alliances.

Abu Khattala is the sole person to go to trial in a U.S. courtroom in the terrorism case over night-long attacks Sept. 11 and 12, 2012, in which militants overran and burned a State Department special mission about 10 p.m. and hit a nearby CIA annex with mortars after 5 a.m. The four Americans were killed in the assault.

He has pleaded not guilty to 18 charges filed after his June 2014 capture in Libya by U.S. commandos.

Prosecutors say that while others participated in the attacks, Abu Khattala told individuals that he masterminded the affair, directed underlings at the mission, and delivered training and maps that made the precision mortar attack possible.

Defense lawyers counter that Abu Khattala is merely an outspoken militia leader scapegoated by Libyan power brokers to shield others in their ranks against whom the U.S. government has evidence.

The defense team notes that influential Islamist militias other that Abu Khattala’s played a role in the attacks, such as the February 17 Brigade, which the U.S. government paid to protect its facilities, and that all of them have contended in a violent political power struggle with Abdullah’s secular, Egyptian-backed Libyan National Army, now rising and led by Gen. Khalifa Hifter.

Hifter, a former CIA asset who spent years in exile in Northern Virginia, launched his anti-Islamist “Operation Dignity” offensive the month before Abu Khattala’s capture by U.S. commandos in June 2014.

he commander and his allies “will do, say anything to get their enemies, and whether they can kill him [Abu Khattala] on the battlefield, or have him locked away in the United States, their mission would be accomplished,” defense attorney Jeffrey D. Robinson told jurors.

The commander was the first witness to allege that Abu Khattala conspired in the attacks and the only one so far to testify to events before the attacks took place. The trial, which began Oct. 2, poses a high-profile test of U.S. counterterrorism policies developed in recent years to capture terrorism suspects abroad and interrogate them for intelligence purposes, while preserving the right to prosecute them in U.S. civilian court.

In September 2012, Abu Khattala appeared at the door of the officer’s home, where the two spoke alone, he said. Abu Khattala asked for equipment from the officer’s 370- to 400-man unit, he said in the recording played in court.

“ ‘I want you to provide me with military cars, armed cars,’ ” the commander quoted Abu Khattala as saying. “He said he wanted to attack the American consulate.”

The commander said that others knew his account earlier and that a brother of his was separately speaking with Americans. But he acknowledged that he directly spoke with American investigators only after one of his brothers had been kidnapped and killed and another had been wounded in an assassination attempt by Islamist “terrorist organizations.”

At that point, his family also was in talks that eventually resulted in about 10 members of the extended family being allowed to move to the United States and the U.S. government’s paying $170,000 to cover those relatives’ expenses.

[dukkha]

Ahmed Abu Khattala, accused ringleader of the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, was photographed shortly after his apprehension

“Why would the United States grab Abu Khatallah in Libya? Because he is a good man?

he was grabbed by the US because he was a convenient target to blame. Khatallah used to sit around cafes in Bengazi
talking about how he was untouchable,but always denied any role in the attack

But he acknowledged that he directly spoke with American investigators only after one of his brothers had been kidnapped and killed and another had been wounded in an assassination attempt by Islamist “terrorist organizations.”

tit for tat -quid pro quo. Put on a dog and pony show and we'll let him go

he admitted that his recollection had changed since his initial statement to the government — by adding mention of the Red Cross and dropping a claim that Abu Khattala had told him an attack was imminent during their talk at the commander’s home. He also testified that he told no one about Abu Khattala’s alleged involvement before the attacks, and did not speak with Americans until October 2014.
The trial, which began Oct. 2, poses a high-profile test of U.S. counterterrorism policies developed in recent years to capture terrorism suspects abroad and interrogate them for intelligence purposes, while preserving the right to prosecute them in U.S. civilian court.

the real motivation behind the snatch and grab.He was high visability, and they decided he would be a useful tool

[dukkha]

[dukkha]

About 4,500 refugees and migrants were rescued from the Mediterranean in just one day, Italian rescue workers announced, as Europe's migrant crisis continues to grow.

[anatta]

Six years after Libyans toppled their 40-year ruler Muammar Gaddafi from power in a U.S.-backed revolution, the former leader’s son and heir apparent to his father’s regime, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, has announced his return to frontline politics.

Speaking in the Tunisian capital Tunis, Gaddafi’s lawyer Khaled al-Zaidi told reporters Gaddafi’s son was returning to Libya’s fractious political scene, adding he was in good health.



He’s working on politics from his base in Libya, with the tribes, with the cities, with the decision makers,” Zaidi said according to Reuters. “He’s in a good health...in top condition. His medical and psychological condition are good.

“The aim is to achieve peace in Libya,” said Zaidi. “He follows Libyan affairs closely every day.”

Following his capture at the tail end of the revolution that ended with his father’s summary execution, Saif al-Islam was held in the western Libyan mountain town of Zintan.

He was sentenced to death by the Libyan court via video link in 2015 for the role he played in the revolution but in the shifting allegiances of Libya’s civil war he was released under a law granting political amnesty to former Gaddafi officials later the same year.

Ahmed Gaddaf al-Dam, Gaddafi’s cousin and one of the most senior members of the former regime besides Saif al-Islam not either killed during the revolutionary war or imprisoned, tells Newsweek the former heir had recommitted himself to Libyan politics adding that he was in contact with his family member through intermediaries, though not directly.

Gaddaf al-Dam refused to say whether Saif al-Islam was likely to lead the country in the future but said he needed to be involved in the ongoing peace process. “Let's get Libya out of all this mess. This is the priority after that the Libyans can choose whatever kind of leader they like. It's too early right now to talk about who is leading,” he said.

Gaddaf al-Dam, who served as an aide to Muammar Gaddafi and as a foreign envoy, says Libyans had reconciled themselves with the former regime after six years of turbulence. He claimed the majority of those from the Gaddafi era now languishing in prisons were the country’s only experienced administrators.

[dukkha]

U.N. ends month-long Libya talks in Tunisia without proposing new date
https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-n-ends-...071257305.html
Month-long U.N.-backed talks aimed at bridging differences between rival Libyan factions ended on Saturday with no discernable progress towards stabilising the country and paving the way for elections.

A month ago U.N. envoy Ghassan Salame, the latest in a series of Libya envoys since a 2011 NATO-backed uprising ended Muammar Gaddafi's 42-year rule, announced a one-year action plan for a transition toward presidential and parliamentary elections.

Since then the U.N. has hosted in Tunis delegations from rival parliaments from eastern Libya and Tripoli, which are meant to draw up amendments to a previous U.N.-mediated plan signed in December 2015.

But at the end of a second round of talks Salame said only that discussions would continue, without giving a new date.

The U.N. tried a similar approach in 2015 of hosting Libyans in luxury hotels abroad but the deal never won support from the power-brokers and factions aligned with military commander Khalifa Haftar that control eastern Libya.
Western states have tried to work with the U.N.-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli, but it has been hamstrung by internal splits and been unable to halt a slide in living standards or tame the power of armed groups.

Under the new U.N. plan, once amendments have been agreed a national conference is meant to approve the members of a transitional government that would run the country until elections.