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| Africa North | |
| Gaddafi's defectors denounce 'government of Mussolini and Hitler' | |
| 2011-02-26 | |
Abdurrahman Shalgham, Libyan ambassador to the United Nations Previously a Gaddafi loyalist and a long-standing friend of the dictator, Shalgham pleaded with the security council to "save Libya" from its leader. He said he "could not believe" Muammar Gaddafi's troops were firing on the protesters, and backed sanctions against him. In an impassioned speech, he said the protesters were asking for their rights. "They did not throw a single stone and they were killed. I tell my brother Gaddafi: leave the Libyans alone." When Shalgham finished addressing the security council, he was embraced by his weeping deputy, Ibrahim Dabbashi, another former Gadaffi loyalist, who had defected days earlier. Dabbashi described Gadaffi as a "madman" who would never resign. Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, former justice minister Resigned last week and said he expected Gaddafi to make good on his pledge to die on Libyan soil. "Gaddafi's days are numbered," he said. "He will do what Hitler did – he will take his own life." He also told a Swedish newspaper that he knew that Gaddafi was employing foreign mercenaries. "I knew that the regime had mercenaries before the uprising," he said. "The government decided in several meetings to grant citizenship to the [mercenaries] from Chad and Niger. That was something that I objected to." Abdel-Jalil claims he has proof that Gaddafi personally ordered Abdelbaset al-Megrahi to carry out the Lockerbie attack in 1988. Libyan efforts to get al-Megrahi home in 2009 were motivated primarily by Gaddafi's desire to "hide" the truth ahead of the bomber's appeal against his sentence, he said. | |
| Posted by:Steve White |