Libyan rebels demand return of Gaddafi family

Libya’s rebels were on Tuesday seeking the return from Algeria of Moamer Gaddafi’s wife and three children while stepping up the hunt for the strongman himself, as NATO bombed his hometown Sirte. “We’d like those persons to come back,” rebels’ spokesman Mahmud Shammam said after Algiers on Monday announced that Gaddafi’s wife Safiya, two sons, a daughter and their children, had crossed the border into the country.
So far Algeria has not recognised the NTC and has adopted a stance of strict neutrality on the Libyan conflict, leading some among the rebels to accuse it of supporting the Gaddafi regime.
“The wife of Moamer Gaddafi, Safiya, his daughter Aisha, and sons Hannibal and Mohammed, accompanied by their children, entered Algeria at 8:45 am (0745 GMT) through the Algeria-Libyan border,” the Algerian foreign ministry said in a statement carried by the state APS news agency, giving no information on the whereabouts of Gaddafi himself. The ministry said that UN chief Ban Ki-moon, the Security Council and number two leader of the rebels’ National Transitional Council (NTC), Mahmud Jibril, had been informed. Responding, spokesman Shammam said Algeria had given Gaddafi’s family members “a pass” to enter a third country. “Saving Gaddafi’s family is not an act we welcome and understand,” he told a press conference in Tripoli late on Monday.
“We can assure our neighbours that we want better relations with them … but we are determined to arrest and try the Gaddafi family and Gaddafi himself,” Shammam went on, saying the rebels guaranteed a “fair trial.” Italian news agency ANSA, citing “authoritative Libyan diplomatic sources,” said Gaddafi and his sons Saadi and Seif al-Islam were holed-up in the town of Bani Walid, south of the capital Tripoli.
Rebel Libyan justice minister Mohammed al-Allagy told AFP that Gaddafi’s youngest son Khamis, whose death has been announced several times since Libya’s conflict erupted but never confirmed, may have been killed south of Tripoli and buried on Monday.
Khamis, 28, commanded a brigade seen as the most effective and loyal force of the Libyan leader. NATO said on Tuesday its warplanes have fired a new barrage of bombs against Gaddafi forces holed up in Sirte, the regime’s last stronghold. The Western alliance said it destroyed 22 vehicles mounted with weapons, four radars, three command and control nodes, one anti-aircraft missile system and one surface-to-air missile system in the town’s vicinity on Monday. NATO also struck two military supply vehicles, one command post and one military facility. Sirte has been a regular NATO target since the air war began in March but the alliance appears to have stepped up its strikes there while rebels advance on the town, 360 kilometres (225 miles) east of Tripoli. With Gaddafi’s whereabouts still a mystery, there has been speculation that he is hiding out among tribal supporters in his birthplace.