Libya’s new authorities launched a fresh bid Tuesday to stave off a battle in Bani Walid, one of Muammar Gaddafi’s last bastions, amid speculation the toppled strongman has crossed into Niger. Gaddafi’s spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, insisted his boss was still in Libya, ready with his sons to fight to the death, even as rumours swirled that the fugitive dictator had fled to Niger in a military convoy during the night.
Negotiations for the peaceful surrender of Bani Walid, which anti-Gaddafi fighters encircled last week, had collapsed Sunday, and the latest talks were aimed at reassuring Warfalla tribesmen, elders and the local community. “No one will be mistreated; we shall not attack property and we shall not assault anyone,” Mahmud Jibril, the second in command in the National Transitional Council (NTC), told the meeting in the village of Wishtata, on the outskirts of Bani Walid, in a telephone call from Benghazi.
Representatives of Bani Walid, southeast of Tripoli, urged Libya’s new leaders to declare a general amnesty, saying that the Wishtata meeting had cleared the suspicions of its people. “We are here to spare bloodshed,” a Bani Walid leader, Sheikh Abdel Qadir Mayad, told the gathering, even as NTC fighters took up forward positions ready to storm the town.
“Bani Walid has reached the stage where they realise the previous system is over. Bani Walid is with Libya, it is not an exception,” said the sheikh.
Officials meanwhile told AFP that a 200-vehicle convoy had crossed during the night into Niger and was on Tuesday heading towards the capital Niamey.
The convoy drove through the city of Agadez, a stronghold of the former Tuareg rebellion the ousted Libyan leader once supported, a Niger military source said on condition of anonymity.
“I saw an exceptionally large and rare convoy of several dozen vehicles enter Agadez from Arlit… and go towards Niamey,” the source said. “There are persistent rumours that Gaddafi or one of his sons are travelling in the convoy,” the source said, adding that the convoy included civilian and military vehicles.
The new Libyan leadership in Tripoli confirmed it knew of a convoy crossing into Niger.
“We can confirm that around 200 cars crossed from Libya to Niger, but we can’t confirm who was in this convoy,” Jalal al-Gallal, spokesman for the National Transitional Council in the Libyan capital, told AFP.
Niger Foreign Minister Mohamed Bazoum was adamant the ousted Libyan leader was not in the convoy.
“It is not true, it is not Gaddafi and I do not think the convoy was of the size attributed to it,” he told AFP by phone from Algiers. France, too, said it has no information to suggest Gaddafi had entered Niger. Gaddafi spokesman Ibrahim insisted that the fugitive leader was still in Libya and was busy planning to re-take the country. Gaddafi is “in excellent health and planning and organising Libya’s defence,” Ibrahim told Syria’s Arrai television channel on Monday. “He is in place that those scums can not reach. He is fighting inside Libya.”
“We are still powerful,” he said, adding that the sons of the fugitive dictator “had assumed their role in the defence of and sacrifice for,” their country. He however did not name them.
