2 Libyan Air Force Colonels Seek Asylum in Malta

[Spiraling Leopard]

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/142451

Two Libyan air force colonels piloting two Mirage F1 fighter jets arrived in Malta Sunday, asking for political asylum after being order to bomb protesters amid the chaos of a budding civil war, according to Associated Press.

 

 
Airport immigration officials questioned the two pilots as well as seven others - civilians claiming they were French - who arrived in two civilian helicopters shortly before the jets touched down at Malta International Airport.

The two Libyan air force colonels reportedly told authorities from the cockpit that they were seeking asylum after taking off from a base near Tripoli. They had flown at a low altitude through Libyan air space to avoid detection, according to a source that requested anonymity. According to Maltese government officials, the pair flew away after being ordered to bomb protesters.

Sources from the scene appeared to confirm the report. “What we are witnessing today is unimaginable,” said Adel Mohamed Saleh, a Libyan political activist. Warplanes and helicopters are indiscriminately bombing one area after another. There are many, many dead.”

Quoting witnesses, the pan-Arab Al Jazeera satellite news network reported that Libyan warplanes were bombing indiscriminately across Tripoli. There were no third-party confirmations.

Most recent estimates place the current death toll at 600, a figure that included 250 murders on Monday alone by government forces aided by mercenaries, according to the Human Rights Watch organization.

European governments, as well as oil and gas companies, have been evacuating their citizens. Military forces reportedly split up and were fighting each other. Hundreds of thousands of protesters continued to swarm over public sites in major cities across the country. Demonstrators stormed Tripoli Monday and set government buildings on fire as the death toll mounted from the bloodbath.

Media reported that a Turkish Airlines flight was unable to land in the eastern city of Benghazi on Monday; the flight circled over the airport but was forced to return to Istanbul. A witness in Benghazi reported that protesters lowered the national flag, and instead raised that which belonged to the former monarch who was toppled in the 1969 coup that brought Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi to power.

Meanwhile, speculation continues to mount that Gaddafi may have fled to Venezuela during the violence overnight Sunday, leaving his son Seif al-Islam to face the media. Al-Islam warned in a national broadcast that a civil war was possible, and vowed to “fight to the last bullet” as his father's armed forces reportedly continued to split, fighting each other.

Gaddafi also denied that his father had fled, insisting, “My father is in Libya and is supported by his army.”

[Spiraling Leopard]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/22/world/africa/22nations.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss

Libya’s U.N. Diplomats Break With Qaddafi

Members of Libya’s mission to the United Nations publicly repudiated Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi on Monday, calling him a genocidal war criminal responsible for mass shootings of demonstrators protesting against his four decades in power. They called upon him to resign.

The repudiation, led by Libya’s deputy permanent representative at a news conference at the mission’s headquarters in New York, amounted to the most high-profile defection of Libyan diplomats in the anti-Qaddafi uprising that has convulsed Libya over the past week.

“We are sure that what is going on now in Libya is crimes against humanity and crimes of war,” the deputy permanent representative, Ibrahim Dabbashi, told reporters in the ground-floor lobby of the Libyan mission on Manhattan’s East Side, adorned by a large portrait of Colonel Qaddafi in tribal dress atop a white horse.

About a dozen of Mr. Dabbashi’s colleagues stood behind him as he spoke, looking tense and nervous.

The news conference was held against the backdrop of many reports coming from Libya about the spreading insurrection against Colonel Qaddafi’s regime and what protesters described as his brutal tactics to suppress them, including reports of warplanes that fired on demonstrators in the capital Tripoli.

“We find it is impossible to stay silent and we have to transfer the voice of the Libyan people to the world,” Mr. Dabbashi said.

“We state clearly that the Libyan mission is a mission for the Libyan people,” he said. “It is not for the regime. The regime of Qaddafi has already started the genocide against the Libyan people.”

Mr. Dabbashi also asserted that Colonel Qaddafi was flying in mercenaries recruited from other, unidentified African countries to crush the uprising. He offered no proof to support his assertion.

“We warn all African countries who are sending their soldiers to fight, to fight with Qaddafi, that they will not see their soldiers coming back,” he said.

He called upon Colonel Qaddafi to step down and leave the country “as soon as possible.”

Mr. Dabbashi also said he had not seen the Libyan ambassador since Friday and did not know his whereabouts or whether he shared the opinion of many in his mission.