Reports of Gadhafi spokesmans capture met with skepticism

01 October 2011

SIRTE, Libya: There were growing doubts Friday that the vocal spokesman for fugitive Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi had been captured after reports that he had been seized while disguised as a woman, complete with veil.

Libya’s new rulers were probing the whereabouts of Moussa Ibrahim, the public voice of Gadhafi’s fallen regime, as one television channel said it would air footage of him being detained in women’s clothing.

National Transitional Council commanders said they had received reports from fighters on the ground that Ibrahim had been seized outside Gadhafi’s hometown of Sirte, where his loyalists have been under siege for the past week.

But the fighters’ high command in Libya’s third-largest city Misrata said it was unable to confirm the capture of Ibrahim, who has kept up a steady stream of pro-Gadhafi broadcasts from unknown locations while on the run.

“Misrata fighters contacted us and gave us the information that Moussa Ibrahim has been captured,” said Mustafa bin Dardef of the NTC’s Zintan Brigade.

Another commander, Mohammad al-Marimi, said: “Moussa Ibrahim was captured while driving outside Sirte by fighters from Misrata.”

Libya’s Al-Hurra Misrata television said it would broadcast footage of Ibrahim’s capture, adding that the images showed him being detained in the back of a car outside Sirte wearing a veil.

However, a spokesman for the Misrata military council, Adel Ibrahim, told AFP: “If the Misrata fighters had captured him, they would have told us.” And a pro-Gadhafi website denied his long-time spokesman had been taken.

“Moussa Ibrahim has not been captured,” the website of the former state television channel Allibiya said.

“This is a mendacious rumor aimed at distracting attention from the rebels’ … defeat at the hands of the heroic forces in Sirte.”

Since NTC fighters overran the capital Tripoli on Aug. 23, Ibrahim has continued to issue statements through Syrian-based Arrai television from an unknown location.

Late last week, Ibrahim appealed for resolve against “agents and traitors,” denounced what he called “genocide” by NATO and its “Libyan agents.”

NTC efforts to secure the extradition of fugitive members of Gadhafi’s family and inner circle, meanwhile, took a blow with a rebuff from neighboring Niger to an arrest notice issued by global police agency Interpol for the toppled strongman’s playboy son Saadi.

Niger Prime Minister Brigi Rafini said his government had no plans for the time being to hand over Saadi, 38, who has been under house arrest in the capital Niamey since fleeing across the desert border on Sept. 11.

Interpol said in a statement from its Lyon headquarters that Saadi was wanted “for allegedly misappropriating properties through force and armed intimidation when he headed the Libyan Football Federation.”

Niger has confirmed it has a total of 32 Gadhafi loyalists on its soil, including three generals, saying it allowed them entry for “humanitarian reasons.”

Libya’s western neighbor Algeria has also given refuge to Gadhafi family members, announcing on Aug. 31 that it had admitted his daughter Aisha, her brothers Hannibal and Mohammed and their mother Safiya, again citing “strictly humanitarian reasons.”

The whereabouts of Moammar Gadhafi himself still remain a mystery, although he has issued repeated statements vowing to die a martyr rather than flee his homeland.

Libya’s new leaders suspect that two of his sons – Mutassim and Seif al-Islam – are still inside the country, the former in Sirte and the latter in his loyalists’ other significant remaining bastion, the desert city of Bani Walid.

NATO said Friday that its warplanes had hit two targets in Sirte and two in Bani Walid.

On the ground in Sirte, anti-Gadhafi fighters returned to the fray after being forced to retreat during ferocious fighting late Wednesday.