He has exalted himself as the brother leader of Libya, the dean of Arab rulers and the king of kings of Africa. On Monday, though, he was the autocrat who could not be found.
For all his bluster and bombast over the past four decades as Libya’s quirky ruler, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi was mysteriously absent and silent as forces of the six-month-old Libyan rebellion encircled what they believed to be his ultimate Tripoli hideout, the Bab al-Aziziya compound.
Even the leader of the rebel movement, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, admitted that he did not know if Colonel Qaddafi was holed up inside — or somewhere else in Libya, or another country. He is wanted not only by the rebels but by the International Criminal Court, which in June issued a warrant for his arrest.
Colonel Qaddafi, 69, has not been seen in public for more than two months. His once prolonged televised diatribes have stopped. The only indications that he may be in the compound have been the arrests of three of his sons in Tripoli, and a series of fuzzy audio recordings — the most recent of them Saturday night — promising he will not leave and exhorting Libyans to spill their blood for him to the end.
Rumors have swirled in Libya and elsewhere that he may have secretly slipped out of Tripoli before the rebel movement’s surprisingly speedy invasion of the city over the weekend.
South Africa’s Foreign Ministry on Monday publicly disputed speculation that it had sent an airplane to fetch Colonel Qaddafi and his family. Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, South Africa’s foreign minister, told reporters in Johannesburg that the government had sent aircraft only to evacuate the staff of its embassy.
“I am amazed at any insinuation of South Africa aiding anyone,” she said when asked if South Africa was trying to help Colonel Qaddafi. “We know for sure he will not come here.”
Rumors over the weekend that Colonel Qaddafi might have fled to asylum in Venezuela also proved false.
Abdel Moneim al-Houni, the Libyan representative in Egypt, who proclaimed his allegiance to the rebels on Monday, told reporters in Cairo that the rebels in Tripoli admittedly did not have a firm grasp on Colonel Qaddafi’s whereabouts. But he said, “We believe that his family, his children and grandchildren, are there, and we expect him to be there with them hiding in Tripoli.”
He added that there were reports the colonel might have fled to the Mediterranean city of Surt, his tribal home, where support for him is said to remain strong. That possibility suggested an outcome to the Libyan conflict in which the colonel and his relatives would be confined in some sort of internal exile.
The prime ministers of France and Britain, which have managed the NATO air campaign that assisted the rebels, both said Monday that they could not confirm Colonel Qaddafi’s location.
Liam Fox, Britain’s defense minister, acknowledged nearly 24 hours after the first rebel units entered Tripoli that Colonel Qaddafi had, for the time being, appeared to have outmaneuvered his enemies. “There are a range of different views about where Qaddafi is,” he said after a meeting of Britain’s National Security Council. “There are stories that he’s fled, others that he’s holed up somewhere in the country. At the moment, it’s impossible to tell which of these is true.”
In Washington, a Defense Department spokesman, Col. David Lapan, said the Pentagon believed that Colonel Qaddafi was still in Libya.
Victoria Nuland, a State Department spokeswoman, acknowledged that the absence of information about Colonel Qaddafi’s whereabouts was conspicuous. “I’m not going to get into our intelligence reporting, only to say that, like you, we’ve noticed that he hasn’t been seen in public in quite some time,” she said. “His last message was a radio message, I think. And there are rumors rampant, as you know, in Tripoli and elsewhere. If he is alive, the best thing he can do for his people is to step down immediately and end this.”
The precise location of some members of Colonel Qaddafi’s immediate family also remained a mystery on Monday, including that of his sons Mohammed, the eldest, by Colonel Qaddafi’s first wife; and Khamis, the leader of a once-feared military brigade named after him that was supposed to defend Tripoli from rebel advances. Al Jazeera and CNN reported late Monday that Mohammed may have escaped capture by the rebels, and that a body found in Tripoli may have been that of Khamis. The report could not be confirmed.
Seif al-Islam, the second-eldest son, once thought to be the heir apparent, was said to have been captured by the rebels, but he made a surprise appearance Monday at a Tripoli hotel.
Colonel Qaddafi has four other sons: Saadi, the third-eldest; Muatassim, the fourth-eldest and Colonel Qaddafi’s national security adviser, who once was thought to be a rival to Seif as heir apparent; Hannibal, the fifth-eldest; and Seif al-Arab, the sixth-eldest and least known. Colonel Qaddafi also has a daughter, Aisha, a lawyer, who told The New York Times in an interview four months ago that she always told her three young children bedtime stories about the afterlife, “because in a time of war you never know when a rocket or bomb might hit you, and that will be the end.”
Colonel Qaddafi’s last public appearance was on June 12, when he was photographed playing chess in Tripoli with the visiting president of the World Chess Federation, Kirsan N. Ilyumzhinov, an equally eccentric if less powerful personality from Russia who claims to communicate with aliens from outer space.
NYTimes
