THE DOMINO EFFECT IN THE MIDDLE EAST
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Re: THE DOMINO EFFECT IN THE MIDDLE EAST
@SultanAlQassemi
Al Jazeera: Colonel Jamal Al Zawi: Libyan revolutionaries are 5 km away from town of Brega (800km/500 miles east of Tripoli)
2 minutes ago via web
Guest- Guest
Re: THE DOMINO EFFECT IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Hi Carmen,
That report was shown earlier on Sky as it happened and I think it was wrong for the Reporter to say he was the only one there. The Woman ran into
a Hotel where several Journalists were in around. the started to tell her story, sitting on a chair in the foyer and you could see the cut on her face,
she said she was raped, and showed damage to her wrists where she had been tied. the Libyan "minders" intervened and she was still trying to talk to
reporters as she was led away and pushed into a Car . I dread to think what happened to her.
Panda- Platinum Poster
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Re: THE DOMINO EFFECT IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Panda wrote:
Hi Carmen,
That report was shown earlier on Sky as it happened and I think it was wrong for the Reporter to say he was the only one there. The Woman ran into
a Hotel where several Journalists were in around. the started to tell her story, sitting on a chair in the foyer and you could see the cut on her face,
she said she was raped, and showed damage to her wrists where she had been tied. the Libyan "minders" intervened and she was still trying to talk to
reporters as she was led away and pushed into a Car . I dread to think what happened to her.
Hi Panda, it doesn't bear thinking about what might have happened to the woman.
Also makes you realise how 'imprisoned' the press are there.
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Re: THE DOMINO EFFECT IN THE MIDDLE EAST
@ksnavarra
#Russia military chief: 'Allied strikes on #Libya a total failure'
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Re: THE DOMINO EFFECT IN THE MIDDLE EAST
@MaryFitzgerldIT
Just back from 'liberated' Ajdabiya. Much celebrating there. Met one rebel fighter who was cleaning his boots with Gadafy's green flag
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Re: THE DOMINO EFFECT IN THE MIDDLE EAST
@AlanFisher
AFP reporting #Libya rebels have taken town of Brega
less than a minute ago via web
Guest- Guest
Re: THE DOMINO EFFECT IN THE MIDDLE EAST
carmen wrote:@AlanFisher
AFP reporting #Libya rebels have taken town of Brega
less than a minute ago via web
Yes, it"s true. What is more, the sky Reporter at the scene said along the route Armoured Vehicles containing ammunition, and tanks were blown up by the UN task force. Apparently, this is very significant because up until now there hasn"t been many Gaddafi troops deployed, which suggests that with his planes out of action and lack of ammunition it may be the beginning of the end.
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Re: THE DOMINO EFFECT IN THE MIDDLE EAST
BREGA TAKEN?,THINGS APPEAR TO BE SPEEDING UP
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Re: THE DOMINO EFFECT IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Badboy wrote:BREGA TAKEN?,THINGS APPEAR TO BE SPEEDING UP
Yes, BadBoy, Gaddafi is supposed to be arming Civilians which suggests he is desperate. Brega is a strategic gain because of the Oil terminal.
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Re: THE DOMINO EFFECT IN THE MIDDLE EAST
SOME REBELS TURNING BACK FROM BREGA,ONLY THERE ARE SOME PRO GADDHAFI FORCES NEAR/IN AJDABIYA WHO HAVE DUG IN
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Re: THE DOMINO EFFECT IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Inside Gaddafi's brutal prison: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad's Libyan ordeal
While reporting the war in western Libya, award-winning Guardian correspondent Ghaith Abdul-Ahad was seized by Gaddafi's militia. Here he describes two weeks inside the regime's brutal prison system
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
guardian.co.uk, Friday 25 March 2011 22.00 GMT
Article history
Muammar Gaddafi's supporters in Sabratha, Libya, where Brazilian journalist Andrei Netto and the Guardian's Ghaith Abdul-Ahad were captured. Photograph: Ben Curtis/AP
We ran into Gaddafi's troops on the outskirts of Zawiya, less than a mile beyond the last signs of rebel activity: a destroyed checkpoint, a bullet-ridden building and five burnt-out cars.
The soldiers were blocking the main highway to the coast with pickup trucks and armoured vehicles, so our driver took to the desert, skirting the roadblock in a wide arc before cutting back to the road. He was edgy after that, spooked even by the sight of a distant abandoned car parked in the middle of the road.
We – the Brazilian journalist Andrei Netto and I, travelling in the company of rebels from western Libya – would not be able reach Zawiya that night as planned. Instead we made for Sabratha, 12 miles to the west.
It was clear that Sabratha had been reclaimed by Gaddafi loyalists. The police and intelligence service buildings were charred, but they had new green flags of the regime flying above them.
We separated from our rebel escorts and took shelter in an empty half-built house, away from the militiamen roaming the streets. Later that night we saw four men approaching, dressed in dark tracksuits and carrying sticks except for one, who had a gun. When they surrounded the house there was no way to escape. They took our phones then frogmarched us, heads down, to an SUV, ranting as we went. "You sons of bitches! You Jews and Zionists! You Arab traitors! You want to topple Gaddafi? We will rape your mothers! Gaddafi will show you!"
I was put in the pickup first, then Netto. As he was getting in, a tall militiaman swung a metal pipe that struck him on the head. Inside the car the man sat behind us, jabbing at us with a stick as he continued his tirade.
We were taken a short distance to a compound guarded by armed men, where we were interrogated, then blindfolded and driven for two hours to a prison that I now know is in Tripoli. We were separated there; I have not seen Netto since. Still blindfolded, I was interrogated for four hours about my "collaboration" with the infidel British newspaper the Guardian. Then they walked me downstairs to the cells.
They removed the blindfold in a neon-lit corridor lined with 20 great iron doors with sliding bolts and white numbers. Each door had two small hatches, at the top and the bottom. Empty cartons of juice, plastic packaging and trash were piled up outside the doors.
I was pushed into cell 11, a windowless box, 2.5 metres x 1.5 metres, painted dark grey and lit by a weak bulb. The room contained a dirty mattress, blanket and soiled pillow. A low wall separated a broken toilet seat covered with a thick brown crust, a tap and a bucket. There was a strong smell of sewage.
It was Wednesday 2 March. The prison would be home for a fortnight.
Day and night in the prison, bolts were pulled, doors slammed and guards, in combat trousers, T-shirts and trainers, shoved shackled prisoners in and out of the cells.
One guard in particular – a tall man with rimless spectacles whose civilian clothes implied rank – spoke the most. "All the people we are capturing are al-Qaida infiltrators," he said at one point. "Al-Qaida are beheading civilians, burning them and eating their hearts."
Another day, he delivered a paean to Colonel Gaddafi. "We love him," he said, rolling his eyes until they were just two white slits. "We love, love, love him! And we want him. It's up to us Libyans to choose him – not the west.
"With him we have survived so many things. So many crises have passed and we will survive this. It's history we have with him. It's 42 years! I have known nothing but him and they want us to turn against him now. He is not just our leader, he is a philosopher and a thinker. He is everything."
Worse than the guards, the fear and the smell were the ravings from a prisoner down the corridor. This man's shouting, made incomprehensible by being delivered through his hands or a blanket, echoed around the jail day and night. Sometimes he would break off, a moment of silence would ensue and he would begin crying and squealing in apparent pain.
When a guard passed by he would ask in a very polite voice: "You are not serving tea or coffee today?" "We are not getting newspapers today?"
Days later I discovered that he, like many of the others, was being regularly interrogated and beaten.
In the early hours of Sunday 6 March a gunbattle began outside the prison. It started with a few bursts of small arms fire, then came the deeper note of anti-aircraft guns, which turned into a continuous long drumming. At one point guns were being fired from somewhere just next to the cells.
The inmates became excited. Were the rebels storming into the prison? Had the uprising reached Tripoli? Were we being saved? The raving man gave a long, ululating victory cry while the prisoner in cell 12 continuously repeated "O Lord" like a mantra.
The sounds of shooting rose and fell for more than half an hour before fizzling away and finally stopping when two helicopters came circling overhead.
The officer with the rimless glasses came through the corridor later, fuming with anger. He shoved breakfast through the door hatch. "Those filthy Europeans, we will crush them with the tips of our shoes," he said. "If those rebel dogs come here to attack we will all die together. The sons of Gaddafi will never run. A man lives once and dies once, so better die fighting."
On the evening after the battle the cells began to fill up. There was a man from Zwara, another from Zawiya, and a chubby grey-haired man named Richard who spoke English with an American accent. By Monday some cells had three inmates. "Why am I kept here?" I overheard one man say. "I have handed myself in after the amnesty."
"Sure," laughed a guard. "We will take you to a five-star hotel very soon."
I was moved to a bigger cell upstairs. I could still hear the doors slamming and the man shouting and the new cell was also windowless, but it was whitewashed and lit by neon night and day.
Later I heard the first of the voices coming through the wall. The cell was next to two interrogation rooms, where men were brought throughout the day. Each interrogation began and ended with the clinking sound of a man in shackles walking to or from the room. The madman was brought for interrogation at least twice.
I heard snatches of shouted questions or accusations from the interrogators – "Qaida", "attack Libya", "Muammar", "who are they?" – punctuated with smacks and thuds, like someone throwing sacks of rice at a wall, and the sound of prisoners pleading, screaming and weeping.
One interrogation on Wednesday evening went as follows:
"Stand up!"
Smack came the sound. Smack. Smack.
"I said stand up!"
Smack. Smack.
This cycle was repeated five times.
Somewhere down the hall a TV blasted pro-Gaddafi marching songs.
On Thursday 10 March I was taken out of the big cell and put in cell 18 in the downstairs corridor. This was also dark, tiny and filthy, but this time I was to share with another prisoner.
He was sitting on a torn mattress, his back resting against the wall and his legs covered with a dirty yellow and red blanket. His hair was slicked back and a few days of white stubble sprouted from his chin. "Bangladesh," he said, pointing at himself. He was shivering in a thin shirt and after few minutes of silence he added, in Arabic: "Cold. All clothes with them."
He told his story in broken sentences. He had lived in Dhaka with his wife and three children. Some years ago he had gone to "a big manager in big glass building with a big office" and paid money to get a visa to Saudi Arabia to work in construction. He had been promised a good salary, but the visa never came. After five months he was told there was no visa for Saudi, but he could get a visa for Dubai. So he paid the manager more money and waited.
Two months later, he was told there would be no visa to Dubai but there was one for Libya. "The manager said Libya is like Dubai, lots of petrol and a good salary." He arrived in Libya on a tourist visa that soon expired and the work permit and job he was promised never came, but he worked anyway, on building sites in Benghazi, then Tripoli.
When the fighting and demonstrations erupted and foreigners started leaving Libya, he asked his Libyan boss to pay him the money he was owed so he could leave the country. "He said 'later, later'."
While his friends all left for Tunis, he stayed to wait for his 800 dinars (£400).
"Four days ago" – he counted them out with his fingers – "a soldier stopped me and said where is my visa. I said I had no visa. They beat me and brought me here.
"Everywhere Bangladesh worker go, India, China, Indonesia … only here in Libya they do this to you and put you in a locked room." He crossed his hands to indicate handcuffs.
A week had passed and he hadn't been able to speak to his wife. "What is she to do now?"
Later he asked what would happen if he found enough money to get a ticket to Bangladesh: "Would they let me go?"
The following day I was moved into solitary again, but towards the end of the second week I noticed small differences in the way I was treated. On day 12, a guard brought a toothbrush. On day 13, a bar of soap and shampoo arrived. On day 14 they brought a cup of coffee and even offered a cigarette.
There was no information about what was happening outside or why I was being held, despite being told when I was first interrogated that I would be released the next day. When, I wondered, might they come and take me to the room where the beating took place?
On Tuesday night a smiling officer came to say I would be released. I was blindfolded and taken to a bathroom with a mirror, given a razor and told to shave. I did not want to shave. I pleaded with him and he relented. An hour later I was told my release had been postponed.
The next morning, Wednesday 16 March, I was given my notebooks and camera and blindfolded again. I had to lie in the back of a van and was driven for half an hour before being led into a room. When they took off the blindfold, I discovered I was back in my cell. "We made a mistake," said an officer as he locked the door.
Two hours later I was blindfolded and bundled into the van again. I would have to face trial, the officer said. There was an armed guard in the van.
The van stopped and the guard told me to move closer to him. He took off the blindfold and I could see we were outside a grand building. A second man came and led me up some marble steps.
At the top I found three colleagues from the Guardian waiting to receive me and take me out of Libya. The Brazilian journalist Andrei Netto, they said, had been released six days earlier.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/25/inside-gaddafis-brutal-prison?CMP=twt_gu
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Re: THE DOMINO EFFECT IN THE MIDDLE EAST
(All times are local in Libya GMT+2)
8:45pm
Pro-democracy activist Ahmed Al Misrati in Misurata tells al Jazeera:
The city of Misurata is besieged from all sides. Gaddafi's troops had laid siege to the city and after the no-fly zone [was imposed] Gaddafi troops who were stationed in certain [areas] are now spreading out around the city.Some of them are also positioned inside the city in the main road called Tripoli Street. As a matter of fact, the city of Misurata since morning has been under heavy gunfire and heavy bombardment ... by tanks or mortar shells. This bombardment is indiscriminate and arbitrary, sometimes targeting residential plots and one entire family was killed - the father and his children.They are also stationed in other rooftops, especially the high buildings ... Anybody in the street comes under heavy gunfire and now the situation is exacerbating and is very, very dire.
http://blogs.aljazeera.net/live/africa/live-blog-libya-march-26
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Re: THE DOMINO EFFECT IN THE MIDDLE EAST
@AdelDarwish
Gaddafi TV reported TUC London march against cuts & riots as ' protest against the air-raids on Libya'. There is a methodology in madness
6 minutes ago via web
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Re: THE DOMINO EFFECT IN THE MIDDLE EAST
@AJELive
French warplanes destroy five Libyan planes and two helicopters on ground at Misurata airport, reports Reuters, quoting spokesman
9 minutes ago via Seesmic Desktop
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Re: THE DOMINO EFFECT IN THE MIDDLE EAST
@REUTERSFLASH
Al Jazeera correspondent says east Libya rebel forces reach outskirts of Uqayla after taking control of Brega
17 minutes ago via web
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Re: THE DOMINO EFFECT IN THE MIDDLE EAST
@SultanAlQassemi
Al Arabiya: Libyan revolutionaries announce that they have taken control of oil town of Ras Lanuf (660km/410miles east of Tripoli) #Libya
4 minutes ago via web
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Re: THE DOMINO EFFECT IN THE MIDDLE EAST
carmen wrote:@SultanAlQassemi
Al Arabiya: Libyan revolutionaries announce that they have taken control of oil town of Ras Lanuf (660km/410miles east of Tripoli) #Libya
4 minutes ago via web
Wow, that's a major turnup for the books if it's true
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Re: THE DOMINO EFFECT IN THE MIDDLE EAST
The Famous Grouse wrote:carmen wrote:@SultanAlQassemi
Al Arabiya: Libyan revolutionaries announce that they have taken control of oil town of Ras Lanuf (660km/410miles east of Tripoli) #Libya
4 minutes ago via web
Wow, that's a major turnup for the books if it's true
That tweep seems pretty reliable - has a large following of journos
http://www.dsg.ae/People/tabid/312/language/en-US/562/Default.aspx
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Re: THE DOMINO EFFECT IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Kadhafi's lies pushed us into fight, captured soldiers say
Fecha: 27/03/2011
Compártelo Enviar Imprimir
AFP
Their bodies are broken -- as broken as their loyalty now to their one-time leader Moamer Kadhafi, whom they say lied to push them into battle against rebellious compatriots in eastern Libya.
Three of them are soldiers in Kadhafi's army, wounded and taken prisoner in different locations a week ago by rebels.
They were lying in beds in a guarded room in a hospital in Benghazi, sleeping, praying and reflecting on how they ended up being cared for by a compassionate enemy that in no way resembled Al-Qaeda, Israel's Mossad or the foreign terrorists Kadhafi's officers had said awaited them.
Azoumi Ali Mohammed, 25, said he was a reservist taken on March 20 after coalition warplanes bombed his convoy of more than 400 Libyan troops and African mercenaries on a desert road leading from the eastern city of Ajdabiya.
"The planes hit us as soon as we headed out. I saw two people die in front of me. After that I don't know what happened," he said. He showed his bandaged right leg where he was wounded by shrapnel.
Their orders had been to secure the area, and to "fight mercenaries and al-Qaeda," he said.
"I was shocked" to discover the enemy was in fact fellow Libyans, he said, explaining that all their mobile phones had been confiscated in Tripoli to prevent them having outside communications.
Mohammed said that now he had seen the rebellion, and been cared for by its doctors, "I know I want to fight against Kadhafi's forces."
Mustafa Mohammed Ali, a 40-year-old career soldier, survived being shot six times in a rebel ambush as he was driving out of Ajdabiya on March 18.
Three comrades with him, in a four-wheel-drive vehicle flying the green flag of the Kadhafi regime, were killed.
They had been told agents of Israel's Mossad intelligence service had fomented unrest by hiring Tunisian, Egyptian and Syrian fighters on hallucinogenic drugs.
"I was loyal (to Kadhafi). Now I'm not, after finding out the truth about the fighting," he said.
"In Benghazi I found young people making a revolution to escape from the darkness they were living in," he said.
Like Mohammed, Ali said the rebels had told him he would be released to return to his family after Kadhafi was toppled.
Ali said his loyalty, too, had switched sides. "Why not? Kadhafi is just one person. But the country is important."
Even more badly wounded was Wanis Ibrahim Hassan, a 30-year-old who had been in the crew of a tank that had made its way into the rebel stronghold of Benghazi on March 19 with orders to take the airport.
He had jumped out of the tank as rebels targeted it with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.
The blast took out a metal railing behind him, driving smoking hot metal pieces deep into his back, breaking his right arm in several places, wounding his head and ripping into his legs.
He gave an inconsistent story, saying initially he had wanted to escape en route to Benghazi because he "did not want to fire on innocent people in front of me."
But then he said he had been convinced he was mobilised to fight terrorists.
Mohammed, the young reservist, said that Hassan "is wounded in the head -- he tells a different story every time."
Staff at the hospital looking after them, though, were clear about their responsibilities.
"I am taking care of them because they are human beings, and because I'm a Muslim," said a doctor examining X-rays of one of the patients.
http://wires.univision.com/english/article/2011-03-27/kadhafis-lies-pushed-us-into
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Re: THE DOMINO EFFECT IN THE MIDDLE EAST
I am away to put the 24 hr news channel on now to see woss happenin
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Re: THE DOMINO EFFECT IN THE MIDDLE EAST
(All times are local in Libya GMT+2)
12:01pm
Al Jazeera's James Bays reported from Uqayla, where opposition rebels had taken control:
The coalition forces can say everything they are doing is aimed at protecting civilians. But now it's not Gaddafi forces who are advancing, it's opposition forces advancing. The next big place on the map after Ras Lanuf is Sirte. Now that is a big city, it's Gaddafi's stronghold. If opposition fighters start advancing on that, how can you say it's Gaddafi's forces who are threatening civilians? Gaddafi's forces will be the ones holding the ground, and those that are advancing would be the opposition fighters. [It will be] much harder I think for the coalition then to act in favour of the opposition in the terms of that UN resolution.
11:50am
Al Jazeera's James Bays, reporting from near Uqayla, where opposition forces had reportedly reached:
The opposition forces have certainly pushed forward since they took control of Ajdabiya, after those air strikes on Ajdabiya, pushing along the coast heading westward towards Tripoli.
http://blogs.aljazeera.net/live/africa/live-blog-libya-march-27
Interesting conundrum??
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Re: THE DOMINO EFFECT IN THE MIDDLE EAST
I had been watching Sky"s Murnaghan programme, went for a shower and heard this Arab protester saying the West should not be interfering etc.
He also said it was wrong to think the Woman who went into the Hotel to tell her story was telling the truth. I stopped the shower, listened from the bathroom and he said the woman was not taken by Gaddafi"s men, she was merely attention seeking. Apparently she had been raped and beaten and
her case would have been dealt with by the Court and a Human Rights Lawyer had been appointed to her. She decided to turn it into a Political case
by going to the Hotel but he assured everyone she was fine and been released by the Hotel "minders" who took her away.
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