Congrats to people of Libya for throwing out a tyrant. I hope now they will be able to build a modern democratic state.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/08/21/2369296/gadhafi-regime-apparently-falls.html
BENGHAZI, Libya – The long reign of Col. Moammar Gadhafi appeared to collapse Sunday as rebels swept into Tripoli, captured two of his sons and set off wild street celebrations in a capital that he’d ruled by fear for more than four decades, Libyan officials and NATO said.
With NATO bombings paving the way, rebel forces entered Tripoli with surprising ease and by early Monday controlled much of the city. Gadhafi’s personal guard surrendered to rebel forces, and television showed crowds of opposition fighters in Tripoli unfurling the tricolor flag of pre-Gadhafi Libya and smashing the ruler’s portraits.
“This is historic,” Amal Abdelrazk, 41, a resident of downtown Tripoli’s Andalus Street, said by phone. "After 41 years, eight months and 27 days, we witness this moment. … “The whole thing is like a dream.”
Rebel military spokesman Col. Ahmed Bani told McClatchy that his forces were looking for Gadhafi in and around Tripoli. Gadhafi’s whereabouts were unknown, but a U.S. official said: “We have no reason to believe (he) has left the country.”
Late Sunday Gadhafi made a brief audio statement on Libyan TV, sounding desperate as he called on individual tribes and cities to “take weapons” and defend “beautiful Tripoli.”
“All the tribes, you must all march to Tripoli in order to defend and purify it,” he said, calling the rebels agents of Western powers. “Otherwise you will have no dignity; you will become slaves and servants in the hands of the imperialists.”
But the mercurial leader was nowhere to be seen, and for many Libyans, the regime’s death blow came with the rebels’ arrest of Seif al-Islam, Gadhafi’s powerful son and one-time heir apparent, who had d vowed after the uprising against his father began that the regime would fight its opponents “until the last bullet.”
The rebels’ Transitional National Council in the eastern city of Benghazi confirmed Seif al-Islam’s arrest. Luis Moreno Ocampo, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, told CNN that he would begin talks with the rebels Monday on transferring him to the custody of the court, which issued a warrant for his arrest in June on charges of crimes against humanity.
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in a written statement: “The Gadhafi regime is clearly crumbling. The sooner Gadhafi realizes that he cannot win the battle against his own people, the better - so that the Libyan people can be spared further bloodshed and suffering.”
President Barack Obama, asked about the situation while he was vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., said, “We’re going to wait until we have full confirmation of what has happened. … I’ll make a statement when I do.”
Thousands of Libyans celebrated in Benghazi, cheering and dancing to mark the apparent climax to an uprising that began there more than six months ago. Celebratory gunfire echoed as Mustafa Abdel Jalil, leader of the Transitional National Council, announced Seif al-Islam’s capture shortly before midnight.
“Finally, Libya is liberated,” said Ibrahim Shebani, 29, who joined the raucous party near Benghazi’s courthouse. “Stay tuned, world - you will finally get to meet the real Libyans.”
It marked a stunningly successful final push by rebel forces, for months described as ragtag and badly organized, and thought to be suffering from the mysterious assassination just weeks ago of their commander, Abdel Fattah Younes, a longtime Gadhafi lieutenant who defected at the start of the uprising. Younes’s death instead appeared to embolden the rebels, who in recent days routed pro-Gadhafi fighters from the strategic town of Zawiya, 30 miles west of Tripoli, and surged into the capital Sunday with little trouble.
Bani, the rebel military spokesman, said that rebels from Zawiya were joined by reinforcements from Misrata and Zlitan, two other rebel-held cities, who landed on a beach in Tajura, on Tripoli’s eastern edge, after noon Sunday.
“It’s over. There is no more Gadhafi, no more secret police, no more blood,” Bani said.
Gadhafi has cut a dramatic, erratic and eccentric figure across the world stage for the past half century.
To the West he ran an outlaw regime that funded revolutionary groups such as the Irish Republican Army and the Black Panthers. He was said to be behind terrorist attacks across Europe - the most notorious being the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jumbo jet that crashed over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 passengers and crew and 11 others on the ground.
A former Libyan foreign minister who defected earlier this year has said that the Gadhafi regime was behind the explosion.
Gadhafi’s speeches before the United the Nations became tortuously long harangues. He often dressed in sumptuous traditional garb and traveled with a retinue of armed female bodyguards and a huge Bedouin tent
The son of Bedouins himself, born in a tent, Gadhafi chose a far different course, receiving a university education and attending the Libyan Military Academy. There he some fellow disgruntled officers hatched a plot to overthrow Libya’s monarchy, which they did on Sept. 1, 1969, when he was 27.
The United States long ago cut ties with his regime, but a rapprochement began under President George W. Bush, who sought Gadhafi’s cooperation against terrorism. He renounced support for terrorist groups and gave up his nuclear weapons ambitions, and was widely believed to be grooming British-educated Seif al -slam to succeed him when the Arab Spring protests blossomed this year - and began the downfall of his regime.
Gadhafi’s most diehard supporters tried to remain defiant. His chief spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, visibly rattled, said at a news conference in Tripoli that Libya would be plunged into civil war as tribes and towns loyal to the regime struck back at rebels. Online anti-Gadhafi activists described it as his “last appearance.”
“We have thousands and thousands of fighters who have nowhere to go but to fight,” Ibrahim said.
He said the rebels couldn’t be trusted because “they killed their own commander and they are penetrated by al-Qaida extremists.” He said the advancing rebels had left a trail of burned houses and looted shops as they entered Tripoli.
But Abdelrazk, the Tripoli resident, reported a different perspective. Prisons were open and Libyan political detainees were being freed, she said. By late Sunday night, state TV had ceased official programming and was playing patriotic songs.
(Allam reported from Cairo, Bengali from Washington. Nancy A. Youssef and David Goldstein in Washington and McClatchy special correspondents Refaat Ahmed and Mohannad Sabry in Cairo and Osama Alfitory in Benghazi also contributed.)