Gaddafi’s loyalists arrive Niger

Posted by admin Africa & World Politics, Headlines Tuesday, September 6th, 2011

Scores of Libyan army vehicles have crossed the desert frontier into Niger in what may be a dramatic, secretly negotiated bid by Muammar Gaddafi to seek refuge in a friendly African state, military sources from France and Niger said yesterday.

A spokesman for the rebels’ National Transition Council said that banknotes included in the convoy of gold and cash that the council believed had reached Niger had been stolen from Sirte’s branch of the Central Bank of Libya. An NTC official, Fathis Baja, told Reuters: “Late last night, 10 vehicles carrying gold, euros and dollars crossed from Jufra into Niger with the help of Tuaregs from the Niger tribe.”

It was unclear if these vehicles were separate from the much larger military convoy reported by the foreign sources. The head of Gaddafi’s security brigades, Mansour Dhao, along with more than 10 other Libyans, crossed into Niger Sunday, two Niger officials had said earlier Monday.
The military sources said a convoy of between 200 and 250 vehicles was escorted to the northern city of Agadez by the army of Niger, a poor and landlocked former French colony. It might, according to a French military source, be joined by Gaddafi en route for adjacent Burkina Faso, which has offered him asylum.

France, Niger and Burkina Faso, as well as Libya’s new rulers and NATO, all denied knowing where Gaddafi was or of any deal to let him go abroad or find refuge from Libyans and the International Criminal Court who want to put him on trial.
The sources said the convoy, probably including officers from army units based in the south of Libya, may have looped through Algeria rather than crossing the Libyan-Niger frontier directly. Algeria last week took in Gaddafi’s wife, daughter and two other sons, angering the interim council now running Libya.

Gaddafi’s fugitive spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said in remarks broadcast on Monday: “Muammar Gaddafi is in excellent health and in very, very high spirits … He is in a place that will not be reached by those fractious groups, and he is in Libya.”
French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said it was for Libyans to decide the venue but that Gaddafi would not be allowed to slip away quietly.

“He will have to face justice for all the crimes he has committed in the past 42 years,” he said.
Niger’s foreign minister, Bazoum Mohamed, was quoted by Al Arabiya television saying that Gaddafi was not in the convoy, which arrived late Monday.

An aide to French President Nicolas Sarkozy said: “We have no specific information that would indicate that Gaddafi is there.”

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