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Africa

The magical appearing act of Saif, Gaddafi’s son and heir

The magical appearing act of Saif, Gaddafi’s son and heir

It was all going so well. Most of Tripoli was in rebel hands, Gaddafi besieged in the tunnels of his presidential palace, and three of his sons in rebel custody. Then Saif Gaddafi – supposed to be safely in rebel custody –turned up in the middle of the night at the government-controlled Rixos hotel, flashing V signs and telling reporters this was all nonsense. What the hell’s going on in Tripoli, and who can we trust to tell us? By SIMON ALLISON.

Journalists at Tripoli’s Rixos Hotel have had a frustrating war. Trapped by their government minders, they’ve been fed a steady stream of government misinformation and been kept away from the real action. So they turned up to another press conference outside Gaddafi’s presidential complex called by the government in the middle of Monday night with low expectations. And then Saif Gaddafi walks in.

This is the same Saif Gaddafi who the rebels claimed, with great fanfare, to have detained. The same Saif Gaddafi who was the subject of hasty and apparently presumptive negotiations between the rebel national transtional council and the International Criminal Court, who want him to appear in The Hague on war crimes charges. The same Saif Gaddafi whose capture was meant to symbolise the collapse of the entire Gaddafi regime.

Was he ever caught by the rebels? He denied it, saying the whole thing was made up. “I am here to refute the lies,” he said. Asked if Gaddafi senior was safe and well, and still in Tripoli, he shrugged; “Of course.”

A bewildered NTC member told Al Jazeera: “We had confirmation Saif al-Islam was arrested, but we have no idea how he escaped.”

Saif’s appearance was verified by CNN, BBC and Al-Arabiya news stations. CNN’s Matthew Chance (@mchancecnn) was particularly excited, tweeting: “Here’s the picture I took sitting next to #Saif #Gadhafi! Certainly not detained! Exclusive!! #cnn #libya #tripoli http://t.co/1h0Fcgo”. The liberal use of exclamation marks, and a sudden change from the CNN preferred spelling of ‘Gaddafi’ in his tweets caused a brief Twitterstorm with angry – and perhaps disillusioned – rebel supporters convinced his Twitter account had been hacked by Gaddafi loyalists. This theory seemed to be disproved by his subsequent appearances on CNN.

Still, there’s no way to substantiate the veracity of the reports of Saif Gaddafi’s unexpected appearance – just as, in retrospect, claims of his detention were impossible to verify. But if true, his appearance smashes the credibility of the rebels, who are guilty of one of three things, none of them good: wrongly identifying Saif, lying about his capture or lying about the degree of their control over Tripoli.

And it gets worse for the rebels. Al Jazeera reports that another son, Muhamad Gaddafi, also detained by the rebels, escaped on Monday night after pro-Gaddafi forces freed him from the house where he was being kept. This indicates – again, if true, an important caveat given the fog of war and the disinformation campaigns that both sides seem to be waging – that the rebels don’t have nearly the degree of control over Tripoli that they claim, and that the battle for the capital isn’t over yet.

After the rebels massive gains on Sunday, Monday proved there was a sting in the tail of the Gaddafi regime. It’s not going to save Gaddafi, or his sons; Libya’s too far gone now for that, with the rebels in control of too much of the country. But it might just fatally wound the TNC, the interim rebel government, which in a country with weak laws and a severely damaged infrastructure has only its credibility to rely on. DM



Read more:

  • Who is Saif al-Islam Gaddafi? on CNN;
  • Gaddafi son makes his stance in Tripoli on Al Jazeera.

Photo: REUTERS

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