Libyan protesters storm poll offices
David Kirkpatrick
July 3, 2012
Election anger: A peaceful protest in Benghazi over assembly seats is overshadowed by ransacking of election offices. Photo: Reuters
WITH Libya's landmark elections for a constituent assembly only days away, armed protesters have ransacked the offices of the national election commission in the eastern cities of Benghazi and Tobruk, in anger over the way assembly seats were distributed among the country's regions.
The elections for the assembly, which will draft the country's new constitution, have already been postponed once and were dealt another blow as protesters carried computers, ballot boxes and ballot papers out of the offices and burnt them in the streets.
Some of the attackers carried signs calling the leader of Libya's interim government a ''traitor'' to the eastern region of the country, known as Cyrenaica, which the protesters said was given too few seats in the assembly. Others demanded a constitution before elections.
A protester raises a ballot box after storming the office of the national election commission in Benghazi. Photo: Reuters
Libyans hoped that the election of the assembly on Saturday would establish a government with more credibility than the weak National Transitional Council, one that could control the local militias that have dominated the country since the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi last year, but the latest attacks cast doubt on the whole election process.
There have been reports in recent weeks of low-level violence against diplomatic missions from the United States, Britain and Tunisia.
In Benghazi, the main eastern city, a senior prosecutor was murdered, apparently in revenge for having detained rebel commander General Abdel Fattah Younes, who was assassinated in custody during the anti-Gaddafi rebellion.
Fighting among rival tribes around Kufra in the south killed more than a dozen people last month and there were reports in the past week that easterners, angry over the assembly, had blocked the main coastal road connecting the country's centuries-old rival provinces.
Many in the east remain deeply suspicious of western Libyans. Before Gaddafi's 1969 coup, the country was ruled as a loose federation under a monarch based in the east, but Gaddafi moved the capital to Tripoli in the west, and took with him the biggest share of the country's booming oil resources.
They fear an imbalanced assembly might draft a constitution that favours the more populous west and leaves their region vulnerable to neglect.
Although many easterners have embraced the vote as the only path forward, others have begun movements calling for a return to a more federal form of government, or urging a boycott of the vote. The country has no recent history of elections or voting districts to work from, nor is there a reliable census.
Emad al-Sayeh, deputy head of the High National Election Commission in Tripoli, said the attacks caught commission officials unprepared. ''There wasn't enough security at the gates to stop the protesters,'' he said, ''so they had to step back and let them storm the building.''
NEW YORK TIMES
Libyan rebels admit killing own commander
David Kirkpatrick Benghazi, Libya
July 3, 2012LIBYAN rebel leaders have acknowledged that their own soldiers killed their top military commander, contradicting earlier statements as the rebels scrambled to avoid revenge attacks that could divide their ranks.
The death of General Abdul Fattah Younes has shaken both the rebel leaders trying to oust Muammar Gaddafi and their Western supporters by revealing divisions and intrigue within the rebel forces.
The shifting and partial accounts of his death have raised new questions about the rebel leaders' credibility.
Even before a member of the rebels' governing council, Ali Tarhouni, told reporters late on Friday that General Younes had died at the hands of rebel soldiers, many in the general's powerful tribe, the Obeidi, were accusing the council of playing a role in his death.
General Younes's death removed the rebels' top military commander just as they were struggling to restart their stalled drive towards Tripoli before the expiration in late September of the UN resolution authorising NATO's actions against Colonel Gaddafi.
NATO air strikes continued yesterday with attacks on three Libyan television transmitters to silence ''terror broadcasts'' by Colonel Gaddafi's regime.
The ''precision'' air strike aimed to degrade Colonel Gaddafi's ''use of satellite television as a means to intimidate the Libyan people and incite acts of violence against them'', a NATO statement said.
General Younes, a former chief of security under Colonel Gaddafi, was responsible for the detention and torture of untold numbers of Libyan dissidents, and had long been a controversial figure among the rebels because of his close ties to their nemesis in Tripoli.
Shortly before the general's death, the rebels issued a subpoena for him to return from the front lines for questioning by a panel of judges, reportedly about charges of treason.
But instead of relying on a legal process, a group of rebel soldiers sent to retrieve him killed him along with two guards, then dumped their bodies outside the city, Mr Tarhouni said.
''Everything is under control,'' he said. ''This is just a rough stage we are going through.''
His comments contradicted a clearly fearful statement delivered the night before by the rebels' top leader, Mustapha Abdul-Jalil, who suggested General Younes had been killed by an ''armed gang''.
In Washington, a US State Department spokesman urged the rebels not to let the discord over General Younes's death divide them.
''What's important is that they work both diligently and transparently to ensure the unity of the Libyan opposition,'' said the spokesman, Mark Toner.NEW YORK TIMES, AFP
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