Mustafa Abdel-Jalil is quick on his feet, if nothing else. From senior functionary in a despised and brutish regime to freedom-loving “head of the provisional government” in under a fortnight is smart work indeed.
It is reassuring, too, that Gaddafi’s former justice minister has been “chosen”, in the Scotsman’s words, “to head new regime”. Alternatively – the Sky News version – Abdel-Jalil has been “elected... president of Libya’s newly-formed National Council”.
As it turns out, the born-again democrat appears to have done all the electing and choosing himself, backed by the overwhelming support of persons named Abdel-Jalil.
On Friday, Al-Jazeera TV reported that talks were taking place between “personalities from eastern and western Libya” with a view to forming an interim government. On Saturday, Abdel-Jalil was said to be “leading the process”. Late that same night, he was declaring – a turn-up for the books – that he would be heading said government.
As the Associated Press put it: “His announcement seemed to provide exactly the kind of emerging opposition leadership that many both inside and outside Libya are looking for”.
The agency went on to report, however, that the resistible rise of Abdel-Jalil had not been acclaimed universally. On Sunday, Abdel-Hafidh Ghoga, a noted human rights lawyer just released from jail, held a news conference in Benghazi to explain that no “provisional government” exists. The Libyan Youth Movement meanwhile tweeted: “... any talk of a ‘Libyan’ government on hold until Tripoli liberated”.
AP elaborated: “In the corridors of the Benghazi courthouse, where much of the business of governing the rebel territories is unfolding, the former justice minister’s announcement of a provisional government was greeted by many politicians with surprise and bafflement. Ghoga told reporters that even if there were a provisional government, it would certainly not be headed by Abdel-Jalil”.
Atif al-Hasiya, a spokesperson for the “National Libyan Council” (also newly-formed) in Benghazi, further observed that Abdel-Jalil contacted officials in some towns and cities before he made his announcement, but ignored others, causing “bitter feelings”. The former minister had also met with opposition (my italics) from many veteran human rights activists as someone who was, for a time, closely associated with the regime.
Al-Hasiya was another quick to state that if a provisional government was indeed formed it would not be led by Abdel-Jalil. The rebuffed former minister has since “clarified” his claims as mere “personal views”.
But such is revolution. For some, it’s a struggle and a sacrifice. For scurrying types disembarking from sinking ships, it’s an opportunity. Clearly, our friend Abdel-Jalil was engaged in a shameless grab for power, and hoping to exploit the eager media to manufacture his fait accompli.
“Closely associated with the regime” is not a description liable to bear much scrutiny in the weeks to come, after all. It might require some fast talking. Abdel-Jalil – doubtless about to the “overthrown” in a newspaper near you – has the knack.
Over the weekend, for example, he felt able to tell reporters that “Gaddafi alone bore responsibility for the crimes that have occurred” in Libya. What might that mean? That no one else – a former justice minister, for example – should be held accountable? That anyone and everyone who served the regime “only followed orders”? First he claims a government, now he demands amnesty.
The point is, of course, that a person prepared to say anything to save his neck or to win power is probably not the most reliable witness ever born. That Abdel-Jalil is granted credibility is bad enough. That he is taken at his word, no questions asked, even when his claims are flimsy or fatuous is very much worse. This, after all, is the man who has been touting “the truth about Lockerbie”. And finding a global audience.
He calculates, no doubt, that his access to the world’s media will bolster his status in a post-Gaddafi Libya. Name recognition, they call it. But to pull off that trick, Abdel-Jalil must first tell the western press what the western press wants to hear, and bet – a safe enough bet – that reporters will not think beyond the headlines. Over the weekend, he made excellent use of his brief spell as Mr President.
So here’s Murdoch’s Sunday Times, a paper to which the phrase “once great” attaches itself like a faded obituary. “Gaddafi ordered the Lockerbie bombing” was done and dusted by the weekend. A new line was required. Any ideas?
The Lockerbie bomber blackmailed Colonel Gaddafi into securing his release from a Scottish prison by threatening to expose the dictator’s role in Britain’s worst terrorist atrocity, a former senior Libyan official [guess who] has claimed.
Now, let’s keep this simple. Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was handed over to Scottish police on April 5, 1999, and released on compassionate grounds on August 20, 2009. Clearly, this was the most patient blackmailer the world has seen. If we believe a word, the man nursed his threat to exact “revenge” for over a decade, until terminal cancer intervened. As you do.
According to Abdel-Jalil and the Sunday Times, nevertheless, “Megrahi’s ploy led to a £50,000-a-month slush fund being set up to spend on legal fees and lobbying to bring him back to Tripoli”. Since the entire Libyan exchequer was Gaddafi’s personal slush fund, the sum seems niggardly. If vastly more was not spent on the case, I’d be astonished. And why wouldn’t it be spent? Wasn't Megrahi threatening to “spill the beans”?
But here Abdel-Jalil pulls out another of his plums. Again, he provides nothing resembling the whiff of proof. Al-Megrahi “was not the man who carried out the planning and execution of the bombing, but he was ‘nevertheless involved in facilitating things for those who did’”.
So where does that leave us? Megrahi – what with “planning and execution” omitted – didn’t do it. Another sensation. Or is that revelation perhaps designed to solve several tiny issues raised by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) and others over a miscarriage of justice and sundry associated issues?
Never fear: Gaddafi certainly did do it. That’s “on the record”, placed there by the erstwhile “head of the provisional government”, no less. So what then of “planning and execution”; what of “those who did”? Yet again, Abdel-Jalil doesn’t say. Why not?
Smoke and mirrors is a cliché, God knows. You only wish they would polish the mirrors occasionally, and puff up some properly thick smoke. But why bother? It works. First: make sure that “everyone knows” Gaddafi did it. Secondly, as though inferentially, throw in a few details based on a “fact” established by hearsay and mere assertion. This is how you build a lie.
What happened – what is established by the evidence as having happened – matters less than perception and belief. Gaddafi, with his multifarious actual crimes, is now the handiest scapegoat imaginable. Perhaps he should complain to Tony Blair.
Or perhaps he should get himself to the Hague, and to a proper court. It would do the dictator no good, but it might do wonders, even now, for the reputation of Scottish justice. I put the chances of that at zero.
Postscript. Having caught up with sundry other press reports, I see that Atef Abu Bakr, formerly a “general” with Abu Nidal’s murderous “Fatah Revolutionary Council”, has decided to join in the fun. He too “breaks his silence” to the Arabic paper Al Hayat. It is, as they say, a riveting read.
“I can assure you categorically that the two processes [making the bomb and destroying the plane] were the outcome of a partnership between the Abu Nidal group and the security of the Libyan Jamahiriya,” says Bakr.
This would be fascinating had the same individual not said precisely the same thing before, in August of 2002, in a previous interview published in Al Hayat. On that occasion he reported Nidal as confessing all just before his death.
As the Guardian had it at the time: “Nidal had said: ‘I will tell you something very important and serious. The reports which link the Lockerbie act to others are false reports. We are behind what happened.’ According to Bakr, Nidal then threatened anyone who leaked what he said with death.”
The revelation had no effect in 2002, but with open season having been declared on Gaddafi we are granted an encore. Bakr’s actual contribution now, as paraphrased by the Scotsman, is to observe that Megrahi “may have played only a minor part” in the bombing.
That, so I had presumed, was the point all along, at least as it affected the conduct of Scottish justice. As for the rest – and one hates to be tiresome – there remains the matter of proof. Bakr is not claiming that he planted the bomb himself, after all.
