Middle East

Human Rights Watch found documents in Libya after the fall of Muammar Qaddafi that it passed on to the Wall Street Journal, which is analyzing them. The WSJ reported today that the documents show that Qaddafi developed so warm a relationship with George W. Bush that Bush sent people he had kidnapped (“rendition”) to Libya […]

The CSM reviews the jockeying for position in Libya at the Friends conference in Paris, and especially the prospects of the US. But a spokesman for the Transitional National Council emphasized that oil bids would be let on the basis of the company’s expertise and experience, not on the political grounds of whether its nation […]

A NATO official has told Agence France Presse that it is the “firm view” of NATO member states that they reject the idea of sending any ground troops to Libya. And, they want the UN to authorize any extension of the no-fly zone. Gee, it doesn’t sound to me as though NATO is the kind […]

China and some others have been pushing for a strong United Nations role in Libya, presumably in an attempt to forestall a continuation of the NATO mission in that country or the placing of European troops on the ground. Not just China, but everyone should be concerned that the NATO air intervention, which is likely […]

An Italian news service, Ansa, reported Monday that Muammar Qaddafi, his eldest son Saif, and another son, Saadi (a military commander during the failed attempt to put down the uprising) are hiding in Bani Walid southeast of Tripoli. Saif, the de facto ruler of Libya in recent years, had been reported taken prisoner (a report […]

CNN’s intrepid Nic Robertson gets the scoop. He discovered that Abdel Basit Ali Megrahi, the convicted Lockerbie bomber, is in a coma in a villa in Tripoli. Megrahi suffers from prostate cancer. Megrahi was freed by UK authorities on health grounds, but there had been reports that he may have been in remission, producing some […]

The systematic war crimes of the Qaddafi regime continue to be uncovered, with the discovery Saturday in Tripoli of the charred remains of nearly 60 bodies in a warehouse. The victims had been prisoners of the regime, among some 150 who have disappeared, nearly a hundred of them probably hastily buried. But these 58 bodies […]