Articles

Gadhafi planned retirement in South Africa

Category: International Published on Wednesday, 23 November 2011 10:51 Written by NNPA News Service

(NNPA/GIN)—The late Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi believed he was headed for Karoo, a desert-like area in South Africa, where he would live in a tent under the protection of his allies, when he was fatally ambushed by joint NATO-Libyan forces.

REBELS REST— Rebels rest in the bed of late Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi in a palace in Sirte, Libya, Oct. 10. (AP Photo/Bela Szandelszky)

Reports of South African fighters hired to guide the fallen Libyan leader have appeared in two South African papers in the Afrikaans language. The South African soldiers of fortune are now stranded abroad but officials of the government, a former Gadhafi ally, are offering no support.

“Any South African who is involved in military matters in Libya would do so illegally and at own risk. They are their own responsibility," Siphiwe Dlamini, a defense department spokesman, told the newspaper Beeld.

Meanwhile, Gadhafi’s second son Saif al-Islam, was captured in a southern Libyan city along with two of his aides who were trying to smuggle him out of the country, a militia commander said on Nov. 19. Bashir al-Tlayeb of the Zintan brigades said that Seif al-Islam was caught in the desert town of Obari, near the southern city of Sabha about 400 miles (650 kilometers) south of Tripoli. Seif al-Islam is the last of Gadhafi's sons to remain unaccounted for.

(Special to the NNPA from the Global Information Network.)