Libya prepares for liberation ceremony

Governing National Transitional Council plans declaration as Nato announces it will end military operation on 31 October Libya’s transitional government will finally declare the country liberated on Sunday following the capture and killing of the ousted dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Military official Abdel-Rahman Busin said the governing National Transitional Council (NTC) had begun preparations for a liberation ceremony on Sunday in the eastern city of Benghazi, birthplace of the Libyan revolution. The declaration of liberation comes after Nato announced it would officially end its seven-month operation in Libya on 31 October. In another step towards transforming the former dictatorship into a democracy, the interim prime minister Mahmoud Jibril said on Saturday that Libyans should be allowed to vote within eight months to elect a national council that would draft a new constitution and form an interim government. In the meantime, the priority was to remove weapons from the country’s streets and restore stability and order, Jibril said at the World Economic Forum in Jordan. “The first election should take place within a period of eight months, maximum, to constitute a national congress of Libya, some sort of parliament,” he said. “This national congress would have two tasks: draft a constitution, on which we would have a referendum, and the second to form an interim government to last until the first presidential elections are held.” The Nato secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said late on Friday that the 31 October end to the alliance’s operation would be confirmed formally next week. Diplomats said Nato air patrols would continue over Libya for the next nine days as a precautionary measure to ensure the stability of the new regime and would be gradually reduced, assuming there were no further outbreaks of violence. Meanwhile, Libyan authorities face questions from international human rights organisations about Gaddafi’s death in Sirte on Thursday. Wounds on Gaddafi’s body appeared to confirm he was killed in cold blood in the chaotic minutes following his capture on Thursday. There was a close-range bullet wound on the left side of his head. Blood stains showed another bullet wound to his thorax. His body, subsequently driven to Misrata and publicly paraded, was barefoot and stripped to the waist. Amnesty International has called call on the NTC to investigate. It said that if Gaddafi were deliberately killed, this would be a war crime. The NTC’s position is that it will support an investigation because the new Libya is a law-abiding country, but officials seemed sceptical that it was necessary. Gaddafi’s bloodied corpse, now on public display in a refrigerated meat store in Misrata, has become a gruesome tourist attraction and a macabre symbol of the new Libya’s problems. Hundreds of ordinary Libyans have queued to see the dead dictator. Libya Muammar Gaddafi Arab and Middle East unrest Middle East Africa David Batty guardian.co.uk

Posted by on October 22, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.