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FROM:
The Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) Brigade, the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (GC), the Malcolm X Movement (UK), Pan-African Society Community Forum (UK), and the undersigned organizations and individuals, will deliver this Petition
TO:
The United Nation (UN) General Assembly, the United Nations (UN) Security Council, the International Criminal Court (ICC), and the Governments and Peoples of the World
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Background Preamble
On 26 February 2011, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1970 referring the “Situation in the Libyan Arab Jamahirya” to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. See ICC Reports and Transcripts.
On 27 June 2011, the ICC issued a Warrant of Arrest for Muammar Qaddafi alleging his “criminal responsibility for the commission of murder and persecution of civilians as crimes against humanity.” Similar warrants were issued against Saif al-Islam, his son, Abdalla al-Senussi, and others.
The ICC alleged, among other things, that it had “reasonable grounds to believe” that:
“There was a state policy designed at the highest level of the State machinery aimed at deterring and quelling the February 2011 demonstrations by any means necessary, including by the use of lethal force, against demonstrators confronting Gaddafi’s regime, which started in February 2011”;
“As of 15 February 2011 and within a period of less than two weeks, in February 2011, Muammar Gaddafi’s Security Forces killed and injured, as well as arrested and imprisoned hundreds of civilians”;
“From 15 February 2011 until at least 28 February 2011, Muammar Qaddafi, Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, and others committed (i) murder as a crime against humanity, within the meaning of article 7(l)(a) of the Rome Statute; and (ii) persecution as a crime against humanity, within the meaning of article 7(l)(h) of the Rome Statute.”
The ICC warrant for The Brother Leader was terminated on 22 November 2011, following and as a result of his murder. The ICC case against al-Senussi was declared inadmissible on 11 October 2013. A General Law of Amnesty in Libya was proclaimed in July 2015, and Saif, al-Senussi and others were freed. The ICC Warrant for Saif however, is still pending.
On 9 September 2016, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom released a report titled Libya: Examination of intervention and collapse and the United Kingdom’s policy option. This Report refutes the ICC’s allegations, and confirms our belief that Muammar Qaddafi, Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, and others, are innocent of the ICC’s allegations; and that crimes were committed, and continue to be committed against and the People and Residents of Libya. We cite several paragraphs from this Report that confirm our belief and link them to articles, photos, and videos.
The introduction to the Summary of this Report said “that [i]n March 2011, the United Kingdom and France, with the support of the United States, led the international community to support an intervention in Libya to protect civilians from attacks by forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi. This policy was not informed by accurate intelligence. In particular, the Government failed to identify that the threat to civilians was overstated and that the rebels included a significant Islamist element. By the summer of 2011, the limited intervention to protect civilians had drifted into an opportunist policy of regime change.”
In paragraph 32, the Report found that “[d]espite his rhetoric, the proposition that Muammar Gaddafi would have ordered the massacre of civilians in Benghazi was not supported by the available evidence. The Gaddafi regime had retaken towns from the rebels without attacking civilians in early February 2011. During fighting in Misrata, the hospital recorded 257 people killed and 949 people wounded in February and March 2011. Those casualties included 22 women and eight children. Libyan doctors told United Nations investigators that Tripoli’s morgues contained more than 200 corpses following fighting in late February 2011, of whom two were female. The disparity between male and female casualties suggested that Gaddafi regime forces targeted male combatants in a civil war and did not indiscriminately attack civilians. More widely, Muammar Gaddafi’s [alleged] 40-year record of appalling human rights abuses did not include large-scale attacks on Libyan civilians.”
In paragraph 33, the Report said that “[o] n 17 March 2011, Muammar Gaddafi announced to the rebels in Benghazi, “Throw away your weapons, exactly like your brothers in Ajdabiya and other places did. They laid down their arms and they are safe. We never pursued them at all.” Subsequent investigation revealed that when Gaddafi regime forces retook Ajdabiya in February 2011, they did not attack civilians. Muammar Gaddafi also attempted to appease protesters in Benghazi with an offer of development aid before finally deploying troops.”
In paragraph 34, the Report said “there were past examples of the way in which Gaddafi would actually behave. If you go back to the American bombings in the 1980s of Benghazi and Tripoli, rather than trying to remove threats to the regime in the east, in Cyrenaica, Gaddafi spent six months trying to pacify the tribes that were located there. The evidence is that he was well aware of the insecurity of parts of the country and of the unlikelihood that he could control them through sheer violence. Therefore, he would have been very careful in the actual response…the fear of the massacre of civilians was vastly overstated. … [T]here was no “real evidence at that time that Gaddafi was preparing to launch a massacre against his own civilians.”
In paragraph 28, the Report said “Libyan connections with transnational militant extremist groups were known before 2011, because many Libyans had participated in the Iraq insurgency and in Afghanistan with al-Qaeda. … It is now clear that militant Islamist militias played a critical role in the rebellion from February 2011 onwards. They separated themselves from the rebel army, refused to take orders from non-Islamist commanders and assassinated the then leader of the rebel army, Abdel Fattah Younes.”
In paragraph 36, the Report said “An Amnesty International investigation in June 2011 could not corroborate allegations of mass human rights violations by Gaddafi regime troops. However, it uncovered evidence that rebels in Benghazi made false claims and manufactured evidence. The investigation concluded that much Western media coverage has from the outset presented a very one-sided view of the logic of events, portraying the protest movement as entirely peaceful and repeatedly suggesting that the regime’s security forces were unaccountably massacring unarmed demonstrators who presented no security challenge.”
In paragraph 37, the Report said “[W]hile Muammar Gaddafi certainly threatened violence against those who took up arms against his rule, this did not necessarily translate into a threat to everyone in Benghazi. In short, the scale of the threat to civilians was presented with unjustified certainty. US intelligence officials reportedly described the intervention as “an intelligence-light decision”.
In paragraph 38, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons in the United Kingdom concluded: “We have seen no evidence that the UK Government carried out a proper analysis of the nature of the rebellion in Libya. … [T]he UK Government was unable to analyse the nature of the rebellion in Libya due to incomplete intelligence and insufficient institutional insight and that it was caught up in events as they developed. It could not verify the actual threat to civilians posed by the Gaddafi regime; it selectively took elements of Muammar Gaddafi’s rhetoric at face value; and it failed to identify the militant Islamist extremist element in the rebellion. UK strategy was founded on erroneous assumptions and an incomplete understanding of the evidence.”
In paragraph 20, the Report offers an “insight into French motivations [as] provided in a freedom of information disclosure by the United States, State Department, in December 2015.” “On 2 April 2011,” according to the disclosure,” Sidney Blumenthal, adviser and unofficial intelligence analyst to the then United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, reported this conversation with French intelligence officers to the Secretary of State:
“According to these individuals Sarkozy’s plans are driven by the following issues:
a. A desire to gain a greater share of Libya oil production,
b. Increase French influence in North Africa,
c. Improve his internal political situation in France,
d. Provide the French military with an opportunity to reassert its position in the world,
e. Address the concern of his advisors over Qaddafi’s long term plans to supplant France as the dominant power in Francophone Africa
The sum of four of the five factors identified by Sidney Blumenthal equated to the French national interest. The fifth factor was President Sarkozy’s political self-interest.”
David Cameron of the United Kingdom and Nicolas Sarkozy of France, according to the Report “were the undisputed leaders, in terms of doing something.” … Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton of the United States were “instrumental in extending the terms of [UN Security Council Resolution 1973 beyond the imposition of a no-fly zone to include the authorisation of “all necessary measures” to protect civilians. In practice, this led to the imposition of a ‘no-drive zone’ and the assumed authority to attack the entire Libyan Government command and communications network”.
Salon.com reported, in an article titled U.K. Parliament report details how NATO’s 2011 war in Libya was based on lies that “The Associated Press reported in September 2011, [that] rebel forces and armed civilians are rounding up thousands of black Libyans and migrants from sub-Sahara Africa. The crimes rebels committed against black Libyans would go on to become even worse.” In 2012, there were reports that “black Libyans were put in cages by rebels, and forced to eat flags.”
As Salon previously reported, “Human Rights Watch warned in 2013 of “serious and ongoing human rights violations against inhabitants of the town of Tawergha, who are widely viewed as having supported Muammar Gaddafi.” Tawergha’s inhabitants were mostly descendants of black slaves and were very poor.” Human Rights Watch also reported that Libyan rebels carried out “forced displacement of roughly 40,000 people, arbitrary detentions, torture, and killings are widespread, systematic, and sufficiently organized to be crimes against humanity”.
The Washington Times, according to the Salon.com article, wrote: “Gaddafi’s son Saif had hoped to negotiate a ceasefire with the U.S. government. … [He] quietly opened up communications with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton intervened and asked the Pentagon to stop talking to the Libyan government. “Secretary Clinton does not want to negotiate at all,” a U.S. intelligence official told Saif.”
In March 2011, Secretary Clinton called Muammar Qaddafi a “creature who has no conscience and will threaten anyone in his way.” Clinton, who played a leading role in pushing for the NATO bombing of Libya, claimed that “Qaddafi would do “terrible things” if he was not stopped. From March to October 2011, NATO carried out a bombing campaign against Libyan government forces. It claimed to be pursuing a humanitarian mission to protect civilians.”
“In October, Qaddafi was brutally killed — sodomized with a bayonet by rebels. Upon hearing the news of his death, Secretary Clinton announced, live on TV, “We came, we saw, he died!”
See: Flashback 2011: Hillary Clinton Laughs About Killing Moammar Gaddafi
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Call to Action!
Muammar Qaddafi, Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, and others who were charged, imprisoned, persecuted and murdered, did not commit the crimes charged in the ICC warrant. Murder, persecution, human rights violations, crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed, and continue to be committed against them, and the Libyan and other African Peoples. France, the United Kingdom, the United States, the United Nations Security Council, the International Criminal Court, and NATO must be held accountable for their crimes.
This Petition is the opening salvo in a massive, worldwide campaign for human rights, justice and peace. The Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) Brigade, the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (GC), the Malcolm X Movement (UK), the Pan-African Society Community Forum (UK), and the undersigned organizations and individuals, demand that the International Criminal Court (ICC) terminate the Warrants for Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, immediately and unconditionally; that he be released immediately and unconditionally; and that his safety and human rights be protected and guaranteed in Libya and in any and all countries he travels to and lives in.
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Related Documents:
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UNWARRANTED ARREST WARRANTS: The ICC vs Saif al-Islam Gaddafi & Others
- Other documents will be posted soon!