Saif al-Islam is Freed! / Nato War on Libya Based on Same Lies and Deceit as War on Iraq

On the day that the Chilcot Report in part illuminates the deep flaws of the war on Iraq, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi has been freed in Zintan, a development that relates directly to the Nato war on Libya that repeated many of the same apparent mistakes and crimes that were committed on Iraq by leading Western states. There were similar fundamental flaws in the Nato war of destruction against Libya in 2011 as there was against Iraq in 2003.

The Nato war against Libya was based several lies that have since been proven to be so, such as the lie that the Libyan government bombed peaceful protestors and that African mercenaries were being deployed when actually there was a pogrom of lynching of Black people from the outset of the rebellion, including the total eradication of the only Black African town in North Africa, Tawergha which had a population of 40,000 people.

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi has been released by the Zintan tribe in the city of Zintan in the west of Libya after being in detention for nearly five years. Since 2011 similarly to Iraq, Libya and the Libyan and African and Asian people there have been left in a collapsed society where abduction, rape, people smuggling, thousands of militias have proliferated and led directly to the fall out of terrorism in the region including links directly to terrorist attacks in Algeria, Nigeria, Mali, Egypt, Tunisia and other countries.

The 'refugee crisis' is also a direct fall out of the Nato war against Libya that has led and continues to lead to tens of thousands of people dying in the Mediterranean Sea and in the Sahel and Sahara areas. Similar to Iraq, Libya was destroyed as it was a strategic unifier and uplifter of its own region in the African continent and had successes in that regard and was about to develop further Pan-African and South-South unity and development. Very similarly to UK and USA's plans for the war on Iraq, the same forces planned the same proxy militias to compliment the Nato's massive airstrikes campaign.

Saif al-Islam is a leading political figure in Libya both in the previous government of the Libyan Jamahirya and since. He is one of the most important national figures in Libya who has the capacity like other leading political prisoners and political figures active in Libya and in the Diaspora who is able to unite Libyans in the current plight they are in.

The Zintanis and most of the tribes and peoples in the Western Mountains are allied to the House of Representatives (HoR) based in Tobruk. The HoR has a legal process for reconciliation and forgiveness for political prisoners that includes Saif al-Islam. Zintan has completed this process in relation to Saif al-Islam and will be releasing him imminently. In stark contrast there was the massacre of over a dozen young men by militias in Tripoli last month, there was no due process, this was a illegal massacre motivated for purely narrow sectarian political interests. There needs to be justice and reconciliation for thousands of other similarly detained people in illegal detention across Libya, especially in Tripoli, Misrata, Sirte and other areas were Daesh or Daesh type forces have a presence.

However, there has been especially in the last year considerable moves by the social movements and patriotic tribes in developing a growing united Libyan process to healing the wounds of division and collapse between the Libyan people and their neighbours, and develop peaceful political processes in uniting the people towards an independence movement that reunifies and uses the God-given natural resources of Libya back to a socialised distribution for the benefit of all people of Libya and Africa. The freeing of Saif al-Islam is another historical development towards the reunification and independence of Libya, and many Libyans have welcomed this development.

Please get in touch with the Malcolm X Movement for Libyan and non-Libyan specialists who can speak to media on this issue.

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