Libya: Kidnap was 'coup attempt'

Libyan PM Ali Zeidan says his kidnap was coup attempt

Zeidan says armed militias that still hold sway across Libya will not be able to continue to operate with impunity

the Guardian,

11 October, 2013

Libya's prime minister has denounced his kidnapping this week as an attempted coup and warned that some of the country's many armed militias want to turn it into "another Afghanistan or Somalia".

In his most impassioned speech since coming to power in 2012, Ali Zeidan said a large force of gunmen had seized him from his city centre hotel room at dawn on Thursday: "One hundred vehicles came with heavy and medium weapons," he said. "This is a coup against legitimacy."

Zeidan demanded an explanation from the group which snatched him. He said his captors identified themselves as from the "revolutionaries' operation room," the headquarters of a group of former rebel militias called the Libya Shield who were drafted into Tripoli during the summer by the congress leader, Nuri Abu Sahmain.

Giving his first account of his ordeal, which ended when local militias stormed the Tripoli police station where he was being held on Thursday afternoon, he said: "I faced men who claimed to be revolutionaries, they demanded things, they came with their weapons, with their bombs, they came with different threatening methods but I refused to do anything."

Zeidan said his kidnappers had attacked and abused diplomats living in the Corinthian hotel while searching for him. "They entered international and diplomatic missions they terrified employees got them down on their knees," he said.

The German and Qatari embassies are based in the hotel, along with the European Union support mission.

Zeidan warned the armed militias which still hold sway across Libya – and which have stubbornly resisted attempts to disarm – that they would not be able to continue to operate with impunity. "In the coming days we are going to concentrate on security," said Zeidan. "If anyone gets killed [in security operations], I ask his family not to come for revenge but to ask why he was killed."

Zeidan's speech puts the prime minister, a former human rights lawyer once exiled in Switzerland, on a collision course with powerful militia formations based in Tripoli, in a trial of strength he characterised as a battle for democracy.

"The kidnappers were former revolutionaries who refused to follow the law. They don't want democracy to be established. If they cannot take down the government with votes they want to take it down with weapons."

Zeidan announced criminal investigations against militia leaders, and demanded the armed factions surrender those responsible for his attempted kidnapping: "Everyone thought when I was talking with a soft tone, everyone thought Zeidan was afraid or Zeidan is weak. That is not so."

Zeidan accused a minority in the national congress of seeking to undermine him. The prime minister did not name his opponents, but he has made no secret of his hostility to the Muslim Brotherhood, whose Justice and Construction party is the second largest in the congress. Last month he returned from meeting Egypt's new military rulers to declare: "The Muslim Brotherhood has been trying to undermine me for months."

Mohammed Sawan, JCP leader, told the Guardian last month that his party had been trying to sack Zeidan using constitutional methods but had failed to find a suitable alternative prime minister.

Evidence is mounting that a number of former rebel units grouped together for the kidnapping. Hours after Zeidan was captured, the state news service LANA announced he had been arrested and would face criminal charges. The attorney general denied issuing an arrest warrant, and has begun investigating paramilitary units in eastern Tripoli involved in the abduction.

"Its a conspiracy, its clearly a conspiracy," said Michel Cousins editor of the English language Libya Herald. He said the coup failed because of an unexpectedly strong show of support for a prime minister who was until this week regarded as weak and ineffectual. "The people who took him thought they would be heroes [but] all the government stayed by Zeidan. Lots of people who don't like Zeidan were appalled by this."

Zeidan said he was trying to rebuild the army, but that the British government was demanding £3m to pay for training of army units in the UK, and that Libya's congress had refused to authorise the money.

His address ended a dramatic week of violence and tension following the seizure on Sunday by US Delta Force commandos of al-Qaida suspect Anas al-Liby. Zeidan condemned the raid, saying Libyan forces should have detained Liby. "Everyone knows about America's intelligence capacity, everyone knows that Libya is not able to face America, but we condemn this kidnaping of a Libyan citizen. The arrest of Libyan citizen needs to be dealt with by Libya."

As he spoke, opposition protestors gathered outside, with army units arriving in pickup trucks mounting anti-aircraft guns, shouting at journalists and bystanders to leave as they expected armed clashes. Meanwhile al-Qaida supporters in Benghazi, Libya's second city, called for attacks on foreigners in reprisal for the US raid. Protesters waved placards bearing the face of Liby, who is now being held on a US navy ship and has been accused of involvement in the bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi in 1998. Other mass-produced placards said: "Death to traitors and foreigners."