THE WHEREABOUTS of deposed Libyan leader Col Muammar Gadafy remained a mystery last night, with conflicting reports over whether he had fled the country.
One report described a convoy of up to 250 Libyan army vehicles crossing Libya’s southern border into Agadez in northern Niger late on Monday. According to some accounts, the convoy was largely made up of Tuareg fighters enlisted by Col Gadafy as irregulars or mercenaries. Others claimed Col Gadafy himself was travelling in the convoy.
On Monday, Reuters cited unnamed Niger officials who said that Col Gadafy’s personal security chief, Mansour Dhao, had entered the country on Sunday.
Moussa Ibrahim, Col Gadafy’s fugitive spokesman, claimed in a phone interview with a Syrian TV channel that the former leader was still in Libya, and in “excellent health, planning and organising for the defence of Libya”.
“We are fighting and resisting for the sake of Libya and all Arabs,” Mr Ibrahim said. “We are still strong and capable of turning the tables on Nato.”
Niger’s foreign minister was quoted by al Arabiya television saying that Col Gadafy was not in the convoy. A French military source told Reuters he had been told Col Gadafy and his son Saif ul-Islam might later join the convoy to reach Burkina Faso, which has offered the family asylum.
A spokesman for Libya’s interim government, the National Transitional Council, claimed a convoy of 10 vehicles carrying gold and foreign currency including dollars and euro had crossed from the southern Libyan town of Jufra into Niger with the assistance of Tuaregs. It was unclear if these vehicles were separate from the much larger military convoy reported elsewhere.
Reports of the convoy raised speculation that a deal may have been struck with the Gadafy family, as such a large convoy is unlikely to have gone unnoticed by Nato, whose aircraft have been over Libya since March.
A Nato spokesman said the alliance was not hunting Col Gadafy and had a UN mandate only to stop his forces attacking civilians.
“Our mission is to protect the civilian population in Libya, not to track and target thousands of fleeing former regime leaders, mercenaries, military commanders and internally displaced people,” Col Roland Lavoie said.
Bernard Valero, spokesman for the French foreign ministry, said he had no information about the convoy heading across Niger.
In a statement, Mr Valero, who was responding to the question of whether France would be satisfied if Col Gadafy went into exile, said that, wherever Col Gadafy was, “he will have to face justice for all the crimes he has committed in the past 42 years”.
In Washington, US defence secretary Leon Panetta said he did not know the ousted leader’s location. “I wish I knew . . . the best information we have is that he’s on the run,” he said.
Meanwhile, there was heavy fighting for the first time in some days near Sirte. Fighters reported exchanges of shell fire and rockets to the east of the town. Several interim government fighters were said to have been wounded. Negotiations over the fate of Bani Walid, a small town located 140km (87 miles) from Tripoli, which remains in the hands of Gadafy loyalists, continued yesterday.