DR Congo bounty for rebel leader

9 September 2011 Last updated at 13:05 GMT Authorities in Democratic Republic of Congo have offered a reward of $100,000 (£63,000) for information leading to the capture of a top militia leader who broke out of jail.

More than 960 inmates were freed on Wednesday when armed men attacked the prison in Lubumbashi, Katanga province.

Gedeon Kyungu Mutanga, a former commander of the Mai Mai militia movement, remains on the loose.

Smaller bounties have been posted for other fugitive inmates.

Two guards were killed when the masked gunmen drove into Kassapa prison in a minibus - apparently unnoticed - and launched their assault.

Of the 967 prisoners who escaped, about 230 have been recaptured, among them Mutanga's wife, provincial interior minister Dikanga Kazadi told Agence France-Presse news agency.

Mutanga was sentenced to death in 2009 for his role in the long-running conflict in eastern DR Congo.

The governor's chief of staff said that the authorities did not regard Mutanga as a direct security threat, but were offering the high reward as a signal that they would not condone impunity.

As well as the bounty offered for his recapture, a reward of $10,000 has been offered for a woman member of the Co-ordination for a Referendum on Self-Determination for Katanga (Corak), a secessionist group said to be behind an attack on Lubumbashi airport in February in which a civilian died, AFP said.

The other fugitives have $500 bounties on their heads.

Escapes and mutinies are common in DR Congo's prisons, analysts say, with the east largely lawless as rival militias battle for power.

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Libya's rebel government moving to Tripoli to head off power vacuum (The Christian Science Monitor)

Benghazi, Libya – Libya's rebel leaders are moving to establish political control in Tripoli in anticipation of Muammar Qaddafi's fall, seeking to prevent a power vacuum and establish themselves as the sovereign government of a new Libya.

“We have to be there at the moment of liberation,” says Joma Sayehi Eltayef, who has been coordinating preparations for securing Tripoli from the eastern city of Benghazi. “We can’t leave any opportunities for remnants of the regime, or a vacuum. We need a strong grip so that we don’t have chaos. As soon as the regime falls, we have an alternative ready to take over.”

IN PICTURES: Qaddafi through the years

The move poses a major test of the leadership's coordination as it prepares to expand its responsibility from the rebel-controlled east to the entire nation, and make the transition from the battlefield to the task of running a vast, oil-rich country.

Rebel leaders flying to Tripoli todayAfter rebels' swift takeover of the capital on Sunday night, Qaddafi loyalists began fighting back intensely today, indicating that the push to take the capital may yet be a bloody and drawn-out battle. The rebels' National Transition Council, as well as local councils under its umbrella, is now activating plans it has been preparing for months.

The NTC is sending government ministers to Tripoli today to begin coordinating executive control as well as security, and aims to implement its transition plan as soon as possible.

Mr. Eltayef, a Tripoli native from a prominent family and leader of the local Tripoli council, says he will try to fly to the capital today. Once there, he plans to activate what he calls an extensive network of Tripoli residents he has been preparing over the past few months to secure the capital once rebel fighters took control.

He plans to ensure the security of the capital by deploying his network to man checkpoints, secure government buildings, commercial centers, bakeries, and streets, and allow civil services to continue, he says.

The hundreds of people he has cultivated over recent months, first in person and then via satellite phone after he fled to Benghazi early in the uprising, have already begun to step into their roles as their neighborhoods have been freed. When Qaddafi falls, they will be in full force, he says.

“This is of course in harmony with what the NTC is doing, under the National Transitional Council umbrella,” says Eltayef, whose brother is an NTC minister.

Credibility concerns in BenghaziYet even as the council begins to extend its reach to the capital, it is facing doubts in Benghazi. Initial reports that rebels captured two of Qaddafi’s sons fell apart when one was reported to have escaped and the other appeared at a hotel where foreign journalists are staying in the capital.

The leader of the NTC “has lost his credibility by repeatedly lying to the press,” said a woman who asked to remain anonymous while criticizing the rebel leader because she came from a prominent family in Benghazi. A spokesman for the council refused to talk when contacted by phone today and then turned off his phone.

These latest developments have compounded local doubts about the NTC in the wake of the July 29 assassination of rebel military commander Abdel Fatah Younis.

"These things have been happening because the basic foundation of the council is not well organized because they have a lack of experience about how to deal with national matters," says Mohamed El Obeidi, a political science professor at Garyounis University in Benghazi. "They're not that politically experienced in these things. On this basis there have been gaps on the NTC, the biggest and hardest is the assassination of Younis."

Qaddafi forces retreating from BregaThe rebels’ military spokesman in Benghazi, Ahmed Bani, said in the early morning hours of Tuesday that 95 percent of Tripoli was under rebel control, but that pockets of resistance were fighting back fiercely.

Qaddafi’s forces are barricaded in his compound of Bab Al Aziziyah and are using their position to indiscriminately bomb neighborhoods, he said. He added that Qaddafi was using Grad missiles to bomb civilian areas, and said Qaddafi’s son Khamis, commander of a feared military brigade, was likely inside Bab Al Aziziyah.

In the east, rebels were still fighting for the oil refinery in the city of Brega, Mr. Bani said, though some of Qaddafi’s forces are retreating from the area and heading to his hometown, Sirte. Rebels have been fighting for months for the oil facilities, which under normal operation bring in $35 million per day. They have been wary of allowing the facilities to be bombed, and he said that was why the rebels have still not taken control of them.

Al Jazeera also reported that the oil town of Ras Lanuf had fallen to rebels as well.

Qaddafi himself is still on the loose, his whereabouts a mystery, and Sirte still under control of his troops. Bani said rebel troops will not attack Sirte, but will wait for residents to rise up against the colonel. Electricity to the city has been cut for more than a week.

IN PICTURES: Qaddafi through the years

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Libyan rebel to give Gaddafi hat to his father (Reuters)

CAIRO (Reuters) – A Libyan rebel, wearing a flamboyant military peaked hat that he said he had seized from Muammar Gaddafi's bedroom in his Tripoli compound, said he planned to give the trophy to his father.

Speaking to Britain's Sky News, the bearded fighter identified only as al-Windy, was among the fighters who stormed Gaddafi's Bab al-Aziziya compound in the Libyan capital Tripoli on Tuesday, seizing weapons and trophies.

"I just went inside his room, Gaddafi's bedroom, and I was really, I was like 'Oh my God'. I am in Gaddafi's room. Oh my God. Then this thing happened. I found this, oh my goodness," the rebel said, taking the red and grey hat embroidered with gold thread off his head.

"I am going to give this to my dad as a present because he has suffered a lot from Gaddafi and from Gaddafi followers," the rebel, who also wore a huge gold chain over his drab olive-green T-shirt and carried what looked like a ceremonial mace.

Gaddafi, reputed for his eccentricities, was once crowned Africa's "king of kings" by those from south of the Sahara.

The fighter said he had fought with rebels in the Western Mountains region before they advanced on Tripoli and overran Gaddafi's main stronghold early this week.

Pro-Gaddafi forces initially tried to defend the vast Bab al-Aziziya compound, the seat of Gaddafi's political power and the principal base of loyalists seeking to rescue his 42-year rule, but their resistance later faded, the reporters said.

"I am really proud for this moment that the Libyans have waited for 42 years," al-Windy said.

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Despite Rebel Surge, Gaddafi's Vindictive Resolve Endures (Time.com)

No one thought Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and his hard-core supporters would go away easily, and more than 48 hours after rebel forces stormed the capital Tripoli, that determination to dig in is still evident. But if few observers believe Gaddafi's renewed efforts to prove his regime remains a force to reckon with can turn back what appears to be looming victory by rebels, some warn his penchant for creating serious trouble for his foes won't disappear with his defeat. If one thing seems sure about Gaddafi clan members, it's their zeal for dishing out payback, even when that seems all they have left.

That gritty resolve and spitefulness was apparent even amid the rebel surge that has given anti-regime forces control of what some accounts say is 90% of Tripoli. Early Tuesday morning, Gaddafi's son and once-heir apparent to power, Saif al-Islam, turned up in a Tripoli neighborhood still held by regime supporters vowing to defeat its enemies yet. The younger Gaddafi's combative re-emergence came after officials from the rebel leadership National Transitional Council (NTC) had announced his arrest by their forces in Tripoli - as had another Gaddafi son who also resurfaced free after escaping captors. Meanwhile, later in the day rebel forces struggled to cut off troops loyal to Gaddafi advancing on the Colonel's oil-producing home-town Sirte - one of the few Libyan cities the regime still nominally controls, and the site from which at least two Scud missiles have been fired from towards rebel-held towns. That new evidence of the regime's resolve to continue battling against seemingly impossible odds led leaders from around the world to renew calls to Gaddafi to cease fighting, spare the Libyan people further bloodshed, and give himself up for what remains still undefined treatment by a post-war government.

Good luck with that - especially with those appeals being motivated by indication from the hunkered-down Gaddafi and his allies are set on taking as many of their enemies down with them as they can. And that will doubtless remain a goal of Gaddafi's inner-circle in the likelihood its principal members can be rounded up. Because the bottom line, some experts says, is that virtually all nations have dealt with Gaddafi in one way or another since he dismantled his arms program and renounced terrorism in 2003 - meaning officials in virtually all those countries are at risk of having been tainted with the smear that inevitably seemed involved in doing business with the unscrupulous Libyan leader. (See pictures of the lengthy battle for Libya.)

"Given his complete control of Libya, Gaddafi made no distinction between its politics, economy, and society, and tried to impose that unaccountable, monarchic vision in his dealings with the leaders and political parties of foreign nations," comments Karim Emile Bitar, a Middle East specialist for the Institute of International and Strategic Relations in Paris. "Gaddafi made up his laws at home, which meant dealing with him often involved demands, conditions, or favor-trading that wouldn't be considered legitimate - or even legal - in a lot of countries. But it was an imposed aspect of relations with him. Because of that, there are a lot of intelligence services in a lot of countries that will be working to make sure Gaddafi's archives are secured by trustworthy hands once his regime falls, because it's likely a lot of the dirt Gaddafi was responsible for still left a lot of powerful people dirty."

Even gaining control of Gaddafi's secret records might not prevent Gaddafi and his lieutenants from accusing foreign figures of action that, even unsubstantiated, Western publics might find troubling. Some already have. In March, Saif al-Islam claimed his father financed the victorious 2007 campaign of French President Nicolas Sarkozy - doubtless in retaliation for Sarkozy's leading roll in mounting the NATO-led air intervention in the Libyan war. Though there's no evidence to suggest the claim is true, the allegation was given a longer look than it might have in France given Sarkozy's well-known interaction with the iffy Gaddafi, and Gaddafi Jr.'s role in that. (See a brief history of Muammar Gaddafi's 40-year rule.)

Saif al-Islam was central Sarkozy's first big global coup after his election: the July 2007 release of Bulgarian medical workers who'd been sentence to death in Libya on what were widely considered trumped up murder charges. (A death sentence, ironically, that current NTC leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil confirmed and defended as Gaddafi's Justice Minister.) A lot of money was known to have exchanged hands as part of the agreement than secured the medics' release; a flurry of contracts was also signed between Paris and Tripoli in its wake. Sarkozy's reputation then took a serious blow in December of that year when he fulfilled promises made during negotiations to free the Bulgarians to host the Libyan leader to a state visit - a trip that proved a controversial embarrassment in many ways. None of that has been found to have been illegal, though the contacts did provide evidence of just how far Paris was willing to bend to work with Gaddafi's Libya.

But France is hardly alone in having engaged in outwardly normal agreements with Libya that may have involved less savory conditions below the surface. The U.S., Germany, and former colonial power Italy have all closed big business deals in Gaddafi-dominated Libya over the past decade in spite of protests his regime remained too toxic to touch. Still, all of those countries are thought to have been outdone in such activity by Britain. In 2009, Scotland's release of convicted Lockerbie bombing operative, Abdelbaset Ali Al-Megrahi not only sparked an international outcry, but also charges the humanitarian grounds for sending the gravely ill prisoner home masked the political and financial interests of signing more energy contracts with Gaddafi's Libya. But if there, too, no evidence has surfaced to prove anything legally objectionable was involved, the general outlook remains that whenever they're troubling smoke surrounding Gaddafi, there's always fire somewhere below the surface. (See Why the Arab Spring's success depends on jobs, not guns.)

"The trap with Gaddafi has always been that if you touch Libya at all, you're almost guaranteed to wind up dirty to some degree or another," says a French security official, who adds he has no direct knowledge into the conditions involved in political or economic agreements concluded between European capitals and Tripoli. "Within that context, it's similar to the dilemma of dealing with lots of Middle Eastern regimes to the extent that accepting conditions that aren't considered ethical at home is part and parcel of doing business in the region. With Gaddafi, that was pushed to the limit."

If so, that would be one reason why nations involved in the NATO-led intervention might want the NTC to assure all confidential material held by the Gaddafi government is located, secured, and even destroyed as part of a rebels taking power. Yet as Bitar points out, even that wouldn't necessarily rob Gaddafi of his vindictive powers. Merely leveling detailed charges against foreign figures would be enough to raise considerable doubts about wrongdoing in Europe and the U.S. - where Gaddafi's reputation as consummately corrupt is well established. And that may factor in to the decision whether to hand Gaddafi and his clique over to the international tribunal seeking to try him for crimes against humanity, or deprive them such a global platform by leaving him in Libya to face justice. (See how NATO helped Libyan rebels.)

"There are a lot of voices - including inside the NTC - that are adamant about trying Gaddafi in Libya for crimes committed in Libya, and given recent Western indecision about Gaddafi's fate once the conflict is over, it may be to everyone's advantage that he be dealt with in Libya," says Bitar. "In addition to limiting his ability to accuse foreign leaders and parties of corruption, he'd also have a harder time making what I'm sure will be the case he and Saif al-Islam will be keen to pursue about the NATO operation having violated international law by surpassing its legal UN mandate. So it may work out best for everyone if Gaddafi faces justice in Libya - though I'm not sure the international court would agree about that. "

See pictures of life in Benghazi during wartime.

See TIME's special report "The Middle East in Revolt."

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New pressure on Gaddafi on foreign, rebel fronts (Reuters)

NALUT, Libya (Reuters) – Rebels fighting in Libya's western mountains prepared on Thursday for a new offensive against Muammar Gaddafi's troops, raising pressure on the Libyan leader a day after Britain granted diplomatic recognition to the opposition.

With hopes fading of a negotiated settlement, both sides appear prepared for the five-month-old war to grind on into the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in August.

The rebels said they were planning to attack the town of Ghezaia near the Tunisian border in the next 48 hours, and a Reuters correspondent saw dozens of heavily armed pickup trucks heading for the nearby rebel-held town of Nalut.

"We are reinforcing the position around Nalut and we will attack Ghezaia tomorrow or the next day for sure. We plan to take it," Omar Fakkan, a rebel commander, told Reuters.

He said that forces from a number of rebel-held towns in the Nafusa Mountains were gathering in Nalut, ready for the attack.

Rebel fighters have taken large swathes of Libya since the start of an uprising to end Gaddafi's 41-year rule, and now control much of the Nafusa mountain range, the northeast of Libya and the western city of Misrata.

Yet they remain poorly armed and are often disorganized. Despite four months of NATO strikes, they have failed to reach the capital Tripoli and appear unlikely to make a breakthrough soon.

Gaddafi has scoffed at the efforts to end his rule and has weathered the now-stalled rebel advance and the NATO air raids on his forces and military infrastructure.

A recent flurry of diplomatic activity has yielded little, with the rebels insisting Gaddafi step down as a first step and his government saying his role is non-negotiable.

United Nations envoy Abdel Elah al-Khatib visited both sides this week with plans for a ceasefire and a power-sharing government that excludes Gaddafi, but to no avail.

Asked about Khatib's proposal, rebel leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil said: "We were surprised the day before yesterday that we are taking 10 steps back... and he says to share power with Muammar Gaddafi's regime. This is laughable."

Gaddafi also appeared defiant on Wednesday, urging rebels to lay down their arms or suffer an ugly death.

"We all lead this battle, until victory, until martyrdom," he said in an audio message aired at a pro-Gaddafi rally in Zaltan, 140 km (90 miles) west of his stronghold Tripoli.

RECOGNISING THE REBELS

Ramping up pressure on Gaddafi, Britain expelled his diplomats from London on Wednesday and invited the rebel National Transitional Council to replace them.

Foreign Secretary William Hague announced that Britain now recognized the rebels as Libya's legitimate government and unblocked 91 million pounds ($148.7 million) in frozen assets.

The United States and about 30 other nations have also recognized the opposition, potentially freeing up billions of dollars in frozen funds.

"This decision reflects the National Transitional Council's increasing legitimacy, competence and success in reaching out to Libyans across the country," Hague said in London.

Gaddafi's government said the British move was "illegal and irresponsible" and a "stain on the forehead of Britain."

"We will go to the International Court of Justice and the national courts in Britain, and we will use their justice," said Libya's deputy foreign minister, Khaled Kaim.

However, the British move won praise from rebels fighting in the western mountains.

"We are encouraged by what Britain has done and there is no way Gaddafi can stay in Libya," said Fakkan.

"The fighting will get much worse now because he will have to fight to survive and the Libyans do not want him."

(Additional reporting by Joseph Nasr in Berlin, Rania El Gamal in Benghazi, Hamid Oul Ahmed in Algiers, Missy Ryan and Lutfi Abu Aun in Tripoli, Mussab Al Khairallah in Misrata; Writing by Lin Noueihed; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

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