I had not wished for Muammar Gaddafi to die in that horrible manner, covered in blood and squealing like a rat caught in a trap. I had written the above when I commented on Gaddafi's death on the 22nd of this month, and I thought that I was alone in not bearing to see the Colonel begging those who captured him to spare his life, as he was being cursed, humiliated or slapped, and dragged out of the hole he took refuge in, after he accused the Libyan rebels of being rats and mice. Since that historic day, or the day Libya was liberated, I have been going over and collecting some comments on the killing of Gaddafi, and I admit that I was pleased to find that I was not alone in condemning the horrible manner in which he was killed. Many writers, both in the West and in our countries, deplored this like I did, and justice would have required him to be arrested and tried, for the relatives of his many victims could have learned, from his trial, the fate of a missing father, husband or son. The fact that I refuse for him to be killed does not mean that he is innocent. He was only innocent for a few months after the coup of 1/9/1969, when he raised oil prices and ended the monopoly by oil companies, before regressing, and moving from one abyss to another. Perhaps the death of President Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1970 was a watershed that severed the 'Brother Colonel's' relationship with reality, after which he built an imaginary world from his sick imagination with the entire people of Libya being the victim. The other victims included those citizens who were tried in football fields and public squares in the seventies and the eighties, and were executed for no reason. And perhaps some of them ended up covered in blood and begging for their lives, just like Muammar Gaddafi would after that. Let us not also forget those who were forcibly disappeared, like Sayyed Musa Al-Sadr, whose friendship and knowledge was a source of pride for me, and also the former foreign minister of Libya Mansour al-Kikhia, who was abducted in Cairo and then disappeared in Libya. I do not need to call on the new regime to seek to learn the fate of these two friends and the others who disappeared, since there are local groups and international organizations already calling for this, and their fate will be known, sooner or later. Now, Human Rights Watch is saying that it found 53 bodies, most likely belonging to Gaddafi supporters killed by the rebels. I want to warn the rebels here against perpetrating the same crimes that caused them to rebel against their perpetrators. The first time I saw Colonel Gaddafi was in Beirut in 1970, before Abdel Nasser died, and the last time was at the UN General Assembly in September 2009, when he spoke for more than one hour instead of the 15 minutes usually allocated to heads of state, and he also tore the UN Charter and went on a rant. In the end, Muammar Gaddafi believed his own lie that the Libyans loved him, and continued to believe this lie even when they rose up against him until they killed him. Perhaps the only consensus ever achieved by Gaddafi is the unanimous Libyan opposition against him, as we have seen through the people's joy in his departure. His death marks both a beginning and an end: an end to 42 years of a dark reign, and the beginning of a new era that I hope will be an enlightened one. Libya's future is in the hands of the Libyans before any other party, and the new rulers are of the people, and while the challenges are many and daunting, solutions are available and they are feasible. Today, there are tribes, secular political parties and religious groups that range between some that are moderate and others that are extremist, in addition to intellectuals or leaders of thought, mostly from the Arab left, as well as businessmen and arms dealers everywhere (Like in Yemen, where I said, after Tawakel Karman won the Nobel Peace Prize along with two women from Liberia, that no Yemeni man will win the prize in a hundred years, because every adult male has a dagger on his waist).. Nevertheless, the Libyan people can expect a promising future ahead, because the foundations of the economy are solid, and the Western countries will continue to compete to buy the Libyan oil. Hence, I hope that the Libyan people will not forget about those countries which dealt with Gaddafi and turned a blind eye to his crimes against his people because of oil, to the point that they sent dissidents back to their countries to be tortured, amid a real threat they may be liquidated. So perhaps the decision by the Transitional Council to participate in a conference for the youths of Yemen, Egypt and Tunisia, is a good first step towards formulating a new common future. While the topic at hand is extremely serious, there was a joke on the internet that asked: Which of the Arab leaders will qualify to the "final match" after Gaddafi's death? We have in our country a popular saying that goes: "You're still alive, but didn't you see who died?" I hope that the death of Gaddafi will be a deterrent and an adequate moral to others. [email protected]
