By Sami Zaptia.
Tripoli, 15 November 2013:
Speaking live on Libya Al-Ahrar TV this evening the head of the Misrata militia based at . . .[restrict]Gharghour, Taher Basha Agha defended his militia saying that they were fired at by the demonstrators.
Basha Agha, said that he was ‘’surprised how the Tripolitanians who had met us with flowers during liberation, now shoot at us’’. Basha Agha insisted that the so-called peaceful civilian demonstration was armed.
‘’It was not a peaceful demonstration. They carried light arms and shot at us’’. Asked by the interviewer why was it that all the injuries and deaths were on the demonstrators’ side, Basha Agha claimed that his militia had one death.
Asked if and when his militia would leave the capital, Basha Agha insisted that they would not leave alive. ‘’The only way we would leave is in our coffins’’, he said. ‘’We will only leave when the constitution is written and the state is safely set up. When I am convinced that my state is on the right path, I will leave. How do you expect us to leave when the state has not been set-up yet? The state does not have an army or police’’
Basha Agha would not accept that the demonstration was an innocent legitimate demonstration saying that political forces ‘’used old people, women and children as cover, whilst shooting at us from the top of buildings. These civilians were used as pawns by political forces’’, Basha Agha insisted, without elaborating as to who these were. [/restrict]
