Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, son of former dictator Muamar Qaddafi, was buried in Bani Walid today next to his brother. Saif was assassinated last Tuesday evening (3 February) in his hideout in Zintan.
Thousands attended his funeral as supporters of the former Qaddafi regime (1969 – 2011) displayed Qaddafi’s old green flag.
Emotions have been heightened by the assassination of Saif as his and his father’s regime supporters threatened to politicise the funeral and turn Saif into a martyr.
On the other side, many who had suffered at his father’s brutal regime over the 42-years have reminded those with short memories as to why most Libyans revolted against Qaddafi in February 2011.
Qaddafi’s decades of suppression of political opposition
It will be recalled that Qaddafi’s regime frequently employed public hangings, executions, and televised trials to punish, terrify, and eliminate political opponents.
Starting in 1977, 7 April became an annual day for public executions of student activists and military officers who opposed the regime.
Executions were often held in public squares or stadiums, sometimes with students and civilians forced to watch.
Hangings and “show trials” were frequently broadcast on state television, including during the holy fasting month of Ramadan, to intimidate the public.
A prominent example was the 1984 execution of Sadiq Hamed Shwehdi, a student activist who was hanged in a basketball stadium.
In a single incident in 1996, over 1,200 inmates were killed in Tripoli’s Abu Salim prison, many of whom were political opponents of the regime.
The regime utilized “revolutionary committees” to identify and brutally suppress any dissenters, including those living abroad. Several political opponents, labelled ‘‘stray dogs’’, were assassinated abroad.
These practices continued throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and the regime continued to suppress opposition through other brutal means until Qaddafi was overthrown in 2011.
When the 2011 revolution broke out, Saif, who had been masquerading as a reformist, chose to publicly support his father rather than the Libyan public.
Saif’s infamous wagging finger speech
In an infamous televised speech in February 2011, wagging his finger arrogantly at Libyan viewers, Saif warned that “Libya is not Tunisia or Egypt,” referring to the successful revolutions in those two countries that had already overthrown their dictators as part of the Arab Spring.
He said foreign media had exaggerated the extent of the violence in Libya.
He said opposition groups and outsiders were trying to transform Libya into a group of small states. If they succeeded, he said, foreign investment would stop and living standards would drop drastically. Libyans would not be able to buy a loaf of bread, he warned. He said no one (besides his father) could manage Libya’s oil wealth if there was a successful revolution.
Rivers of blood will flow
He warned that if a civil war started, Libyans would be “mourning hundreds and thousands of casualties”, as ‘‘rivers of blood will flow’’ and Libya would slide back to “colonial” rule.
Saif chose father, family and kin over the nation
The general public, and the leaders of the 2011 revolution, saw the “mourning hundreds and thousands of casualties” and ‘‘rivers of blood will flow’’ remarks as a threat.
But rather than cowering to the threat, it emboldened them further. There had been a faint hope that Saif would side with the revolution against his father and his cronies and prevent further bloodshed. Libyans thought he could convince his father to stand down in his favour allowing for a more liberal regime.
Instead, Saif chose his father, family and his kin over his nation. He made some empty promises in his speech, but no one believed after 42-years of his father’s rule. It was too little, too late
He had misread the audience in the room, as they say. He failed to understand the degree to which Libyans had had enough of his father’s rein in power. They wanted change, for better or worse. And the rest is history, as they say.
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