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Posted on 05/13/2011 11:37:05 AM PDT by Cardhu
Reuters) - Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has likely been wounded in western airstrikes and has probably left Tripoli, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said Friday.
A Libyan government spokesman immediately denied that Gaddafi had been harmed.
Frattini told reporters that he believed what he had been told by Giovanni Innocenzo Martinelli, the Catholic bishop in Tripoli, that Gaddafi had probably left Tripoli and had probably even been wounded by NATO airstrikes.
"I tend to give credence to the comment of the bishop of Tripoli, Monsignor Martinelli, who has been in close contact over recent weeks, when he told us that Gaddafi is very probably outside Tripoli and is probably also wounded. We don't know where or how," Frattini said.
"It's nonsense," Libyan government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim said in Tripoli. "The leader is in high morale. He's in good spirits. He is leading the country day by day. He hasn't been harmed at all."
Asked about the Libyan denial, Frattini said he still believed what Martinelli said.
In a separate interview published on the website of the Corriere della Sera, Frattini also said that he did not believe that Libyan TV footage of Gaddafi greeting tribal leaders on Wednesday was authentic.
"I strongly doubted that those images were taken on that day and above all in Tripoli," Frattini said.
"There are people on the ground who have the pulse of the situation ... Among many others I am referring to Bishop Martinelli, who has had, and still has, close relations with the regime," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
As the Vatican's top official in Tripoli, Martinelli has been in contact with Gaddafi's entourage"
That could make an interesting HBO Series.
He’s probably with Berlusconi in some whore house in Switzerland.
I hope he left his female bodyguards behind when visiting such establishments.
lol the undeclared war.
Krazy Kadfi probably saw what happened to his buddy Osama, passed out, hit the concrete floor of his bunker and injured himself.
He did a 180 after President Reagan had his tent bombed and after his buddy $addam was pulled out of his hidey hole and $addam’s two clones, aka, sons stopped wasting oxygen.
I am sure such an eventuality has crossed his mind.
With the prospect of an arrest warrant being issued shortly and the case of John Demjanjuk being prosecuted and found guilty after 66 years.
Am I the only one who thinks that the bishop is ill advised to be passing information to the Italians? I am sure the Catholics in Libya don’t need a bigger bulls eye on their back.
I too thought the same thing that it is not very diplomatic for someone who is trusted and apparently very close to the family.
Unless, it is the Italian Foreign Minister who has betrayed something told to him in confidence.
Thanks, I had forgot about this event: “the case of John Demjanjuk being prosecuted and found guilty after 66 years.”
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