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TRIPOLI (AFP) – Slain Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi's sprawling residence in Tripoli, Bab al-Aziziya, will be turned into an amusement park under plans announced on Tuesday by the tourism minister. "The work to clear away the rubble from the ruins of Bab al-Aziziya, which was a black spot in Tripoli and a source of concern for residents, has begun," the minister Ikram Basha Imam said. "This space will be transformed into a green area and an amusement park as a place of entertainment for Libyan families," she said. Bab al-Aziziya covers several square hectares (acres) of prime real estate in...

TRIPOLI — Gunmen on Sunday surrounded Libya's foreign ministry demanding it be "cleansed of agents" of ousted dictator Moamer Kadhafi, AFP correspondents said, as Prime Minister Ali Zeidan said the interior ministry was also attacked. Zeidan also said that gunmen attempted to storm the headquarters of Libyan state television. Armed men prevented foreign ministry staff from entering their building in Tripoli as they encircled it, correspondents said. Around 30 vehicles, some mounted with anti-aircraft guns, and dozens of armed men surrounded the offices, they reported. An official, who declined to be named, acknowledged that the gunmen's demands that officials from...

BENGHAZI, Libya -- Libya's new leaders vowed Thursday to bring Moammar Khadafy's killers to justice in a sharp break with their previous insistence he died in a crossfire with his own loyalists. At the same time, the UN Security Council unanimously voted to end the mandate for international military action in Libya, closing another chapter in the war against Khadafy's now-toppled regime. "With regards to Khadafy, we do not wait for anybody to tell us," Abdel Hafiz Ghoga, vice chairman of the ruling Transitional National Council (TNC), told a news conference in Benghazi. "We had already launched an investigation. We...

Sharia: Obama-encouraged Libyan transitional council approves polygamy,... Daily Caller - Neil Munro ... Abdul-Jalil's announced support for Islamic law could have meant anything between a symbolic nod to fundamentalist rebel groups and a promise for Saudi-style theocracy — complete with apartheid-style treatment of Muslim women and Christians, Jews and other non-Muslims. His announcement ending the Gadhafi-era ban on polygamy suggests that he and his allies intend to implement much of Sharia.

AGADEZ, Niger — A large military convoy from Libya arrived in the northern Niger city of Agadez late Monday, a military source told AFP. "I saw an exceptionally large and rare convoy of several dozen vehicles enter Agadez from Arlit... and go towards Niamey," the source said, amid speculation that toppled leader Moamer Kadhafi may be in it. "There are persistent rumours that Kadhafi or one of his sons are travelling in the convoy," the source said. A journalist from a private radio station in Agadez said he saw "a convoy of several dozen vehicles crossing the city and heading...

Rebels in the western Libyan town of Zliten were said to be low on ammunition and on the defensive on Sunday, as the regime said its forces had retaken the strategic southwest town of Bir Ghanam. Abdul Wahab Melitan, a rebel spokesman in the port city of Misrata near Zliten, said forces loyal to strongman Moamer Kadhafi had launched an assault on rebel positions in Zliten's Souk Telat area, killing three and wounding 15. "The rebels lack ammunition to advance and we do not want to risk losing any ground," Melitan said. Meanwhile, a rebel source at Al-Qusbat, around 90...

TRIPOLI (AFP) – Libya's Moamer Kadhafi will "inevitably" leave or be forced from power, US President Barack Obama said on Thursday, as NATO declared it had significantly degraded the strongman's war machine. UN chief Ban Ki-moon told AFP, meanwhile, that attempts to secure a ceasefire in Libya have failed and the humanitarian crisis is worsening. Rebels fighting to overthrow Kadhafi also said they were increasingly concerned about the humanitarian situation in the Nafusa mountains even after a gaining control of the western lifeline city of Misrata. "Time is working against Kadhafi," Obama said in a major speech in response to...

Influential Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi issued a fatwa on Monday that any Libyan soldier who can shoot dead embattled leader Moamer Kadhafi should do so "to rid Libya of him." "Whoever in the Libyan army is able to shoot a bullet at Mr Kadhafi should do so," Qaradawi, an Egyptian-born cleric who is usually based in Qatar, told Al-Jazeera television. He also told Libyan soldiers "not to obey orders to strike at your own people," and urged Libyan ambassadors around the world to dissociate themselves from Kadhafi's regime. Famous in the Middle East for his at times controversial fatwas, or...

Veteran Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi fears flying over water, prefers staying on the ground floor and almost never travels without his trusted Ukrainian nurse, a "voluptuous blond," according to US documents released Sunday by WikiLeaks. Kadhafi's eccentric and unpredictable personality are on full display in a State Department cable, which was posted on the New York Times website, a small sampling of the more than 250,00 documents unveiled by WikiLeaks on Sunday despite Washington's protests. The cable from September 2009 describes how Kadhafi's preferences for shorter flights and accommodation on the ground floor created logistical headaches for his staff, and...

Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi gave a speech to 100 young Italian women recruited by a model agency and urged them to convert to Islam, newspapers reported on Monday. The young women selected for Kadhafi's speech in Rome late Sunday each had to be at least 1.70 metres (five feet seven inches) be "pleasant" and "well dressed" but low cut tops and mini-skirts were banned, the newspapers said. Each woman was paid between 50 and 60 euros and was hired by the Hostessweb agency, the reports said. The women were told to got to a luxury hotel in the Via Veneto,...

Hugo Chavez has become a parody of a tin horn Latin American dictator, strutting about trying to prove to his gang of buddies what a bad-ass he is. Last month Chavez hosted a group of 30 leftist leaders from African and Latin states at the Hilton Resort on Isla Margarita, a luxury resort. Among them über baddies Moamer Kadhafi of Libya (who pitched his trademark tent on the beach) and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.  Too bad Kim Jong-il couldn't make it. I am sure Chavez offered the utmost in hospitality, as he spoke with his peers. He was out to...

Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi told CNN he had met with some of the families of those who died in the 1988 bombing of a US jet over Lockerbie to offer his condolences. "Yes, I met some of them yesterday. It was a friendly meeting," the Libyan leader told CNN in excerpts of the interview released Friday. Kadhafi is making his first visit to the United Nations in New York. "I offered my condolences for the families who lost them. They also expressed their condolences for my daughter who was killed for the American raid in 1986," he said, speaking through...

Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi marked the 40th anniversary of the bloodless coup that brought him to power, with celebrations attended by African, Arab and Latin American leaders but largely ignored by the West. At the end of a two-hour show late Tuesday retracing the 40 years since Kadhafi ousted King Idriss in 1969, a brief video clip showed the return to Libya last month of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi, but the western delegations present did not react. Kadhafi's party kicked off around midnight on Monday at the former US military base of Matega near Tripoli with a two-hour...

TRIPOLI (AFP) – Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi blasted Israel at a special African Union summit on Monday on the eve of celebrations to mark his 40-year rule, accusing the Jewish state of causing all the woes facing Africa. Israel is "behind all of Africa's conflicts," Kadhafi told some 30 African leaders gathered under a huge tent at Tripoli airport for a summit focused on solving the continent's trouble spots, including Sudan's Darfur and Somalia. However the one-day meeting ended without proposing concrete steps to do so, the leaders merely adopting a "Tripoli Declaration" and a plan of action "to find...

Italy agreed to pay Libya $5 billion as compensation for its 30-year occupation of the country during the 20th century. The money will be invested by Italy over a 25-year period. For VOA, Sabina Castelfranco reports from Rome. The Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Saturday signed a "friendship pact" with Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi in Libya. Under the pact, Italy agreed to compensate Libya for abuses it committed during its colonial rule of the North African country. Italy will invest $5 billion in Libya in a deal that effectively turns the page on colonial-era disputes that have long...

Lebanon has issued an arrest warrant for Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi over the disappearance 30 years ago of a senior Shiite cleric after a visit to Libya, officials said on Wednesday. Kadhafi was also indicted for allegedly "inciting the abduction" of Imam Mussa Sadr, the spiritual guide of Lebanon's Shiite community, investigating magistrate Samih el-Hajj said in a charge sheet. An "arrest warrant" was issued for the Libyan ruler and six other Libyan suspects who were also indicted for taking part in the alleged abduction, AFP reported. Sadr disappeared while in Libya with two companions Mohammed Yacoub and Abbas Badreddin...

Excerpt - Libya has taken "worryingly retaliatory measures" against Switzerland following the recent arrest of leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's son in Geneva, according to the Swiss Foreign Ministry. Col Gaddafi's government has recalled some of its diplomats from Switzerland, reduced flights between the countries, stopped processing visa requests from Swiss citizens, demanded the closure of Swiss firms in Libya and detained two Swiss citizens. Swiss foreign minister Micheline Calmy-Rey has formally complained about the moves to her Libyan counterpart and has advised citizens not to travel to Libya. ~ snip ~

(AGI) - Geneva, 17 July - The detention of Hannibal Gheddafi, son of the Libyan President, and his wife lasted just one night. The Gheddafis, arrested yesterday evening accused of mistreating two staff of the hotel in Geneva where they were staying, were released after the payment of bail of 309,000 euro. The most serious charges were made against Colonel Gheddafi's daughter-in-law, 9 months' pregnant and admitted today to the University of Geneva hospital. The two employees of the Hotel Presidente Wilson, a Moroccan man and a Tunisian woman showed the injuries to the judge but the Gheddafis' lawyers...

Excerpt - TRIPOLI, Libya -- Recently, Libyan strongman Col. Moammar Gadhafi wrote a letter to President Bush, asking: Where are we going with our relationship? Five years ago, the Bush administration helped persuade Libya -- for decades one of the world's leading sponsors of terrorism -- to scrap its nuclear ambitions and dismantle its terror infrastructure. It ranks as one of the president's signature foreign-policy successes and was supposed to blaze a path for other rogue states, principally North Korea and Iran. Now, these ties are fraying. According to Libyan diplomats who have seen the letter, sent in early March,...