Moon Over Misrata and Sirite

This photo was taken of the moon rising off Misrata, Libya in April, two months into the revolution.

Franklin Lamb, who was later, in August, shot in the leg by a sniper in the Tripoli Marriot Hotel, wrote this article after sitting around a campfire with "NATO Rebels" on the beach at Sirte. Both Misrata and Sirte were pretty much totally destroyed in the course of the revolution. The article is interesting because Lamb seems to take the view that the NATO bombings were criminal and he has many ties and connections with pro-Gadhafi loyalists. His sitting around a campfire with the rebels reminds me of the Amazing Berber campfire song video on Youtube from last March, in which the young rebels sing about the brave people of Benghazi, Zawiya and Zintan. When I read a small report of these mountain rebels being armed by the French in air drops, it wasn't quite clear that they would institute a second major front in the revolt, and succeed in coming out of the mountains and freeing the coastal towns before liberating Tripoli in August.

Watch video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilv7PAK1EcU

Where do you want us to go?

Give me your hand

So we can go to Benghazi

The City of Freedom

So we can go to Zawiya

The City of Marytyrs

So we can go to Zintan

The City of Knights

And in the end Libya will be free, and we will live in love and tranquility

that was beautiful. I wish I was in the middle of all of you. I'm from Peru and watching all you Libyans closely. You are amazing people. Be careful (not like the guy with the drum that was almost burn by the fire camp :) .... ). I wish you all become a more united people and country after all these. Now I want to visit Libya. Before the only Libyan I knew was Gaddafi. Now I know hundreds of freedom fighters.

Bad Moon Rising Over Great Sirte Bay
by Franklin Lamb | Sirte, Libya
November 19, 2011

“Everyone Says We are Rich. Then Why Do We Feel So Poor?”

This observer, with his sandaled feet comfortably dug into the sand of a chilly Mediterranean beach and huddled next to a camp fire with a congenial and bright group of still heavily armed “NATO rebels,” is learning that the past eight months’ experiences for many Libyans who fought with or for NATO were rather different from what the western mainstream media portrayed. And what many of us who spent last summer in the Western Libya Gadhafi stronghold were inclined to believe about them.

Two of my new acquaintances are from the Law Faculty of re-named Benghazi University (following the 1969 Fatah Revolution its name was changed to Garyounis), and six others who fought in most of the battles in Libya between February and October 2011. The meeting was arranged by a rebel commander named “Samal.” I first met Samal quite by chance at the central bus station in Alexandria Egypt, where as in Cairo, many “NATO rebels” are currently being feted with R & R. His visit to Egypt was Samal’s first break from eight months of rough military duty, he explained. In his other life he is a part time university librarian who plans to return to his studies once the new academic year begins in January. Like most students in Libya, he lost a full academic year as schools were closed due to the Libyan uprising and he wants to catch up with his degree program in computer science.

Samal readily admits that he, like many Libyans, was not as opposed to Muammar Gadhafi personally as they were to many of those around “the leader” who took advantage of their positions, connections and immunity and committed serial crimes against the public. Understanding this observer’s interest in this subject, and once back in Misrata, Samal arranged a meeting a few days later with some of his friends at a café on the Mediterranean shores of the Gulf of Sirte. “Abu Nasser’s” is located on the outskirts of the village of Qasr Abu Hadi where Muammar Gaddhafi was born in a tent and where the youngster was raised until his parents sent him to secondary school for five years down south in Sabha. It was in Sabha where the budding Nasserite revolutionary reportedly relished his history studies, joined a local scout troop and later the Libyan armed forces.

After a terrific meal of spicy Libyan couscous with big junks of lamb on the bone at “Abu Nasser’s” and as it began to get dark, I noticed Samal gazing toward the northeast horizon deep out into the Gulf of Sirte. As the full moon rose he suggested we make a campfire on the beach and continue our discussion under the stars. Truth be told, Samal could not have proposed anything more perfect for this Oregonian, who as a kid passed many an evening beside beach campfires on the often cold and stormy Oregon coast or on the banks of Kellogg Lake near the Lamb family home on Lake Road, in Milwaukie.
One of the lecturers at the Benghazi College of Law told us that “our leader”, and then he quickly and self-consciously corrected himself and said “the tyrant” used to enjoy camping exactly where Samal had brought us on this beach. He to us that Gadhafi would explain to visitors about “Great Sirte Bay” as he called it, where he liked to swim. Gadhafi would explain to visitors about the Gulf of Sirte’s historic role in defeating the American military during the mid-1980’s when the Libyan air force chased away US aircraft sent by President Reagan to contest Gadhafi’s famous drawing of his red line (Gadhafi called it the “Line of Death”). The Libyan leader’s straight line ran across the mouth of “Great Sirte Bay” at 32 degrees, 30 minutes north between a point near Benghazi and the western headland of the Gulf at Misrata. The red line signaled Libya’s claim to an exclusive 62 nautical miles (115 km) fishing zone (Sirte bay has the world’s largest population of tuna which explains why during Ramadan this year when there was no fresh food at our hotel due to the fighting EVERY Iftar meal to break the fast consisted of a mountain of canned tuna which this observer can no longer even stand the sight of).

At the UN Libya declared that given its natural configuration, the Gulf of Sirte was in fact Libyan territorial waters as Gadhafi first claimed in 1973. According to Gadhafi, Libya’s historic victory in “Great Sirte Bay” resulted “from the 1984 expulsion of the US military from the area.” The US government rejected what it considered Libya’s illegal appropriation of the high seas, yet decided it was not worth a war and let the matter slide.
Some of my beach party interlocutors had been fighting since late February 2011. Samal and two others fought in six of the key battles including, Brega, Misrata, Zawieh, Tripoli, Bani Walid and Sirte. I asked the group when the rebels first began to believe that they might defeat their adversaries. Immediately Ahmed replied, “After the third battle of Brega we could tell that the Gadhafi forces did not have their hearts in this fight. By July 20th I would guess.”

Ahmed’s colleagues agreed and one added, “It was like a repeat of when the Israeli forces gave up and lost against Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006. Israeli forces clearly did not believe in their mission. Many of these Gadhafi guys did not either. When you are on the battlefield you can sense your enemy’s psychology even when you can’t see him. During the third battle for Brega we were fighting at close range in residential areas and most of Gaddafi’s forces retreated to Ras Lanuf. Some were still in a few buildings but they were no threat to us.”

Rashid interjected, “After Brega we knew that sooner or later we would win because we kept asking ourselves, in battle after battle, where is the regular Libyan army? We knew some of them personally but we never saw them. What happened to them, we wondered. Finally we realized that Gadhafi’s authority and his troops had melted. That was made clear on August 23 when we found little resistance as we arrived to Tripoli. Actually we were shocked. His army had abandoned him.”

Samal, added, “Yes but remember, and for sure we admit this, without NATO we would not have lasted one month. Please don’t think we are in love with NATO although many Libyans seem to want our country to join NATO and some in NATO and our interim government wants this also. NATO knows that our country could be a perfect AFCOM base to re-colonize Africa and end progressive projects for African countries. Please do not think we are not aware of what NATO countries want from Libya and our neighbors. They want from Libya and this whole region oil and natural resources, they want military bases on our soil, and they want us to accept Israel. How they plan to achieve all this is by getting Arabs to fight and kill Arabs and Muslims to fight and the Muslims.”

One of the law professors added: “As we saw these past months the US and their allies will try to limit the Western countries role to providing support from the sky with bombs and drones and special units and without sending their regular troops. This is the NATO plan and we saw it clearly in our country and perhaps we will see it again in Syria in a different form.”

Kamal, a medical lab technician added, “Many Gadhafi loyalists in Tripoli and Western Libya who saw civilians killed by NATO bombs do not realize that NATO also killed plenty of us rebels, and civilians in our areas of Eastern Libya. We are not allowed to mention it but NATO made many mistakes. We called them ‘the gang that can’t bomb straight’ and many of our forces, a few hundred I would say, were bombed by NATO. An even higher number of civilians were killed in our areas by NATO. Often we feared NATO more than we feared the Gadhafi fighters. Human rights groups should investigate what happened to us because the NTC will not.”

Under the big full moon hanging above “Great Sirte Bay” and deep into the night, these observers’ hosts shared some candid views on a variety of subjects, some of which were the following:

They predicted that Algeria will be the next regime to face an ‘Arab Spring’ uprising. The rebel fighters reported that some Libyan and foreign Islamists, mainly Saudi-paid salafists, are leaving Libya for Algeria where since 1992 the Algerian government has been repressing Islamists. Between 1988 and the late 1990’s more than 200,000 civilian were killed, 20,000 were disappeared and never heard from again, and scores of thousands were wounded. These figures dwarf the casualty rates in Libya and the Arab Spring countries to date. The coming uprising combined with the expected Algerian government’s reaction may be horrendous.

One of the reasons is that there is great anger at the Bouteflika government over the massive arms Algeria sent to the Gadhafi regime and Algeria’s granting of protection to members of the Gadhafi family and his regime. Algeria continues to have chilly relations with the new Libyan government and there are suspicions regarding its intentions about aiding the growing resistance to the new regime. The NTC may support an uprising in Algeria, according to Samal and his friends.

Samal and his friends discussed their frustration with the fact that the UK, France, US and other NATO countries are swarming like locusts around Libya and seeking very lucrative contracts to rebuild Misrata, Brega, Sirte, after they and their NATO allies destroyed them. “That’s Haram!”, Ahmad insisted. “They destroyed our country and now they want us to pay them to rebuild it. I wish we could rebuild without one NATO country profiting. It’s like that crazy American woman running for President of your country who wants Iraq to pay for the death of US occupation soldiers who were killed. The US must pay the Iraqi families for every one of the more than one million Iraqis the US killed and for all the damage its bombs did to Iraq.”

They discussed the possibility that Libya may experience what the Congo went through after the fall of the dictator Mobutu. Samal noted some parallels and the possibility that Libyans may actually regret Gadhafi’s departure as many in the Congo have misgivings regarding the absence of the 33 year rule of strong man Mobutu, since Gadhafi also gave his fractionalized country a sort a unity, a sense of being Libyan, free education, free medical aid, subsidized housing and woman’s rights — all of which could now be in jeopardy. Ahmed explained: “OK, we are “free” now what? Everyone says we are rich. Then why do we feel so poor? What kind of government will we have? I favor a strong unitary government like Patrice Lumumba did in the Congo. Many want a federal system. We have to build. Now our biggest challenge is our leadership vacuum. Are we going to regret that Gadhafi is gone? For sure many will. Not all rebels hated Gadhafi but they hated his henchmen who were out of control and had created their own small empires. That is why many are now saying that the new government must not include any Gadhafi former henchmen. They were the main problem, not Gadhafi himself.”

This observer’s hosts shared many amazing photos they had taken on their camera phones over the past months. Showing a photo of beaded fighters Ahmad commented that western media saw these beards and immediately concluded “Al Qaeda!” “This is not true at all and we laughed when we saw these false reports”, he continued, “The reason the media saw so many beards is for the simple reason that we did not have time to shave. If I have some free time I will clean my weapon or rest, not shave. Now as you see I have no beard. Same thing with many of my friends. Yes there are plenty of Al Qaeda among us. And I want to add that each Al Qaeda fighter is worth 100 of us during battles. They are very well trained and very expert with explosives. I don’t know how they can do what they do with simple devices, plus they are not afraid to die. But they are not in control here in Libya. Whether they will be eventually, time will tell.”

They all expressed concerned about the growing influence of the Persian Gulf country of Qatar which they acknowledge sent the rebels millions of dollars, weapons, and fighters and used their aircraft against Gadhafi loyalists while they favored the Salafist groups.
My hosts expressed their exasperated concern over what they see as the deep political vacuum in Libya that is considered harmful and dangerous for national unity. Their strongly presented opinions were that a new legislative assembly needed to be launched within the next several months and much sooner than the NTC is suggesting with multi-party elections put off until 2013.

The fighters thought there was no possibility that any rebel militia would give up its arms anytime soon. One of the group insisted, “I will not turn in any of my weapons, and I, like my friends, have hidden a lot of them including shoulder-fired missiles. I will keep them until I am convinced that the new government truly serves the people.”
They discussed who will command the new national army and that it will be a difficult decision and may lead to internal armed conflict.

They reflected on the fact that Gadhafi still has lots of supporters both in Libya and throughout Africa and my hosts all thought that the newly formed loyalist “Libya Liberation Front” (see my recent report) could become a major force in the coming months. They recommended dialogue with the LLF, something the Obama administration and NATO consistently vetoed with the Gadhafi regime over the past eight months. They acknowledged that dialogue between the Libyan government and the rebels during March could have avoided the tragedy that unfolded during the subsequent seven months.
The following week, additional confirmation was received by this observer from multiple credible sources confirming that between 11/10/11 and 11/16/11 the 28 NATO member countries had been instructed by NATO HQ that if their embassies received a visa application from any Libyan citizen seeking to visit their country that the NATO country Embassy is instructed to freeze the application. Within 24 hours the Embassy is to send a copy of the visa application and one of the two required photos submitted with the application to INTERPOL for the possible issuing of a “red notice” meaning arrest and detention of the applicant, preliminary to a decision from the NTC with respect to an extradition request for the person to be sent back to Libya. Abdel Hafiz Ghoga, deputy chairman of Libya’s National Transitional Council is the force behind this decision according to Tripoli sources. This NATO project clearly demonstrates that NATO has not ended its aggression against Libya, and it is fundamentally illegal and constitutes refoulement, which under international law is the forced return of a person to a country where he or she faces persecution. To date, international human rights organizations have been mute on this project.

One such affected person, with whom this observer recently visited outside of Libya, is subpoenaed to attend a 11/27/11 Court hearing in Brussels as a witness against NATO for that organization’s June 20, 2011 slaughter of the Khaled Hamidi family from Sorman, Libya. The family home was obliterated by three American MK-83 1000 lb. bombs and two missiles. The reason according to NATO, without offering a scintilla of evidence to support its spurious allegation, was that this family’s home was a Command and Control center for Gadhafi loyalists (One of 49 unproven C & C Centers claimed by NATO Brussels-Naples media briefings over a seven month period). Those murdered on June 20, 2011 by NATO included:

Khaled Hamedi’s pregnant wife Safa, their three years and one day old son Khweldi and their four and one half year old daughter Khaleda, as well as their six year old nephew Salam and 13 family members and friends who were all staying overnight at their home following the celebration of their son’s third birthday.

Meanwhile, in the US Congress on 11/15/11, Senators John Kerry, Joe Lieberman, John McCain and Marco Rubio, co-sponsored Senate Bill 317, the purpose of which is to praise US and NATO forces for their “extraordinary bravery and professionalism.”
As the horizon cracked with red rays from the rising sun, our group dispersed. I walked alone through some of the streets of Sirte among the totally obliterated buildings where not even a feral cat was to be seen. Still stunned from what I had heard from the “rebels” overnight and the similarity of their views with what I learned this summer in the pro-Gadhafi western parts of Libya, I felt numb.

And I wondered, “What for the love of God were these months of gratuitous and immoral NATO carnage all about?”

A bad moon is rising over Great Sirte Bay.
ENDS

WEEKEND EDITION NOVEMBER 4-6, 2011
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/04/libya%E2%80%99s-liberation-front-organizing-in-the-sahel/

CounterPunch Exclusive

Libya’s Liberation Front Organizing in the Sahel
by FRANKLIN LAMB

On the edge of the Sahel, Niger

“Sahel” in Arabic means “coast” or “shoreline”. Unless one was present 5000 years ago when, according to anthropologists, our planets first cultivation of crops began in this then lush, but now semiarid region where temperatures reach 125 degrees F, and only camels and an assortment of creatures can sniff out water sources, it seems an odd geographical name place for this up-to-450 miles wide swatch of baked sand that runs from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea.

Yet, when standing along its edge, the Sahel does have the appearance of a sort of dividing shoreline between the endless sands of the Sahara and the savannah grasses to the south. Parts of Mali, Algeria, Niger, Chad, and Sudan, all along the Libyan border fall within this supposed no man’s land.

Today the Sahel is providing protection, weapons gathering and storage facilities, sites for training camps, and hideouts as well as a generally formidable base for those working to organize the growing Libyan Liberation Front (LLF). The aim of the LLF is to liberate Libya from what it considers NATO-installed colonial puppets. The Sahel region is only one of multiple locations which are becoming active as the Libyan counter revolution, led by members of the Gadahfi and Wafalla tribes, make preparations for the next phase of resistance.

When I entered an office conference room in Niger recently to meet with some recent evacuees from Libya who I was advised were preparing to launch a “people’s struggle employing the Maoist tactic of 1000 cuts” against the current group claiming to represent Libya,” two facts struck me.

One was how many were present and did not appear to be scruffy, intensely zealous or desperate but who were obviously rested, calm, organized and methodical in their demeanor.

My colleague, a member of the Gadhafi tribe from Sirte explained “More than 800 organizers have arrived from Libya just to Niger and more come every day”. An officer in uniform added, “It is not like your western media presents the situation, of desperate Gadhafi loyalists frantically handing out bundles of cash and gold bars to buy their safety from the NATO death squads now swarming around the northern areas of our motherland. Our brothers have controlled the borderless routes in this region for thousands of years and they know how not to be detected even by NATO satellites and drones.”

The other subject I thought about as I sat in an initial meeting was what a difference three decades can make. As I sat there I recalled my visit with former Fatah youth leader Salah Tamari, who did good work at the Israeli prison camp at Ansar, south Lebanon during the 1982 aggression, as the elected negotiator for his fellow inmates. Tamari insisted on joining some of them at a new PLO base at Tabessa, Algeria. This was shortly after the PLO leadership, wrongly in my judgment, agreed to evacuate Lebanon in August of 1982 rather than wage a Stalingrad defense (admittedly minus the nonexistent expected Red Army) and the PLO leadership apparently credited Reagan administration promises of “ an American guaranteed Palestinian state within a year. You can take that to the bank” in the words of US envoy Philip Habib. Seemingly ever trustful of Ronald Reagan for some reason, PLO leader Arafat kept Habib’s written promise in his shirt pocket to show doubters, including his Deputy, Khalil al Wazir (Abu Jihad) and the womenfolk among others in Shatila Camp who had some grave misgivings about their protectors leaving them. At Tabessa, somewhere in the vast Algerian desert, the formerly proud PLO defenders were essentially idle and caged inside their camp and apart from some physical training sessions appeared to spend their days drinking coffee and smoking and worrying about their loved ones in Lebanon as news of the September 1982 Israeli-organized massacre at Sabra-Shatila fell on Tabessa Camp like a huge bomb and many fighters rejected Tamari’s orders and left for Shatila.

This is not the case with Libyan evacuees in Niger. They have the latest model satellite phones, laptops and better equipment than most of the rich news outlets that showed up with at Tripoli’s media hotels over the past nine months. This observer’s question, “how did you all get here and where did you secure all this new electronic equipment so fast?” was answered with a mute smile and wink from a hijabed young lady who I last saw in August handing out press releases at Tripoli’s Rixos Hotel for Libyan spokesman Dr. Musa Ibrahim late last august. On that particular day, Musa was telling the media as he stood next to Deputy Foreign Minister Khalid Kaim, a friend to many Americans and human rights activists, that Tripoli would not fall to NATO rebels and “we have 6,500 well trained soldiers who are waiting for them.” As it turned out, the commander of the 6,500 was owned by NATO and he instructed his men not to oppose the entering rebel forces. Tripoli fell the next day and the day after Khalid was arrested and is still inside one of dozens of rebel jails petitioning his unresponsive captors for family visits while an international, American organized, legal team is negotiating to visit him.

The LLF has military and political projects in the works. One of the latter is to compete for every vote in next summer’s promised election. One staffer I met with has the job of studying the elections in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere in the region for possible applications to Libya.

Another LLF committee is putting together a Nationalist campaign message plus specific campaign planks for their candidates to run on and putting together lists of recommendations of specific candidates. Nothing is firmly decided yet, but one Libyan professor told me “for sure Women’s rights will be a major plank. Women are horrified by NTC Chairman Jalil said while seeking support from Al Qaeda supporters who threaten to control Libya, about polygamy being the future in Libya and the fact that women will now longer be given the home when divorced. Libya has been very progressive with women’s rights as with Palestinian rights.” Aisha Gadhafi, the only daughter of Muammar who is now living next door in Algeria with family members including her two-month old baby, was a major force behind the 2010 enactment by the Peoples Congresses of more rights for women. She has been asked to write a pamphlet on the need to retain women’s rights which will be distributed if the 2012 elections actually materialize.

While their country lies in substantial NATO bombed ruins, the pro-Gadhafi LLF has some major pluses on its side. One are the tribes who during last summer were starting to stand up against NATO just as Tripoli fell before they launched their efforts which included a new Constitution. The LLF believes the tribes can be crucial in getting out the vote.

Perhaps even a more powerful arrow in the LLF’s quiver as it launches its counter revolution are the 35 years of political experience by the hundreds of Libyan People’s Committees long established in every village in Libya along with the Secretariats of the People’s Conferences. While currently inactive (outlawed by NATO–truth be told) they are quickly regrouping. Sometimes the subjects of ridicule by some self-styled Libya “experts,” the People’s Congresses, based on the Green book series written by Gadhafi, are actually quite democratic and a study of their work makes clear that they have increasingly functioned not as mere rubber stamps for ideas that floated from over the walls of Bab al Azziza barracks. A secretary general of one of the Congresses, now working in Niger, repeated what one western delegation was told during a late June three hour briefing at the Tripoli HQ of the national PC Secretariat. Participants were shown attendance and voting records as well of each item voted on, for the past decade and the minutes of the most recent People’s Congress debates. They illustrate the similarities between the People’s Congresses and New England Town Meeting in terms of the local population making decisions that affect their community and an open agenda where complaints and new proposals can be made and discussed. This observer particularly enjoyed his 4 years term representing Ward 2A in the Brookline, Massachusetts Town Meeting while in college in Boston, sometimes sitting next my neighbors Kitty and Michael Dukakis. While we both won a seat in the election, I received 42 votes more than Mike but he rose politically while it could be said that I sank, following my joining Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the ACLU and the Black Panthers all in one semester as an undergraduate Boston University, following an inspiring meeting with Professor Noam Chomsky and Professor Howard Zinn in Chomsky’s office at MIT. The Town Meeting debates were interesting and productive and “Mustafa”, the National Secretary of the Libyan People’s Congress, who studied at George Washington University in WDC and wrote a graduate thesis on New England Town Meetings, claimed his country patterned their People’s Congresses on them. Unfortunately, “Mustafa”is also now incarcerated by the NTC, according to mutual friends.

Who LLF candidates will be if an election is actually held is unknown but some are suggesting that Dr.Abu Zeid Dorda, now recovering from his “suicide attempt” (the former Libyan UN Ambassador was thrown out of a second floor window during interrogations last month by NATO agents but he survived in front of witnesses so is now recovering in prison medical ward).

Contrary to media stories, Saif al Islam is not about to surrender to the International Criminal Court and, like Musa Ibrahim, is well. Both are being urged to lay low for now, rest, and try to heal a bit from NATO’s killing of family members and many close friends.

Many legal and political analysts think the ICC will not proceed with any trials relating to Libya for reasons of the ICC convoluted rules and structure and uncertainly of securing convictions of the “right” suspects. Whatever happens on this subject, if a case goes forward, researchers are preparing to fill the ICC courtroom with documentation of NATO crimes during its 9 month, 23,000 sorties and 10,000 bombing attacks on the five million population country.

Some International Criminal Court observers are encouraged by the ICC Prosecutor’s office pledge this week and as reported by the BCC: “to investigate and prosecute any crimes committed both by rebel and pro-Gadhafi forces including any committed by NATO.”

As one victim of NATO crimes, who on June 20, 1911 lost four of his family members including three infant children, as five NATO American MK-83 bombs were dropped and two missiles fired on the family compound in a failed assassination attempt against his father, a former aide to Colonel Gadhafi, wrote this observer yesterday from his secret sanctuary, “This is good news if it is true.”.

As NATO moves its focus and drones to the Seral, it is possible that its nine months of carnage against this country and people will not in the end achieve its goals.

Franklin Lamb is reachable c/o fplamb@gmail.com.

The Intel Hub
August 21, 2011

The Palestine Civil Rights Campaign-Lebanon confirms reports that Franklin Lamb was shot at approximately 11:45 a.m. on Sunday August 21 in Tripoli, Libya outside of the Corinthia Hotel where he has been staying.

Franklin had just returned from a 90 minute bicycle tour of central Tripoliand was walking past the Hotel swimming pool when he was hit in his right leg.
Witnesses report having seen sniper fire coming from the roof of the Marriott Hotel across from the Corinthia.

Franklin is basicly OK. The bullet has been removed and he is resting comfortably and wishes that no one be concerned because he will be fine.
Internet has been cut in Libya and events inside Tripoli are unclear. The PCRC will advise if events warrant.