Police station in Libya's
Benghazi attacked, four killed
BENGHAZI, Libya |
Sun Dec 16, 2012 12:45pm EST
The attack is believed to be linked
to the recent detention of two men in connection with several assassinations of
security officials in the city, as the assault happened next door to a police
station where they were being held.
Unknown assailants fired a
rocket-propelled grenade at the compound, which houses patrol cars, damaging an
office and killing one policeman, police spokesman Khaled Hidar said.
A gun battle then followed and three
of the police reinforcements who arrived at the scene were killed.
"It was a long battle. Three
other policemen were severely injured," Hidar said.
He said two men recently detained in
connection with a series of assassinations in the city, including that of
Benghazi police chief Faraj al-Deirsy last month, were being held in the police
station next door. Deirsy was killed in front of his home last month.
"This happened as two people
were detained recently ... in connection with the series of assassinations in Benghazi,"
Hidar said, adding that Libya's
new interior minister had ordered police reinforcements to Benghazi.
In September, the U.S.
ambassador to Libya
and three other Americans were killed in an attack on the U.S.
consulate in Benghazi, the worst of
a string of attacks on international convoys and official buildings in the
city.
Libya's
government is struggling to contain former fighters and militias who gained
power during last year's uprising, which started in Benghazi
and went on to oust Muammar Gaddafi.
On Saturday, clashes broke out in
the former Gaddafi stronghold of Bani Walid, and three members of the security
forces were killed, according to an official from the office of the army's
chief of staff. The violence began after security forces tried to make an
arrest in the town.
Forces aligned to the Defence
Ministry captured Bani Walid on October 24 amid chaotic scenes that
demonstrated the weakness of the new government's hold over militiamen who owe
it allegiance but largely do as they please.
Secretary Clinton won’t testify before Senate on Benghazi
attack
16 December, 2012,
17:52
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will not have to
testify before a Senate hearing concerning the deadly attack on the US
consulate in Benghazi after she
fainted and sustained a concussion last week.
Clinton, 65, is
currently recovering at home following last week's incident, when extreme
dehydration caused by a stomach virus resulted in her losing consciousness on
Thursday. The concussion that she sustained while falling further aggravated
her condition, which required regular medical attention.
Clinton had to
cancel a number of trips last week, as well as visits to North
Africa and several Gulf countries scheduled to start on Monday
because of her health. She promised to return to work soon, but has thus far
carried out her duties from home.
The fainting incident occurred a week before Clinton
was scheduled to testify in House and Senate hearings on the results of the
investigation into the September 11 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi.
Clinton was
expected to be grilled in the Senate hearing on Thursday by her Republican
rivals over foreign security issues and US
intelligence concerning the attack which killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens
and three other Americans.
Republicans have repeatedly attacked the Obama
Administration for its handling of the investigation into the Benghazi
incident, arguing that the incident could have been prevented.
The Obama Administration insisted that Islamic extremists
hijacked a spontaneous protest against the US-made anti-Islam video ‘The
Innocence of the Muslims.’
Republicans criticized the White House’s version of events,
naming an inadequate reaction by the State Department to security threats to US
diplomats in Libya
as among the reasons the tragedy unfolded in the manner it did.
Now it has become clear that neither the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee nor the House Foreign Affairs Committee will hear Hillary
Clinton’s scheduled testimony on Libya
next Thursday.
Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
and the man most likely to succeed Clinton as Secretary of State, has announced
through his communications director Jodi Seth that given Clinton’s condition,
she “could not and should not appear” for the hearings.
Earlier, it was the Republican chairman who insisted
that Clinton "has
committed to testify before the committee before the end of the
session [of Congress]."
It is expected that at both hearings, Clinton
will be replaced with senior State Department officials William Burns and
Thomas Nides.
The US
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has announced earlier she would step down
from the Obama administration early next year. America’s
top diplomat has also denied rumors of a presidential bid for the 2016 elections.
REPORT AIR
DATE: Dec. 14, 2012
Polarized Egypt
Protests and Prepares for Referendum Vote on Cons
MARGARET WARNER: Finally tonight, to Egypt.
Egyptians will go to the polls tomorrow to vote on whether
to approve a newly drafted constitution. But the path to that vote has deeply
polarized the country.
It's been nearly two years since
exuberant Egyptians, backed by their own military, forced out Hosni Mubarak
after three decades in power.
But in recent weeks, the streets
outside the palace he once occupied have been the site of counterdemonstrations
and clashes between Egyptians who joined forces in early 2011.
Seven people died last week, with
hundreds more injured, in hand-to-hand fighting between secular and liberal
Egyptians and members of Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood.
They were fighting over what the
new man in the palace, former Muslim Brotherhood figure, now President Mohammed
Morsi, has done to bring about tomorrow's vote on a new constitution, including
a late-November decree granting himself unchecked power until the vote.
That led many to compare him to his
reviled predecessor.
MANAL ABDEL AZIZ, Egypt
(through translator): I want to say that we protest against Mubarak because he
polluted our revolution with blood. Morsi, like Mubarak, he did the same thing.
MARGARET WARNER: Morsi said
the decree was needed to ensure Egyptians could vote on the new charter without
interference by Mubarak holdovers in the judiciary.
PRESIDENT MOHAMMED MORSI,Egypt
(through translator): The revolution has passed, but will not stop. However, I
must put myself on a clear path that will lead to the achievement of a clear
goal.
MARGARET WARNER: That clear
goal is a constitution that reapportions powers among the president, parliament
and military, and changes the role played by the Islamic code of Sharia.
Opponents charge it will let the
party in power smother the rights of women, minorities, political opponents,
and the press.
KHALID ABDALLA, The Mosireen
Collective: Right, so people understand, without understanding, without reading
the constitutional draft, that this is a power grab.
MARGARET WARNER: Motion
picture actor Khalid Abdalla was a leader of the revolution in early 2011. He
is now involved in Mosireen, an online video activist group.
KHALID ABDALLA: The
constitutional draft that they are proposing to the country is essentially a
sugarcoated poisoned pill, in which I wish the sugar was real, but, ultimately,
it's saccharine. We're being told that here is a constitution that is going to
guarantee your rights. But, actually, what it is, is it's a road map to ensure
Muslim Brotherhood dictatorship and control of power over Egypt for the next
10, 20, 30 years.
MARGARET WARNER: Not so, say
Morsi's backers. They insist there are plenty of new limits on presidential
authority.
GEHAD EL HADDAD, Freedom and
Justice Party: These checks and balances are a good way forward, not the
perfect way that our generation or even our creed as revolutionaries wanted,
but certainly a step in the right direction, and a big step at that.
MARGARET WARNER: Gehad El
Haddad is a senior adviser to the Muslim Brotherhood's political arm, the
Freedom and Justice Party.
GEHAD EL HADDAD: The president
doesn't have most of the powers that he had in the 1971 constitution. The
president actually got stripped from about 60 percent to 70 percent of his
powers. All of the powers that he has are put under checks and balances from
the parliament of both houses.
SAMER SHEHATA, Georgetown
University: It would be unfair to
say that this constitution establishes the possibility of dictatorship or
anything approaching the authoritarianism of the Mubarak regime.
MARGARET WARNER: Samer Shehata
is a professor of Arab politics at Georgetown
University.
SAMER SHEHATA: There were articles
in the old constitution which made -- which didn't limit presidential terms,
and Mr. Mubarak was, essentially, president for life, 29-and-a-half years. This
constitution reduces term length from six years to four years, and stipulates
that the president can only be reelected once, two-term limits.
MARGARET WARNER: Opponents
also charge the proposed constitution lays a foundation to impose stricter
Islamic law over a country with many strains of Islamic thought, from secular
to severely religious, and a 10 percent minority of Coptic Christians. Morsi
supporters have in fact been chanting "Bread, freedom and Sharia" at
rallies, and this Morsi backer in Alexandria
seemed to have that expectation.
SAID KASSEM, Egypt
(through translator): I support the president, and I think that opponents fear
the growth of the Islamic political current. They know that if the people vote
yes, the Islamic constitution will rule for a long time, and that will affect
the lives of the opponents of the president.
MARGARET WARNER: It's a
prospect that deeply alarms many more liberal-minded Egyptians.
MAN (through
translator): The Brotherhood are here to occupy the country. We will not let
them. We don't need them to teach us what Islam is all about. We are much
better Muslims than they are, and at least we aren't hypocrites.
MARGARET WARNER: Samer Shehata
says there are reasons for concern, especially in the role it gives clerics at
a leading Islamic university in determining whether a piece of legislation
contracts Sharia.
SAMER SHEHATA: Certainly, it
emboldens the idea that Islam should play a larger role in politics and also in
the social code and in law. I think everyone in Egypt
and anywhere else would say, yes, the Sharia means social justice, it means
equality, it means fairness. That's what my grandmother's interpretation of the
Sharia is. Unfortunately, there are some in Egypt,
Islamists of different stripes, that have a very different interpretation of
the Sharia that have to do with limiting the rights of non-Muslims, limiting
the rights of women, possibly limiting some kinds of freedoms of speech and so
on.
MARGARET WARNER: Even more
divisive than the particulars in the constitution has been the way it's been
shaped, a process controlled first by the military, and then the Muslim
Brotherhood and new Islamist- dominated parliament, rammed through, opponents
say, without regard for the views of other segments of Egyptian society. That
divide may be hardest to heal. Secular and liberal forces say, though some of
them were involved in the constitution-writing process, they had little
influence against the Islamists. Most ultimately walked out. That's not
dialogue, says Khalid Abdalla.
KHALID ABDALLA: If you're
going to talk, you don't pull a dagger on me and say, I'm threatening you. And
that's ultimately the way in which it's -- the process is being guided by the
Muslim Brotherhood and the Muslim Brotherhood leadership, and it shows that the
methodology which they're using to force this country to accept something that
reorganizes the state in a way that entirely fits their agenda and their agenda
alone.
MARGARET WARNER: Gehad El
Haddad disputes the charge.
GEHAD EL HADDAD: I don't think it's
a rushed process because the constitutional assembly took six months in the
writing, and they didn't start from scratch either. They started from
well-written drafts of various groups in the society itself.
MARGARET WARNER: El Haddad
says he understands the opposition's frustration, but it's time to move on.
GEHAD EL HADDAD: I think that it --
we really need to be responsible and civilized enough and look at the full half
of the cup, knowing well that we have another half to fill up.
MARGARET WARNER: Many
apolitical Egyptians clearly yearn for their leaders to start filling that
half-empty cup. In Khan el Khalili marketplace, 60-year-old pensioner Muhammad
Taha bemoaned the upheaval that has kept tourists and business away.
MUHAMMAD TAHA, Egypt
(through translator): We want life to go on. It doesn't matter if people say
yes to constitution or say no.
MARGARET WARNER: But Samer
Shehata says it may be hard for Egypt
to move on after the vote. If this referendum is approved, as expected, where
does that leave Egyptian society?
SAMER SHEHATA: It produces a very
divided, polarized Egyptian society, one in which many of those liberal and
secular voices will feel that the constitution is an illegitimate document, and
that certainly is not healthy for democratic consolidation in Egypt.
MARGARET WARNER: For an Egypt
still waiting for the promise of the revolution to be fulfilled in its
citizens' daily lives, that would be a bleak prospect indeed. We asked two
experts to weigh in on the discontent in Egypt.
Read their responses on the Rundown.