The Libyan government took journalists to the site. It was reportedly a compound with several buildings. Underneath one, there may or may not have been a bunker.

One of the most comprehensive reports so far is written by Simon Denyer and Leila Fadel for the Washington Post, and published here.

Al-Jazeera English has posted here a report and elsewhere the full English-language announcement by government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said the Libyan leader and his wife had also been in the building, with friends and relatives — but that Qaddhafi and his wife are unhurt, though there have been other martyrs there, who have now joined other martyrs among the Libyan people for the last 40 days. The spokesman noted that Qaddhafi had just appealed for a halt in NATO action, a ceasefire, and called for dialog — but, the spokesman said, no government has sent any envoy or delegation, and there has been no dialog…

This is being called by some an attempt at a targetted assassination.

But, NATO officials later said they did not intentionally target “any individual”.

Twitter reported some scepticism about the reports of these Qaddhafi family deaths — mainly among Qaddhafi opponents and rebel supporters.

But, the co-author of the WPost article answered some questions on Twitter [@simondenyer], and said, among other things, after seeing the destruction at the site of the strike, that “It did seem unlikely to many members of press corps that anyone could escape completely unscathed, without any injuries at all”.

To one sceptic, who was apparently insisting that a military target had been hit, not a civilian target, @simondenyer wrote: “Praps they removed military gear and replaced it with the contents of someone’s home, then destroyed it and caked it in dust”…

Former U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley has Tweeted [@PJCrowley] that NATO should explain as soon as possible: “If verified that #Qaddafi’s grandsons died following an air attack, it could damage #NATO’s credibility”, and “the sooner #NATO fully explains what happened, the better”.

In 1986, a very young girl that Qaddhafi said was his adopted daughter was killed in a joint British-American strike on his compound in Tripoli.

A New York Times OP ED, signed by BARACK OBAMA, DAVID CAMERON, and NICOLAS SARKOZY and published on 14 April here stated “We must never forget the reasons why the international community was obliged to act in the first place. As Libya descended into chaos with Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi attacking his own people, the Arab League called for action. The Libyan opposition called for help. And the people of Libya looked to the world in their hour of need. In an historic resolution, the United Nations Security Council authorized all necessary measures to protect the people of Libya from the attacks upon them. By responding immediately, our countries, together with an international coalition, halted the advance of Qaddafi’s forces and prevented the bloodbath that he had promised to inflict upon the citizens of the besieged city of Benghazi. Tens of thousands of lives have been protected. But the people of Libya are still suffering terrible horrors at Qaddafi’s hands each and every day. His rockets and shells rained down on defenseless civilians in Ajdabiya. The city of Misurata is enduring a medieval siege, as Qaddafi tries to strangle its population into submission. The evidence of disappearances and abuses grows daily. Our duty and our mandate under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973 is to protect civilians, and we are doing that. It is not to remove Qaddafi by force. But it is impossible to imagine a future for Libya with Qaddafi in power. The International Criminal Court is rightly investigating the crimes committed against civilians and the grievous violations of international law. It is unthinkable that someone who has tried to massacre his own people can play a part in their future government. The brave citizens of those towns that have held out against forces that have been mercilessly targeting them would face a fearful vengeance if the world accepted such an arrangement. It would be an unconscionable betrayal … There is a pathway to peace that promises new hope for the people of Libya … The regime has to pull back from the cities it is besieging, including Ajdabiya, Misurata and Zintan, and return to their barracks. However, so long as Qaddafi is in power, NATO must maintain its operations so that civilians remain protected and the pressure on the regime builds. Then a genuine transition from dictatorship to an inclusive constitutional process can really begin, led by a new generation of leaders. In order for that transition to succeed, Qaddafi must go and go for good”.

In the past few days, Britain, France, and Italy have just decided to send military advisers to work with the rebels, and the U.S. has authorized $25m [million] for “non-lethal” aid to the rebels.

The situation is deteriorating. Reports from Libya are dire.

And, yesterday, two international war photographers — Chris Hondros and Tim Hetherington — were killed in battles in the city of Misrata between Libyan rebels, and forces obeying orders from Libyan leader Muammar Qaddhafi.

Hetherington died of massive blood loss from a wound to his upper leg, and Hondros died from a severe head wound.

Via a Tweet by @dionnissenbaum this morning, we read this remembrance report on Hondros in The Wall Street Journal. Written by Dionne Searcey and Christopher Rhoads, it’s entitled “A War Photographer Who Stayed With His Subject”, and it says: “[Chris] Hondros believed in the impact that images can have and the importance of sticking with a subject. When the roving pack of war journalists was abandoning Iraq for more fresh conflicts elsewhere, he returned time and again believing that the war story there still deserved to be told regardless of how familiar the issues seemed”.

The article reports that “In March, shortly after returning from covering the Egyptian Revolution, Mr. Hondros said in an interview for a blog in the Chicago Tribune, how his deep experience in conflict zones has taught him when an assignment becomes too dangerous … ‘The instinct about what is and isn’t safe is indeed subtle’, he said. ‘And it’s difficult to convey in words sometimes how it affects your work. But after many years of conflict work one does get a honed sense of when a situation is too dangerous. There were many instances when I pulled out of a situation because some subtle cues tipped me off’. He continued, ‘Or, in the case of a fist-sized rock skimming past my temple during one of the rock fusillades not so subtle—I called it a day after that’. He was referring to the attacks, often with rocks, on photographers during the February protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square”.

The WSJ continues: “In the Tribune blog interview, he listed his tips for others covering such events: ‘Travel light. Eat breakfast. Be prepared for the unexpected. Guard and hide your images once you make them. Remember how quickly a benign situation can turn onerous’.”

The article notes: “In a grim reminder of the risks of their trade, Mr. Hondros Wednesday was hit by fire in the besieged city of Misrata while covering battles between rebels and Libyan government forces. He died after being seriously wounded … On Wednesday his photos from Misrata, taken hours before he was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, showed the typical stuff of war: bullets flying from rebel guns, fighters celebrating victories. But they also include a trademark image: a rebel fighter toting a large weapon that belies the apprehension on his face. His work from Misrata appeared on the front pages of several major newspapers Wednesday”.

This was after his death — and certainly also because of it…

The WSJ remembrance article is posted here.

It began by calling for an immediate cease-fire.

The text explicitly mentions Benghazi, which is was under imminent threat (until the Libyan Foreign Minister retracted the threat after accepting the resolution’s call for a cease-fire; earlier, members of the Qaddhafi family said troops loyal to them would be in Benghazi by nightfall

France has reportedly said that military action  under this new UNSC resolution would begin within hours — see the report in The Guardian newspaper, here.

France seems to have taken the lead internationally.  It was also France which put its foot down in UN Security Council deliberations on 26 February, insisting that a provision must be included in UNSC Resolution 1970, adopted unanimously that day, to refer violence against protesters to the International Criminal Court, or ICC.

Since then, ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has reportedly opened an investigation into events in Libya.

After the new resolution adopted last night, there were indications that NATO will reopen debate on its role in moves to protect civilian life and areas in Libya…

Within hours, Libyan authorities closed the country’s airspace, as Sky News reported here.

A short while later, the Libyan Foreign Minister announced a cease-fire and an end to military operations, saying that the country must obey the UNSC resolutions. He did express concern, however, that the new UNSC resolution envisaged military action against Libya. And he said that the no-fly provisions in the new UNSC resolution should not have included Libyan civilian flights.

The new resolution, in its fourth operative paragraph, ” Authorizes Member States that have notified the Secretary-General, acting nationally or through regional organizations or arrangements, and acting in cooperation with the Secretary-General, to take all necessary measures, notwithstanding paragraph 9 of resolution 1970 (2011), to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory, and requests the Member States concerned to inform the Secretary-General immediately of the measures they take pursuant to the authorization conferred by this paragraph which shall be immediately reported to the Security Council”…

“All necessary measures” has typically had a range of meanings when countries actually come to interpret the diplomatic language of UNSC resolutions. It means whatever the most powerful member states want it to mean. In Bosnia, and in its beseiged “safe haven” of Srebrenica, it meant very little, in fact virtually nothing, in 1993, when thousands of Muslim men and boys were massacred despite the presence of a Dutch battalion of UN Peacekeepers…)

Five countries abstained — including two of the UNSC’s five permanent members, Russia + China. Germany, India and Brazil abstained. No countries voted against the draft text, which passed with ten votes, one more than the absolute minimum needed for adoption.

The new resolution was adopted under what are often called (though see paras above) the “binding” and “obligatory” or even “mandatory” provisions of Chapter Seven of the UN Charter.

Indeed, the Arab League last week called on the UNSC to adopt a “no-fly zone” over Libya to save civilian lives.

The Qaddhafi family argues that it has made no air attacks on civilians or civilian areas in Libya. Tanks have indisputably been used against protesters.

The new resolution also “Decides to establish a ban on all flights [though not (a) flights whose sole purpose is humanitarian; or (b) flights evacuating foreign nationals; or (c) flights being undertaken by UN member states to implement paragraph four] in the airspace of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya in order to help protect civilians”.

The new resolution also strengthens and gives specific ways to implement the previous UNSC decision (resolution 1970, adopted unanimously on 26 February) which authorizes an arms embargo against Libya, and imposed a freeze of assets of members of the family of Libyan leader Col. Muammar Qaddhafi, and a travel ban on a total of some 22 Libyans.

The new UNSC Resolution 1973, adopted overnight, establishes a sanctions committee, and also calls for the naming of an 8-member Panel of Experts to follow up the implementation of this resolution.

Clinton added: “The international community is speaking with one voice and our message is unmistakable.  These violations of universal rights are unacceptable and will not be tolerated. This Council took an important first step toward accountability on Friday by establishing an independent commission of inquiry.  On Saturday in New York, the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution imposing an arms embargo on Libya, freezing the assets of key human rights violators and other members of the Qadhafi family, and referring the Libyan case to the International Criminal Court. Tomorrow, the UN General Assembly should vote to accept the recommendation to suspend the Qadhafi government’s participation here in the Human Rights Council. Governments that turn their guns on their own people have no place in this chamber”.

On Tuesday in New York, the UN General Assembly suspended Libya from the Human Rights Council.  It is the first time that this has ever happened.

Afterwards, the U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice tweeted:
“This is another clear warning to #Qadhafi and those who still stand by him: they must stop the killing. He must go, and he must go now”
and
“All 192 member states just agreed to suspend #Libya from Human Rights Council. Unprecedented”.

UNSC resolution 1970 was adopted unanimously. It also freezes assets of Colonel Muammar Qaddhafi and his children, and imposes a travel ban on approximately 22 Libyans connected to Qaddhafi.

The full implications of this decision will only become clear through time…

Agence France Press reported Sunday that “Libyan protest leaders established a transitional ‘national council’ on Sunday in cities seized from Moamer Kadhafi, as world leaders called on him to quit and protesters closed in on Tripoli. ‘The creation of a national council has been announced in all freed cities of Libya’, Abdel Hafiz Ghoqa told a Benghazi news conference … The council is the ‘face of Libya in the transitional period’, he said, adding that consultations were under way on the new body’s composition and duties”.

Nick Cohen wrote in the Comment is Free section of The Guardian newspaper here, that — until now — almost nothing in the Middle East was news if it didn’t involve Israel: “For both sides, the lives of hundreds of millions of Arabs, Berbers and Kurds who were not involved in the conflict could be forgotten … Far from being a cause of the revolution, antagonism to Israel everywhere served the interests of oppressors … Europe’s amnesia about how tyranny operated in our continent explains why the Libyan revolution is embarrassing a rich collection of dupes and scoundrels who were willing to laugh along with Gaddafi … It was not only BP and other oil companies, but British academics who were happy to accept his largesse. The London School of Economics took £1.5m from Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, money which by definition had to have been stolen from the Libyan people, despite being warned to back away by Professor Fred Halliday, the LSE’s late and much-missed authority on the Middle East, who never flinched from looking dictators in the eye … The thinking behind so many who flattered him was that the only issue in the Middle East worth taking a stand on was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that the oppression of Arabs by Arabs was a minor concern. The longevity of the regimes presided over by the Gaddafi, Assad and Mubarak families and the House of Saud ought to be a reason for denouncing them more vigorously, but their apparent permanence added to the feeling that somehow Libyans, Syrians, Egyptians and Saudis want to live under dictatorships. The European Union, which did so much to export democracy and the rule of law to former communist dictatorships of eastern Europe, has played a miserable role in the Middle East. It pours in aid but never demands democratisation or restrictions on police powers in return”…

U.S. President Obama said on Saturday that Qaddhafi must leave power. On Sunday, as she boarded a plane for Geneva to address a regular session of the UN Human Rights Council, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told journalists: “Let me start by saying as strongly as I can that the United States and the American people support the aspirations and rights of the Libyan people. They are clearly sending as strong a message as they are capable of doing that it is time for Qadhafi to go. We think he must go as soon as possible without further bloodshed and violence. We are also very conscious of the actions that have been taken against the Libyan people by the Qadhafi regime … We want him to leave and we want him to end his regime and call off the mercenaries and those troops that remain loyal to him. How he manages that is obviously up to him and to his family. But we have consistently in many conversations over the last week sent messages, and along with partners in the region and beyond have made it clear we expect him to leave. But we’re not involved in any kind of negotiation with him over that”.

Clinted noted that “the Security Council resolution passed unanimously yesterday makes clear there will be accountability for crimes against humanity and war crimes and other atrocities that are being perpetrated against the Libyan people, including a referral to the International Criminal Court. And I want to underscore this unanimous message from the Security Council to those who are around Qadhafi that you will be held accountable for the actions that are being taken and have been taken against your own people. The Security Council resolution yesterday was part of a concerted effort that the United States has been lining up and implementing over the last days, both for unilateral and multilateral action. And we will continue to pursue steps aggressively that we believe will make a difference. Obviously, the Security Council resolution, which was passed in record time and included countries that are often reluctant to empower the international community to take such actions, sends a strong, unmistakable signal. The specifics that go to targeted sanctions and arms embargo and other measures are exactly what we have been looking toward and wanting to achieve in this period. It also opens the door for humanitarian relief, which is going to be essential – the numbers of people fleeing across the borders, particularly into Tunisia and Egypt, where those two countries are facing huge humanitarian demands, plus internally displaced people. There’s also a strong message in the Security Council resolution to countries in the region: You must stop mercenaries, you must stop those who may be going to Libya either at the behest or opportunistically to engage in violence or other criminal acts. And we will be working closely with those neighboring countries to ensure that they do so”…

On her upcoming meetings in Geneva, Ciinton said: “Well, there are a number of reasons why this is turning into a significant meeting. I will be meeting with many of my counterparts from Europe and beyond to discuss ways that we can better coordinate and organize in meeting the expectations laid down by the Security Council, and thinking through how we can respond to the needs of the Libyan people not only in a humanitarian way but in a political and civil response as they try to sort through how they’re going to organize themselves post-Qadhafi”…

In today's meeting of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, the entire Libyan delegation announced that they represented the people, and not the government of Libya, and they called for a moment of silence in honor of the victims of the violence of the regime.

And, Col. Qaddhafi and his son both gave second speeches today (their second since the outbreak of the uprising this month). I was out and missed them. Hussein Ibish of the American Task Force on Palestine wrote today on his blog here that "Well, he [Col. Qaddhafi] finally came right out and said it: ‘those who do not love me do not deserve to live’. With those words, uttered on Libyan state television today, Libyan dictator Moammar Qaddafi at least rhetorically outdid all his megalomaniacal and mass murdering predecessors including Saddam Hussein, Ceausescu, Stalin and the whole bunch. Anyone who still doubts that this man is ready and willing to visit the utmost bloodshed upon his people simply isn’t paying attention. The question is, is he able? The answer is, at this stage at least, quite possibly”.

Ibish later added this update to his post: “There is now some dispute over whether Qaddafi said ‘those who do not love me do not deserve to live” or “if people do not love me, I do not deserve to live’. Al Arabiya reports the later here. But first-rate tweeters reporter Muna Shikaki quoted him as ‘Qaddafi: ‘those who don’t like me don’t deserve to live’ and Sultan Al Qassemi wrote ‘Gaddafi now in TV “I’m in central Tripoli now. The people who don’t love me don’t deserve to live”.’ Those are two pretty good sources, in my view. Either way, the thrust of the arguments remain unchanged. At UN today, the Libyan ambassador finally abandoned Qaddafi after sticking by him till now in an open dispute with his deputy. With emotions and tears flowing, Amb. Shalqam embraced Sec. Gen. Ban and asked the UN to ‘save Libya, we want quick action, save Libya’. He rightly said Qaddafi’s message to Libyans was if I cannot rule you, ‘I will kill you’. I think that says it all. And there is no dispute that Qaddafi today threatened to turn Libya into ‘a burning hell’.”

The Independent reported that “The beleaguered Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi defiantly appealed to his hardcore supporters to ‘defend the nation’ against an uprising which was last night closing in on Tripoli after thousands of protesters braved gunfire to try to march through the capital. Standing on the ramparts of a fort overlooking the city’s Green Square, Colonel Gaddafi pumped his fist and told 1,000 pro-regime demonstrators: ‘We can crush any enemy. We can crush it with the people’s will. The people are armed and when necessary, we will open arsenals to arm all the Libyan people and all Libyan tribes’. Urging the crowd to ‘retaliate against them, retaliate against them’, the 68-year-old President was shown on state television calling on them to prepare to defend the nation and defend the oil’.” This report, written by a team in Bengazi, is published here.

AFP reported that Qaddhafi said in Friday’s speech: “Sing, dance and prepare yourselves … If needs be, we will open all the arsenals”. The U.S. warmed up to Libya after it gave up its nuclear weapons program (after revelations that it came from Pakistani nuclear scientist and salesman], but reports indicate that Libya still has chemical and biological weapons…

In the UN Security Council today, UN Secretary-General BAN Ki-Moon said that “Colonel Qaddhafi and members of his family continue to threaten the population with civil war… Let us be frank, these remarks… raise grave considerations… I strongly believe that the first obligation of the international community is to ensure (protection)”

BAN also noted that “Today the Human Rights Commission convened in special session… it is the first time that a member of the HRC is the subject of a special session … The HRC today took steps to establish independent commission of inquiry and recommended that the UN General Assembly consider suspending Libya from HRC”

And, he said, “There are also indications of a growing crisis of refugees (since Feb 22, some 22,000 fled overland to Tunisia, and 15,000 to Egypt, but much larger numbers are trapped… And those who managed to cross the border said the journey was terrifying … It is crucial for humanitarian agencies to have access to the border”.

And, BAN said, the UN’s World Food Program is concerned about Libya’s food supplies

In those who can stand it — and especially for those who love these things — here is a UN video of today’s UN Security Council meeting on Libya:

According to a Reuters report published in Haaretz, a six-page draft UN Security Council resolution says that “The attacks against Libyan civilians may be ‘crimes against humanity’ warranting prosecution by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, according to a draft UN sanctions resolution. The text, drafted by France and Britain and circulated to other members of the UN Security Council on Friday, also calls for an arms embargo against Libya as well as travel bans and asset freezes for the country’s top leaders … The 15-nation council has only referred one other case to the ICC – the conflict in Sudan’s western Darfur region”. This Haaretz report is posted here.

Here are some selected Tweets on the situation in Libya over the last working week:

21 February:
@marianhouk: Could become one of the most expedited decisions ever taken by UN Security Council – case for humanitarian intervention in #Libya

@marianhouk: To the last man + woman! RT@cnnbrk – Gadhafi’s son: #Libya’s army has been told to restore
security “at any price” http://on.cnn.com/ge2mrQ

@marianhouk: Situation in Libya doesn’t need to be international for UN Security Council action under rarely-used humanitarian imperative resolutions…

22 February:
@marianhouk: It was like a music video @RT IvanCNN: Watch Gadhafi’s…strange…pre-dawn appearance with an umbrella on Libyan TV – http://bit.ly/hCZTR7

@marianhouk: The neo-Con right has tried for years to kick #Libya off the UN Human Rights Commission, then Council. This is inadequate to the carnage now

@themoornextdoor – Qadhafi: “….and the punishment is death” this is really all you need to know from this speech.

@lassecgen LAS Council decides to suspend participation of Libyan delegations in all LAS meetings.

@SultanAlQassemi – Abdul Fattah Younis: Gaddafi, that dirty man, wanted to say that I was killed by protesters so that my tribe, the Obeidat will stand by him

@marianhouk: “Greasy rats”! — one of the most disgusting and chilling things Qaddhafi said today, over + over

@marianhouk: Revelations abt Qaddafi murder of Musa al-Sadr and his secret burial ‘n Sebha, then murder of some who knew [n.b. reportedly including Qaddhafi's personal pilot]: @SultanAlQassimi + @_RichardHall

Wednesday 23 February:

@marianhouk: After revelations about murder + burial in Libya of Musa al-Sadr, when will we learn about Mansour Kikhya, who disappeared in Cairo?

@marianhouk: @weddady – on list of who owes how much to Libya, Nicaragua is $123,000,000+ http://af.reuters.com/article/eritreaNews/idAFLDE7181NC20110209

@marianhouk: Maybe to be repaid in kind, UN votes? @kelliestrom – Nicaragua loan $123 million from #Libya but balance is $302 million. Interest charges?

Thursday 24 February:

@pressfreedom – Deputy Foreign Minister of #Libya: Foriegn journos will be treated as #AlQaeda collaborators. http://bit.ly/eo4SCW #Feb17

@marianhouk: Astonishing US State Dep warning to journalists: Senior Libyan officials told US that unauthorized media in Libya are Al-Qaeda collaborators

@marianhouk: Be advised, US State Dept tells media, it’s now additionally hazardous.Libya says join authorized media teams or u r terrorist collaborators

@markknoller- State Dept planning final evacuation flight out of Tripoli tomorrow. http://go.usa.gov/gwk.

@RobertNisbet – #Libya: Obama will call David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy this afternoon to coordinate response to Libya

Friday 25 February:
@UN – Today’s Human Rights Council meeting is 1st time a member is the subject of a Special Session http://bit.ly/gdRlNI #Libya

@marianhouk: Kicking Libya off Human Rts Council to take advantage of moment? Or use of responsibility to protect mandate? RT @UN HRC to meet on #Libya

@marianhouk: Like UN Security Council imposing sanctions, kicking #Libya off UN Human Rts Council is inadequate to danger, carnage, and is opportunistic

@marianhouk: Will there be useful “teamwork” — or disconnect — between work of UN Security Council in NY + UN Human Rights Council in Geneva?

@marianhouk: UN High Commissnr for Human Rts Navi Pillay’s remarks on #Libya focussed on responsibility to protect civ. pop from crimes against humanity

@marianhouk: Guess Pillay couldn’t urge Libya ouster from UN Human Rts Commission even if she wanted to, but it’s sure on agenda http://on.ft.com/eSiwNf

@marianhouk: UN High Commissionr for Human Rts Navi Pillay to Geneva meeting: “There can be no doubt about the need for action by this Council now”..

@marianhouk: UN High Commissioner Navi Pillay: “The “Human Rights Council + its mechanisms should step in vigorously to help end violence in Libya”…

@marianhouk: Pillay: HR “Council should use all means available to compel Libyan Government to respect the human rights + heed the will of its people”.

@fearraigh75 – Interesting to learn Libya is a shareholder in the Pearson Group, owner of the Financial Times. In

Alec Collett, a former colleague accredited as a journalist at UNHQ/NY in the early to mid-1980s, was one of those internationals kidnapped during the long Lebanese civil war.  Alec was taken from a car near Beirut airport in March  1985, while on a temporary assignment for UNRWA in Lebanon.  The car’s driver was also seized, but later released

After the U.S. attack on Libya in the spring of 1986, there were reports that those holding Alec had executed him in retaliation. A video was released, showing his body hanging from the limb of a leafy tree.

But, for unclear reasons, the UN did not want to acknowledge Alec’s execution. The UN Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar, expressed anger but offered no explanation when asked directly by this journalist — at the time, the President of the UN Correspondents Association (UNCA) why the UN was not accepting the reports of Alec’s death.  UNCA issued a statement condemning the reported execution, and asking for a prompt return of the body, to help ease the anguish of Alec’s family.

Though there was no apparent reason to disbelieve the claims about the execution, nothing was entirely sure about Alec’s fate until this week, when British DNA tests reportedly conducted in London confirmed that a body unearthed recently in the Bekaa Valley by a British forensics team was, indeed, that of Alec Collett.

[Months before the execution, as the BBC reported in a profile published on their website, "the United Nations Correspondents' Association ... made him [Alec Collett] their honorary president, a title he has retained ever since”… The BBC report, posted here, is wrong in a couple of respects, including these: (1) the decision to name Alec as “honorary president” of UNCA was taken at the end of 1985, and not in 1986; UNCA is not, as the BBC wrote, an “organisation for journalists based around the world” — it is an organization for journalists accredited to UNHQ in New York. And, this decision, taken at the urging of some colleagues, was not popular with all of the journalists. Some, who had not hesitated to use his captivity for their own political purposes in the UNCA elections held at the end of 1985, were nevertheless opposed to making Alec Collett “honorary president” on the grounds that (as they argued) he had been on a temporary assignment to UNRWA, and not working strictly as a journalist, at the time he was kidnapped …]

The Times of London reported on 19 November that “Seven British police officers and two forensic archaeologists are excavating near the village of Aitta al-Fuqar in the Bekaa Valley. It is the site of a base belonging to Fatah — the Revolutionary Council. The radical and violent Palestinian group was led by Sabri al-Banna, better known as Abu Nidal.  The team found two bodies, one of them an unidentified man who was first found during an earlier attempt to find Mr Collett 11 years ago. It was reinterred by Lebanese authorities. The second body is undergoing DNA tests to discover if it is Mr Collett.  Lebanese troops have sealed off the site to reporters and onlookers”.  This report can be found here

A second report by the Times of London, published on 24 November, said that “The UN confirmed yesterday that remains unearthed by British investigators in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley are those of Alec Collett, a British journalist kidnapped in 1985 and killed a year later. A spokesman said that Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary-General, while saddened by the news, ‘hopes the actions taken to find his remains can provide a measure of comfort to his loved ones’. The remains were identified with the help of DNA tests conducted in London by the Metropolitan Police. Collett, who was 64 when he was abducted, was on assignment with the UN reporting on Palestinian refugees in April 1985. He was kidnapped by Fatah Revolutionary Council, a radical Palestinian group headed by Abu Nidal. Collett is survived by his wife, Elaine, who also worked for the UN and lives in New York. Last week’s search was the fourth attempt in 11 years to recover his remains. The hunt had been narrowed to an isolated military base, once run by Abu Nidal militants, between the village of Aitta al-Fukhar and the Syrian border. The camp consists of a handful of derelict single-storey concrete buildings scattered on the slopes of a steep rocky valley. The walls of one abandoned building were daubed with sketches of the huge wooden water wheels in the Syrian city of Hama, and of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, and his father Hafez al-Assad. The camp housed a small detachment of Syrian troops until 2005. One of the buildings was half-buried beneath bulldozed earth and rock for protection against attack, and it was here that Mr Collett spent his last weeks in captivity. The cell block consisted of three small rooms and a simple latrine. The doors and any furniture and fittings inside the cramped building long ago disappeared and today it appears to be a shelter for goats that scramble over the surrounding slopes. Mr Collett’ fate was sealed after US aircraft bombed Tripoli, in Libya on April 15, 1986. In retaliation, eight days later, the Libyan-backed militants took Mr Collett from his bleak cell and hanged him, then shot him in the back of the head — according to a Palestinian eyewitness whose testimony in 2005 provided additional confirmation that the British journalist had been buried on the site. A team from the Metropolitan police counterterrorist department and two forensic archaeologists began excavating a section of the camp on November 14. A digger scraped away the surface layer of stony soil, then investigators worked the ground by hand. Small red flags marked the spot of each dig. The operation was conducted amid tight security, with Lebanese troops keeping reporters and onlookers away, but The Times was able to gain access to the site. ‘We looked for signs of disturbance in the soil and focussed on those areas’, said one of the investigators. Two bodies were discovered. One of them was that of a suspected Palestinian militant whose remains were first uncovered during an earlier search for Mr Collett’s body in 1998, and subsequently re-interred by Lebanese authorities. The second body was that of Mr Collett, the bullet hole in the skull convincing the investigators that they had found their man pending the final result of the DNA tests”. This Times of London report is posted here

While the Times of London report, above, said that “Last week’s search was the fourth attempt in 11 years to recover his remains”, a BBC report here said that the UN “tried three times between 1995 and 2000 to find his body and there have been numerous false alarms”.

Two UN officials were trying to get Alec Collett’s release much earlier — in the months immediately after his abduction, and after the reports of the execution: Perez de Cuellar’s aide Gianni Picco, who got involved in some of the hostage negotiations as part of larger regional efforts, and the Lebanese-Palestinian information official, Samir Sanbar. They operated, apparently, on different tracks. I was also told, at the time, that the high-ranking British UN official Brian Urquhart, was also involved on another separate track. And, UNCA made several quiet attempts, at the time, to contact various personalities in Lebanon to seek their help, without result…

My friend and mentor Promeneur, who did not speak to me for more than a year because of the UNCA election and its results, wrote me this week from London and said: “They did the DNA and yes it’s Alec. Any suggestion how I might contact Elaine? She with the UN still I wonder? Gosh their son will be in his mid-30s … and Alec he would now be 87 I think I got that right, double-gosh … Turns out it was … a retaliatory gesture after Reagan bombed Tripoli (remember how it was timed to run live on the 10 o’clock news) … otherwise they figure he was about to be released. All those years I’d imagined it must have been a Lebanese group, reasoning that Alec’s strong PLO sympathies must have tripped him up. Then I reasoned that he wouldn’t have lasted long without his medication – he had diabetes and other stuff, but no seems they did hang him. A guy doing life in the US has given an eye-witness account. The assignment had been a gift from UNRWA who knew how broke he was – it was going to clear his credit card debts etc.”…

UPDATE: Ma’an News Agency reported this morning that Abbas, who was in Amman on Saturday on his way to New York, has postponed his trip to the United Nations and will return to Ramallah today for a meeting with visiting French President Nicholas Sarkozy. Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki, who was with Abbas in Amman, is being sent to New York to attend the UN Security Council deliberations…

Separately, the U.S. State Department issued a statement in Washington, through spokesperson Sean McCormack, saying: “We are working toward a cease-fire that would not allow a reestablishment of the status quo ante, where Hamas can continue to launch rockets out of Gaza and to condemn the people of Gaza to a life of misery. It is obvious that that cease-fire should take place as soon as possible, but we need a cease-fire that is durable, sustainable, and not time limited. Hamas has held the people of Gaza hostage ever since their illegal coup against the forces of President Mahmoud Abbas, the legitimate President of the Palestinian people. They have used Gaza as a launching pad for rockets against Israeli cities, and have contributed deeply to a very bad daily life for the Palestinian people in Gaza and to a humanitarian situation that we have all been trying to address. Hamas has made it very difficult for the people of Gaza to have a reasonable life. The United States is deeply concerned about the humanitarian situation and the protection of innocents. In this vein, we have expressed our concerns to the Israeli government that any military action needs to be mindful of the potential consequences to civilians”.

Israeli media are prominently reporting that these delays are just maneuvers to allow Israel time to do what it wants to do in Gaza. Haaretz, for example, is reporting that “The international community, headed by the U.S. and Egypt, is giving Israel time to carry out the ground offensive in Gaza, so it will severely damage Hamas’ regime. The rationale behind such a move is that a weakened Hamas would improve the chances of achieving a stable agreement in Gaza once the fighting subsides. And so there is a degree of foot-dragging in the diplomatic efforts to reach a cease-fire. The most visible sign of this was the decision to postpone the United Nations Security Council discussion on Gaza planned for Monday. France postponed the discussion to Wednesday, to ensure that it would be held after French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s visit to the region … During her visit to France on Thursday, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni had requested that the discussion be postponed”.

The same Haaretz report adds that “In its efforts to formulate a draft for an agreement with Hamas in the wake of Operation Cast Lead, the designated team of Israeli officials is aiming to bring about the restoration of the cease-fire with Hamas, which expired on December 19, in addition to steps to curb Hamas’ arms-smuggling through the border with Egypt. The officials, all of them from the Prime Minister’s Office, the defense establishment and the Foreign Ministry, are not seeking to introduce international enforcement bodies, but rather the introduction of an upgraded border control system on the Egyptian side of the border. The U.S. administration supports such a move, and is expected to assist the Egyptians in stepping up their efforts to control the border. Currently, Israeli officials are trying to find a work program that would not infringe on Egyptian sovereignty, which is why Israeli diplomats are pessimistic about the prospect of stationing an international force in the Sinai Peninsula.
According to sources in the U.S., President George W. Bush has intercepted an initiative by his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice and her British counterpart, Secretary of State David Miliband, to formulate a cease-fire draft. One source said Bush instructed the State Department to refrain from action in the matter. To date, the U.S. has refrained from sending any envoys or delegates to the region. According to officials, the U.S. and Israel are cooperating diplomatically on the issue
Egypt’s unexpected support for Israel in the conflict with Hamas has, according to Israeli diplomats, been a pleasant surprise for Jerusalem”. This report can be read in full here .

But, the AP report cited above said that “Egypt’s U.N. Ambassador Maged Abdelaziz said it was regrettable that one permanent council member — a clear reference to the U.S. — refused to accept any statement at a time when ‘the aggression is escalating and more people are dying and the military attack on the ground is at its full scale’.”

“UNAIDS is concerned that certain scientific evidence appears to have not been taken into consideration and that this raises serious doubts regarding the conclusion reached by the court”, UNAIDS said in a news release. “As published in the scientific journal Nature, an analysis of HIV and hepatitis virus samples taken from some of the children concluded that the HIV viral strains were circulating in the hospital where the children were treated before the nurses and doctor arrived in March 1998″, it added. “UNAIDS urges that the present decision be reviewed, and that due weight be given to this evidence and all other available scientific evidence related to the case”.

A much stronger case was made in the London newspaper, the Independent: The Big Question: Why have five nurses and a doctor been condemned to death in Libya? , By Peter Popham, 20 December 2006:

“Why are we asking this question now?

Because yesterday the five Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor were, for the second time, sentenced to death by a Libyan court. The verdict was a carbon copy of that handed down by the court in the first trial in May 2004. The foreigners appealed to the Supreme Court and on Christmas Day 2005 the court accepted the appeal and ordered a retrial. The foreign health workers have now been in prison in Libya for nearly seven years, much of that time in degrading conditions. The trial has become by far the longest and most heavily politicised legal process in Libya’s history.

What is their alleged crime?

Almost too horrible to describe: deliberately pumping HIV-infected blood into the veins of hundreds of small Libyan boys and girls. Fifty-two children have died since the epidemic began. Some of the surviving children have tuberculosis and other Aids-related diseases, though the condition of many of the others has stabilised thanks to anti-retroviral medication. Many of the children are being treated at hospitals in Italy and France thanks to funding from the EU.

Why are we calling it ‘alleged’?

Because nobody outside Libya believes there is the slightest reason to think they are guilty. The nurses belonged to a larger group of Bulgarians who took up their contracts at Al-Fatih government hospital in Benghazi, Libya’s second city, in March 1998. Then in February of the next year, 23 Bulgarians working at the hospital were arrested, six of whom, along with the Palestinian, were held incommunicado for months, while the rest were released.

Those held were initially charged with ‘committing actions leading to the uncontrolled murder of people with the aim of undermining state security’ , in a plot that the Libyan authorities claimed had been dreamed up by the CIA and Mossad. The charge of which they were convicted yesterday was ‘deliberately causing an Aids epidemic by injecting over 400 children with harmful micro-organisms’, which also carries the death penalty.

On what evidence were they convicted?

The only evidence against them is a report that was hurriedly compiled by five Libyan doctors and which contains no data, only anecdotes. The court refused to hear witnesses in defence of the medical staff, and rejected requests for new inquiries into the HIV outbreak. The report by Aids experts Luc Montagnier and Vittorio Colizzi submitted to the original trial, which indicated that the epidemic was caused by poor hygiene – needles washed under the tap – and began before the Bulgarians arrived, was discounted. A new report published in Nature last week indicates that the outbreak stemmed from a single HIV-positive child under treatment in the hospital who had been infected by his mother; the virus, the report claims, was already present in the hospital in 1997. But the court did not wish to know.

What do the nurses say?

One of the accused, Christiana Valcheva, told the court: ‘No doctor or nurse would dare commit such a dreadful crime’.

All claim innocence, and insist that their confessions were tortured out of them. They brought a civil suit against their 10 alleged torturers, which was thrown out by a Tripoli court last year, and they were not allowed to appeal that verdict to the Supreme Court, nor to tell the new trial about what had happened to them. The nurses were once again obliged at the retrial to hear the confessions that had been extracted from them by beatings and electric shocks employed to send them to the firing squad.

Has the international community done much to help?

It has done quite a bit. The case is embarrassing all round because while in 1999, when it started, Libya was still an international pariah and nobody was surprised to hear Colonel Muammar Gaddafi making exotic allegations about CIA/Mossad conspiracies, since giving up the bomb in 2003 he has been making a ponderous return from the cold. This case has made the process more difficult. Since the original guilty verdict, the Council of the European Union has invited Libya to join the Barcelona Process – the EU-funded initiative to bring its Mediterranean neighbours into a closer political, economic and cultural relationship, intended to culminate in a free-trade zone – in exchange for dropping the case against the Bulgarians. In November 2004, the European Commission launched a Benghazi Aids Action Plan which has so far received €2m in EU money. Last year Colonel Gaddafi offered to drop the case on payment by Bulgaria of €10m for each infected child’s family. Bulgaria rejected the proposal, but in December set up its own international fund to help Libya combat Aids.

And there is probably more going on behind the scenes: last Friday David Welch, an American Assistant Secretary of State who helped negotiate the resumption of diplomatic relations between Libya and the US, arrived in Tripoli to discuss ‘issues which hinder improvements in relations”‘, according to the Libyan news agency Jana. No details were released. Welch has previously called for the nurses to be allowed to go home, and yesterday Washington said it was ‘disappointed’ with the trial verdict.

Why doesn’t Gaddafi commute the sentences?

Benghazi is the centre of opposition to his dictatorial regime, and the Aids epidemic has become a focus of mass popular anger. The idea propagated by Colonel Gaddafi himself that the epidemic was caused by the Bulgarians acting on the orders of foreign intelligence agencies was repeated verbatim at a press conference in London on Monday by the president of a group representing the victims.

But if he is looking for a way of taking revenge on the West for the loss of face (and dollars) inflicted over the Lockerbie bombing, then the closer the Bulgarians get to the firing squad, the harder the bargain he will be able to drive. There are still two legal steps the foreigners can take before they run out of options, first the Supreme Court, second the so-called ” high judicial council” described yesterday by Libya’s justice minister Ali Hasnaoui as senior to the Supreme Court. Whatever those bodies may decide, the real horse-trading should be starting about now … “
The Independent story on the Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor on trial in Libya is here.

After a judicious few days’ wait, UNSG Kofi Annan said at UNHQ/NY on Friday, according to a report from Associated Press (AP) that “he was ‘deeply concerned’ about a Libyan court’s decision to reimpose death sentences on five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor convicted of infecting children with HIV. Annan offered U.N. support for the children and for efforts to ‘find a humane solution for the fate of the medics.’ He said, ‘I am deeply concerned by confirmation of a guilty verdict and a death sentence’. Annan, whose tenure ends on Dec. 31, praised the international community for providing treatment and medicine to the infected children. Fifty children have died, and the rest have been treated in Europe
The AP story on Kofi Annan’s comments of concern is here.