Libyan revolution ‘eats its children’ by PM kidnapping

News of the Libyan prime minister arrest is not surprising, German journalist Manual Ochsenreiter says.

The reason for the kidnapping is not visible on the surface and lies deep within the Libyan revolution which took place two years ago after Gaddafi’s government fell, he told RT.

RT:The Interior Ministry claims it was an arrest. Why don’t we know [for certain] why the PM has been held?

Manual Ochsenreiter: First of all, this news is not surprising at all and we still talk about Libya like an existing state when we listened to the news that the ministry says it was an arrest. [The] UN group say it was a kidnapping. So we have to take into account that Libya is disintegrated state, it’s a disintegrated area and when we talk about ministries we talk about something else than if we talk about ministries in existing states or in states with the state order. 

It’s not surprising at all that we kept this confusing, the news by the way this is not first confusing news we have from Libya since the so-called revolution. Just attention went away from Libya in the last month and went to Syria, but Libya is a disintegrated country controlled by warlords and those gangs with the biggest guns. So they do the government politics and what they do is confusing for us of course. So I’m not surprised at all.

RT:We have a report that there was an arrest and also a rebel group claims that it was a kidnapping as you say. If you had to guess, what do you think it has happened to the prime minister?

MO: Maybe there is no conflict between an arresting and a kidnapping, because we don’t know who is now working for the Interior Ministry. If we go two years back and if we see who the ground troops of NATO and the French military blowing away the Gaddafi government were, we see that these were Al-Qaeda gangs, these were criminal, violent [people], who are today integrated in the so-called Libyan government. We have to see here just one example of Hakim Belhadj [who] became military commander of the Libyan capital and he’s no politician in Libya. You cannot rely on these allies. This is maybe the lesson the West receives now. Maybe we see now that the revolution eats its children by the kidnapping of the prime minister.

RT:If the rebels are behind the abduction, why is the prime minister a target there?

Manual Ochsenreiter: When we go back two years we have to see what role the prime minister played at the time of the so-called Libyan revolution. The prime minister was located in Europe; he was heading the opposition of Libyan group at the time of French President Nicolas Sarkozy was for a military action against the Libyan government. He was in Europe the poster boy of Libyan revolution. [The] nice face which covered the fact that undergrounds are fighting terrorists, Al-Qaeda guys, criminal gangs. Maybe there is now in a conflict between those gangs and those poster boys of the revolution and of course there are many conflicts about corruption. It’s also about selling interests in Libya as a country with natural resources. So a lot of groups claimed their interest in having benefit. So I think there are many conflicts we don’t see now at the surface which much play the role in this also.

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