Younes: a traitor.. not a traitor !

Nobody knew what to expect as we headed to Benghazi's local version of Tahrir Square, called Courthouse Square. We were going anyway to cover the usual Friday prayers. Abdul Fattah Younes, the top commander of the rebels' army was killed yesterday in very mysterious circumstances.

The streets were as calm as ever.. just like any other morning. The usual armed men outside Tibesty Hotel had disappeared last night after the shootings. They are now back.

Upon our arrival to the square we were surprised to find that the funeral of Younes was actually about to take place, just then ! There was actually a coffin.. even two. One was Younes' and the other was that of one the two officers killed with him. So does that mean they found the body? We had been told yesterday that there was no body.

Would there be a funeral without a body? I found out late at night that the body had been burned. That was probably the reason why Mustapha Abdul Jalil, the head of the Transitional National Council said they were looking for the body.

I found a young man sitting on one side of the square, eyes filled with tears. He turned out to be Younes' son. He told me the body was indeed in the coffin but he would not tell me when they had found it, where or how.

The atmosphere was of utmost sadness. 

Last Friday when I came to the square it was very touching to see women sobbing over the martyrs. But today it was the men shedding tears. I saw depressed faces. I saw shock in their eyes. I felt sorrow in their voices.

Younes was clearly a popular figure in the square. He was called a martyr, like Abdul Jalil had called him. No talk of treason here or of the Council's questioning of Younes. The culprit is : The Fifth Column ---> Gaddafi.

Members of his Special Forces Battalion vowed they would take revenge. His nephew said that his tribe, El Oubaidat, backed the TNC, backed Abdul Jalil. However, let's not forget two things : first, that although this might well be the position of the tribe but he does not speak for the whole tribe, and second that it was not the TNC that issued the arrest warrant for Younes, it was the TNC's Executive Office, namely Ali El Issawi.  While Abdul Jalil is reported to have issued a release order for Younes.. but it was too late then.

The funeral was solemn. The scene of his family members standing in one row as his coffin is being put in the ground was quite powerful. They started firing into the air.. and they kept doing it for more than 10 minutes. It was truly frightening.  It only shows how much respect they hold for Younes.

Behind the scenes, people close to the military told me they had been suspecting for one month that Younes had been in touch with Tripoli and even Cairo. I asked about the presumed wrong coordinates given to NATO, the answer was: naaah that was just a rumour, he did not do that.

Nobody is willing to accuse Younes of treason on the record. Some said to me: we just suspected him, we should not accuse him blindly. The questioning by TNC was supposed to give answers to those suspicions.

One version of the story says he was questioned before he got killed. The official version is that he got killed before he was questioned. It does make a difference, of course !

The head of the armed group that is accused of having shot Younes has been arrested but he did not do it. Someone else in his group did it. I was told that the group used to fight alongside the revolutionaries, but split a while back.

So would the "fifth column" be so good as to infiltrate so perfectly in order to execute such an operation against quite an important man both militarily and politically? If Gaddafi's men are capable of that, then it is quite a concern. Benghazi was thought to have become completely safe.

During the night the "fifth column" is reported to have broken into a prison and freed around 80 pro-Gaddafi prisoners, 60 of which National Security men managed to catch while 20 are still out there.

It is clear there is competition between different factions fighting Gaddafi troops. It is clear there is also a difference between the NTC and its Executive Office. But I guess that is all very normal. Nothing here is homogenous. The only thing that unites people is to go after Gaddafi. 

We get rid of Gaddafi first, said someone at the funeral, then we deal with our own issues.

I suddenly remembered how I had heard a politician say a few days ago: is Abdul Fattah Younes dead yet?  I did not take it seriously then. Little did I know I should well have!

Read my earlier post Younes is .. Dead !
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من قتل يونس؟ مقالة اقتبس منها ما قلته عبر الجزيرة على الهواء مباشرة من جنازة عبد الفتاح يونس

Younes is .. Dead !!

It was quite an eventful night after an eventful day. 

Rumours started circulating early morning on Thursday about Rebel Army Commander Abdul Fattah Younes having been arrested !!

- Arrested? By whom, I asked? 

- By the Transitional National Council ..

- Aren't they on the same side? 

- Yes, I was told, but.. there are issues !

It did not sound too good. Nobody would confirm to us the rumours which were growing stronger by the hour.

It was clear something was indeed happening.. and by the time we got a confirmed source telling us that Abdul Fattah Younes had indeed been arrested and called in for questioning, the rumours had gone in a different direction. They were saying the man has been killed, some going as far as saying : he was executed for his treason!

Treason???? What does that mean? That he was still working for Gaddafi??

Now that is indeed a very very serious accusation. Younes is one of the so-called "Free Officers" who accompanied Muammar Gaddafi in his 1969 "Al Fateh Revolution". He is considered one of his long-time closest comrades. He was his Interior Minister - since 2009 - when he defected in February 2011 at the start of the revolution because of Gaddafi's repression of protesters. He commanded a battalion based in Benghazi, the Special Forces known as Battalion 32.

We spent long hours waiting for the TNC to issue a statement amid growing rumours about Younes' fate, about some rebel troops having retreated from the Brega frontline, about special forces deploying in Benghazi and much more. And finally TNC head Mustapha Abdul Jalil showed up.

He said Younes was killed, he was a martyr, alluding to Gaddafi being behind this assasination.

No body though !

NO BODY??

I asked a TNC member how they knew he was killed if they had no body. He said : we have witnesses who saw the killing.

Shortly after the statement by Abdul Jalil things started going crazy at Tibesty Hotel where we all were. Gunshots were heard just outside the hotel, two young men were screaming in the lobby : so you made him a traitor, so you made him an agent?

The hotel lobby was packed with journalists and others who had attended the official statement reading by Abdul Jalil. I don't know where Abdul Jalil was but I did not see him leave, unless he had left through a backdoor, which is possible.

The shooting continued for a while, we all hid away from the entrance of the hotel lobby.  A colleague of mine outside happened to be speaking on the phone when his camera was taken away from him by the same people that were shooting. He said they arrived in a car and they were all armed.

So we, unarmed people stayed inside the hotel while armed people were outside the hotel. They were arguing and gunshots continued.  A hotel window was smashed.

That was around 11.30pm local Benghazi time.

About an hour later or more, another shooting took place. 20-30 people tried to storm into the hotel, but were stopped by security. The hotel lobby was evacuated.  People on the street were chanting angrily : The martyrs' blood will not go in vain !

Things got calm soon afterwards. Crowds slowly pulled away from the street across the hotel.

Someone I know claims to have spoken to Younes by phone just before he was killed. He said to me that Younes' body had been burned. He also claimed that Younes told him it was salafists (radical islamists) who had come for him with the NTC arrest warrant. This person claimed Younes was "arrested" and taken back to Benghazi just as he was planning to enter Brega and that Younes decided not to fight it, went along with it. Younes was allegedly hoping to enter Brega and pray there on Friday. 

Others are saying that Younes was working for Gaddafi, was giving wrong coordinates to NATO, had stacked weapons somewhere without telling anyone about it. These were allegedly the probable reasons for the TNC's arrest order. He was supposedly going to be questioned in Benghazi.

We are told he was killed outside Qar Younes Camp before the questioning. But even this information is contradictory with other information.

Whatever the truth may be, this is certainly a big blow to the revolutionaries and an automatic victory for Gaddafi, whether or not he was involved in setting it up. We are talking about the rebel's top military commander being assasinated by we-don't-know-whom. It is a big thing. People were really shocked in Benghazi.

Younes is from El Oubaidat Tribe, a huge tribe in Eastern Libya. We saw a tribesman sitting next to Abdul Jalil during his official statement. But we don't know how the tribe might react, although Abdul Jalil said that he and the tribes agreed that the focus now should be on Gaddafi, meaning any differences can be dealt with later.

The last thing this revolution needs is division. Let's see how the next few hours unfold. It looks quiet in Benghazi for now as I am heading to the Friday prayer in Courthouse Square, the local version of "Tahrir Square".

Read Younes : a traitor.. not a traitor !

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