Gaddafi ‘gold’ convoy in Niger

A rebel places a flag on the last checkpoint before Bani Walid, Libya. (Reuters)

Benghazi/Agadez (Niger), Sept. 6 (Reuters): Scores of Libyan army vehicles crossed the desert frontier into Niger in what may be a bid by Muammar Gaddafi to seek refuge in a friendly African state, military sources from France and Niger told Reuters today.       

The Libyan rebels who overthrew Gaddafi two weeks ago said they also thought about a dozen other vehicles that crossed the remote border may have carried gold and cash apparently looted from a branch of Libya’s central bank in Gaddafi’s home town.       

Details of the developments remained very sketchy.       

The military sources said a convoy of between 200 and 250 vehicles was escorted to the northern city of Agadez by the army of Niger, a poor and landlocked former French colony. It might, said a French military source, be joined by Gaddafi en route to adjacent Burkina Faso, which has offered him asylum.       

US officials said they thought Gaddafi was still in Libya, though the convoy in Niger might contain senior figures.       

France, Niger and Burkina Faso, as well as Libya’s new rulers and Nato, all denied knowing where Gaddafi was or of any deal to let him go abroad or find refuge from Libyans and the International Criminal Court who want to put him on trial.       

French foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said it was for Libyans to decide the venue but that Gaddafi must not slip away quietly. “He will have to face justice for all the crimes he has committed in the past 42 years,” he said.       

Near Tripoli, Reuters journalists found torture chambers used recently as Gaddafi tried to suppress the revolt.        

Sources close to Niger’s government said the head of Gaddafi’s security brigade, Mansour Dhao, was in the capital Niamey. He was allowed in to the country earlier in the week.

But Niger’s foreign minister, Bazoum Mohamed, was quoted by Al Arabiya television saying that Gaddafi was not in the military convoy, which arrived late yesterday.       

Those comments did not contradict a French military source who said the 69-year-old fugitive and his son and heir Saif al-Islam might join the convoy later to head for Burkina Faso.       

France has taken a lead in the Nato action backing Libya’s uprising and, with its western allies, would be likely to have the ability to track any sizeable convoy in the empty quarter.       

But Niger’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Adani Illo, told Reuters that such surveillance over thousands of miles of desert was still hard. “The desert zone is vast and the frontier is porous,” he said. “If a convoy of 200 to 250 vehicles went through, it is like a drop of water in an ocean.”       

Gaddafi has broadcast defiant messages since he was forced into hiding two weeks ago, and has vowed to die fighting on his own soil. But he also has long friendships with his poor African neighbours, with which he shared some of Libya’s oil wealth.       

The sources said the convoy, probably including officers from army units based in the south of Libya, may have looped through Algeria rather than cross the Libya-Niger frontier. Algeria last week took in Gaddafi’s wife, daughter and two other sons.