Gaddafi 'will follow Hitler's footsteps'

February 24, 2011
AFP

ONE of Muammar Gaddafi's former ministers has predicted that the Libyan leader will follow in Adolf Hitler's footsteps by committing suicide, rather than give up power.

Mustapha Abdeljalil, justice minister until he quit over the bloody crackdown on protesters, told Sweden's Expressen that he expected Gaddafi to make good on his pledge to die on Libyan soil rather than slink into exile.

"Gaddafi's time is up. He is going to go like Hitler, he is going to commit suicide," Abdeljalil said in Thursay's edition of the newspaper.

Hitler committed suicide in his bunker in Berlin in April 1945 as he witnessed the disintegration of the Nazi German empire.

In comments published on the paper's website on Wednesday, Abdeljalil told Expressen that Gaddafi had personally ordered the 1988 Lockerbie plane bombing that killed 270 passengers, saying he had proof to back up his accusations.

Libyan national Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi was in 2001 convicted of the bombing of Pan AM Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie but he was freed in August 2009 after doctors said he was suffering from terminal cancer.

In his interview, the former minister also endorsed claims that Gaddafi had hired mercenaries from other parts of Africa who witnesses have said are at the forefront of the crackdown designed to shore up his 41-year rule.

"I knew that the regime had mercenaries before the uprising. The government decided in several meetings to grant citizenship to the (mercenaries) from Chad and Niger. That was something that I objected to and that is documented," he told the paper.