Up to 20k surface-to-air missiles looted in Libya. Thanks, Pres. Downgrade!

[Skip8282]

Report: Libyan Islamist Rebels Rounding Up Black Africans

    TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) — Rebel forces and armed civilians are rounding up thousands of black Libyans and migrants from sub-Sahara Africa, accusing them of fighting for ousted strongman Moammar Gadhafi and holding them in makeshift jails across the capital.

    Virtually all of the detainees say they are innocent migrant workers, and in most cases there is no evidence that they are lying.

    But that is not stopping the rebels from placing the men in facilities like the Gate of the Sea sports club, where about 200 detainees — all black — clustered on a soccer field this week, bunching against a high wall to avoid the scorching sun.

    Handling the prisoners is one of the first major tests for the rebel leaders, who are scrambling to set up a government that they promise will respect human rights and international norms, unlike the dictatorship they overthrew.

    The rebels’ National Transitional Council has called on fighters not to abuse prisoners and says those accused of crimes will receive fair trials.

    There has been little credible evidence of rebels killing or systematically abusing captives during the six-month conflict. Still, the African Union and Amnesty International have protested the treatment of blacks inside Libya, saying there is a potential for serious abuse.

    Aladdin Mabrouk, a spokesman for Tripoli’s military council, said no one knows how many people have been detained in the city, but he guessed more than 5,000.

    While no central registry exists, he said neighborhood councils he knows have between 200 and 300 prisoners each.

    The city of 1.8 million has dozens of such groups.

http://news.yahoo.com/libyan-rebels-round-black-africans-130723394.html




Smell that Arab "tolerance". Ask the black, Christian Darfurians how well the Muslims treat them.

Ah shit.  The UN better start prepping some "strongly worded" letters to the "interim" government.

[andreisdaman]

EXCLUSIVE: Libyan missiles looted

CNN's Ben Wedeman and Ingrid Formanek reporting from Tripoli, Libya -

TRIPOLI, Libya (CNN) - A potent stash of Russian-made surface-to-air missiles is missing from a huge Tripoli weapons warehouse amid reports of weapons looting across war-torn Libya.

They are Grinch SA-24 shoulder-launched missiles, also known as Igla-S missiles, the equivalent of U.S.-made Stinger missiles.

A CNN team and Human Rights Watch found dozens of empty crates marked with packing lists and inventory numbers that identified the items as Igla-S surface-to-air missiles.

The list for one box, for example, written in English and Russian, said it had contained two missiles, with inventory number "Missile 9M342," and a power source, inventory number "Article 9B238."

Grinch SA-24s are designed to target front-line aircraft, helicopters, cruise missiles and drones. They can shoot down a plane flying as high as 11,000 feet and can travel 19,000 feet straight out.

Fighters aligned with the National Transitional Council and others swiped armaments from the storage facility, witnesses told Human Rights Watch. The warehouse is located near a base of the Khamis Brigade, a special forces unit in Gadhafi's military, in the southeastern part of the capital.

The warehouse contains mortars and artillery rounds, but there are empty crates for those items as well. There are also empty boxes for another surface-to-air missile, the SA-7.

Peter Bouckaert, Human Rights Watch emergencies director, told CNN he has seen the same pattern in armories looted elsewhere in Libya, noting that "in every city we arrive, the first thing to disappear are the surface-to-air missiles."

He said such missiles can fetch many thousands of dollars on the black market.

"We are talking about some 20,000 surface-to-air missiles in all of Libya, and I've seen cars packed with them." he said. "They could turn all of North Africa into a no-fly zone."

There was no immediate comment from NTC officials.

The lack of security at the weapons site raises concerns about stability in post-Gadhafi Libya and whether the new NTC leadership is doing enough to stop the weapons from getting into the wrong hands.

A NATO official, who asked to not be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, said 575 surface-to-air missiles, radar systems and sites or storage facilities were hit by NATO airstrikes and either damaged or destroyed between March 31 and Saturday. He didn't elaborate on the specifics about the targets.

Gen. Carter Ham, chief of U.S. Africa Command, has said he's concerned about the proliferation of weapons, most notably the shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles. He said there were about 20,000 in Libya when the international operation began earlier this year and many of them have not been accounted for.

"That's going to be a concern for some period of time," he said in April.

Gilles de Kerchove, the European Union counterterrorism coordinator, raised concerns Monday about the possibility that al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, based in North Africa, could gain access to small arms, machine guns and surface-to-air missiles.

Western officials worry that weapons from the storage sites will end up in the hands of militants or adversaries like Iran.

The governments of neighboring guy and Chad have both said that weapons from Libya are already being smuggled into their countries, and they are destined for al Qaeda. They include detonators and a plastic explosive called Semtex. Chad's president said they include SA-7 missiles.

An ethnic Tuareg leader in the northern guy city of Agadez also said many weapons have come across the border. He said he and other Tuareg leaders are anxious about Gadhafi's Tuareg fighters returning home - with their weapons - and making common cause with al Qaeda cells in the region. Gadhafi's fighting forces have included mercenaries from other African nations.

The missing weapons also conjure fears of what happened in Iraq, where people grabbed scores of weapons when Saddam Hussein's regime was overthrown.

Bouckaert said one or two of the missing artillery rounds are "enough to make a car bomb."

"We should remember what happened in Iraq," he said, when the "country was turned upside down" by insurgents using such weaponry.

There have been similar concerns in Afghanistan, where the United States provided thousands of Stinger missiles to the Afghan mujahedeen when they were fighting the Soviets in the 1980s. The United States has spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to buy them back, fearful that they would fall into the hands of terrorists.

http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/07/exclusive-libyan-missiles-looted/?hpt=hp_t2



Hahahaha. Keep up the good work, President Foodstamp. I guess handing Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups entire countries wasn't enough, now you go out of your way to arm them. 

is this is Obama's fault, why?..how?

this thread is idiotic....weapons and money go missing in wars all the time...we are missing a ton of shit in Afghanistan and Iraq..its normal..what you are saying is nothing new......except that you are breaking your skull trying to twist things into being Obama's fault..

KEEP TRYING

[Vince G, CSN MFT]

Oh really air marshall Vince. This is a big friggen deal. They think a SAM brought down the SEALs. We had an Iraqi bring an old SA-7 to our front gate...it was a show stopper for a week until it was determined that it was dug up from an old cache. This is an issue. This was something that NATO should have planned for> i expect that they did and targeted weapons sites but who knows whats gotten out.

Something that NATO should have planned for???  Please....Libya has piles and piles of stockpile weapons lying around the country.  I'm not saying that SAM's are harmless but they sure as hell are not nuclear or chemical weapons.  Its only expected that the rebels find these weapons....so what???

BTW, a SAM brought down a fucking helicopter....it would have a much harder time bringing down something that moved faster....like maybe an jet....


Again, has nothing to do with the President, or the United States...the Russians sold the SAM's to Quadaffi and the rebels now have them.

[andreisdaman]

Something that NATO should have planned for???  Please....Libya has piles and piles of stockpile weapons lying around the country.  I'm not saying that SAM's are harmless but they sure as hell are not nuclear or chemical weapons.  Its only expected that the rebels find these weapons....so what???

BTW, a SAM brought down a fucking helicopter....it would have a much harder time bringing down something that moved faster....like maybe an jet....


Again, has nothing to do with the President, or the United States...the Russians sold the SAM's to Quadaffi and the rebels now have them.

excellent post, Vince....these guys go out of their way trying to think up ways to blame the president...they can't see their own hypocrisy

[pillowtalk]

Coming to an 747 near you!  Israeli F16 very soon..............

FIXED !!

PT

[Grape Ape]

Its only expected that the rebels find these weapons....so what???

And you expect them  to just sit on this potential gold mine of product?

[Soul Crusher]

And you expect them just sit on this potential gold mine of product?

Or that airsoft guns can be converted to machine guns.