Cables depict Qaddafi's bizarre, infighting family

Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi is seen in a 2009 file photo.

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Think you're family's crazy? You've probably got nothing on the Qaddafis.

Hundreds of cables from the U.S. embassy in Tripoli released by the transparency group WikiLeaks paint a sometimes humorous and sometimes disturbing picture of Libyan President Muammar al-Qaddafi and his seven sons.

The cables alternately depict absurd extravagance - private island concerts by U.S. pop superstars - and vicious infighting among a group of brothers seeking ever larger pieces of the oligarchic pie and a better claim as the heir to the despot who has ruled Libya for 42 years.

"The glimpses of the clan's antics in recent years that have reached Libyans despite Col. Qaddafi's tight control of the media have added to the public anger now boiling over. And the tensions between siblings could emerge as a factor in the chaos in the oil-rich African country," the New York Times reported Wednesday in one of several reviews of the Libya cables.

Wikileaks cables from embassy Tripoli

Numerous cables focus on a long-simmering feud between the Libyan and Swiss governments that began when one of the Qaddafi sons, Hannibal, was arrested in Geneva for physically abusing his personal staff then hiding from and resisting Swiss police with armed bodyguards.

Libya accused the Swiss of using unnecessary force, violating Hannibal's diplomatic immunity and of "deliberately seeking to embarrass Libya because of Switzerland's 'well-known' dislike of Arabs," according to a U.S. embassy cable.

Libya, in clear retaliation, arrested two Swiss citizens for "immigration offenses" and began shutting down Swiss companies conducting business in Libya on bureaucratic pretexts. The feud eventually led Switzerland's ambassador to Libya to declare the relationship "dead."

Hannibal was separately accused of abusing his wife. Other female family members intervened to advise the wife not to report the abuse and to attribute it to an "accident," the documents show.

In 2008, Condoleezza Rice became the first secretary of state since John Foster Dulles to visit Libya in 1953. In a "scenesetter" cable, classified as secret, local diplomats advised Rice that Libya was a valued partner in the U.S. "war on terror," that it sought the prestige of a leadership role among African states and strong bilateral relations with the U.S. and that her visit would come amid nationalist fervor, days after the 39th anniversary of the 1969 military coup that brought Qadddafi to power.

But the scenestter also described human rights issues, complicated ties with Iraq and warned that Qaddafi is "notoriously mercurial. He often avoids making eye contact during the initial portion of meetings, and there may be long, uncomfortable periods of silence. Alternatively, he can be an engaging and charming interlocutor."

The 68-year-old leader is "a hypochondriac who fears flying over water and often fasts on Mondays and Thursdays. ... who once added "King of Culture" to the long list of titles he had awarded himself," the Times wrote in its review of the cables. He is also, rather notoriously, "accompanied everywhere by a 'voluptuous blonde,' the senior member of his posse of Ukrainian nurses."

[Nikos_Retsos]

I don't have the slightest doubt that Gadhafi is hallucinating now. It won't be easy for him to digest that from his omnipotent and merculiar despotic stature that he has enjoyed for 42 years, he has become now as worthless and as disposable as an old camel.

Like Saddam Hussein who called on all Iraqis to start "The Mother of All Battles" against the U.S. invasion, now Gadhafi is asking his paramilitary militias, and the Sub-African mercenaries still under his control, to wage the "Mother of all battles" on anybody in Libya who opposes his lunatic rule. On his appearance on the Libyan TV yesterday he howled that he was ready to commit genocide against Libyans, and die if necessary as a "martyr" in the process, rather than accept to be relegated to the scrap-heap of history - along with other bloody African heads of state like former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.

Gadhafi has been a lunatic and a renegade head of state for 42 years in the international political circles, and the subject of scorn and ridicule in the global media. But now that even his people want to shove him into the garbage dump of history, his lunacy has reached the apogee of his irrational behavior, and he is ready to take as many Libyan down with him before he meet his fate.

I hope that this is the last gasp of his paranoia, because the sacrifices of the Libyan people to get rid of him should not go to waste. God bless those Libyans who gave their lives to bring some sanity into the government of their country. Nikos Retsos, retired professor