The Daily Mail is reporting Moammar Gadhafi has been reported spotted in Zimbabwe, having apparently escaped to that African country from Libya and is now ensconced as a guest Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean dictator.
This report may turn out to be the equivalent of an Elvis sighting, but the venue would fit Gadhafi’s needs for a bolt hole. Mugabe is an even worse dictator than Gadhafi had been. He had led the insurgency that ended the white minority government in the country formally known as Rhodesia. Then he proceeded to destroy Zimbabwe’s economy by instituting a number of policies that are bizarre and vicious even by sub-Saharan Africa standards.
As a result Mugabe is an international pariah, at least outside of Africa. He maintains his rule through the usual tools of a tyranny, fear and armed force. So he is the perfect soul mate for Gadhafi. While most of the people of Zimbabwe live in squalor, Mugabe and his circle are enjoying the high life. Gadhafi should be very comfortable in his new home, provided that Mugabe, known on occasion to be moody, does not turn on him.
The report may turn out not to be true or Gadhafi’s Zimbabwean sojourn may be a temporary stay pending a more permanent exile in some more hospitable country ruled over by a dictator with a better grip of objective reality. Nicaragua still seems available.
Meanwhile Scottish officials are very interested in finding out where Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie Bomber is hiding. Megrahi, who had been serving a lifetime stretch in a Scottish prison for helping to murder an airliner full of people in the skies over Lockerbie, was released on compassionate grounds on the assumption that he had three months to live. That was two years ago, which may be a commentary on the superiority of the Libyan health care system over that in the United Kingdom.
Megrahi being set at liberty turned out to be a source of embarrassment for Scottish officials, with suspicions of corruption being whispered about. It was also the source of anger for the friends and relatives of Lockerbie victims, seeing the man who killed their loved ones living it up as Gadhafi’s honored guest. One might say that the Megrahi affair is a great argument for the death penalty. Dead mass murders don’t get to be freed on any grounds, compassionate or not.
Source: Gaddafi ‘seen in Zimbabwe on Mugabe’s private jet’ as Libya rebels march on dictator’s home town, Damien Gayle, Daily Mail, August 27, 2011
Gadhafi Asylum Request to Nicaragua Unlikely to Be Accepted, Mark R. Whittington, Yahoo News, August 24, 2011
Libya: Scottish officials still in dark as to whereabouts of Lockerbie bomber, Andy Philip, The Scottsman, August 26, 2011