THE GUARDIAN: Dazzling display at airbase launches 40th anniversary tributes to Libyan leader
Libya's celebrations marking Muammar Gaddafi's four decades in power got off to a spectacular start this morning with a colourful extravaganza lauding his achievements as the heroic "knight" of the country's revolution.
Dancing, singing, marching and feats of horsemanship were combined in a dazzling display at Tripoli's Mitiga airbase in the early hours of the morning in a lavish tribute to the one man who will forever be identified with the coup on 1 September 1969.
Gaddafi, in mottled beige suit and matching cap, sat in the centre of a dais under a striped awning as African, Arab and other VIPs were disgorged from black limousines and ranked according to their importance before the show began after the Ramadan iftar meal.
Green laser beams cut through the humid night sky to announce the "Knight and Men" salute to "a great leader, a maker of great events" – first in Arabic and then English, French, Italian and Spanish for the many foreign guests.
A troupe of Italian girls took part in the dancing sequences, but the horse riders were Libyans, men and women in tribal dress, strutting and cantering across the Astroturf repeatedly to shake their fists and hail the man on the podium. >>> Ian Black in Tripoli | Tuesday, September 01, 2009
THE TELEGRAPH: Libyan celebrations of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s four decades in power saw the strongman lash out at Western governments he has wooed for six years.
Col Gaddafi dedicated the first spectacular mass performance of a week of celebration to his adopted daughter Hannah, who was killed in an American air raid on Tripoli in 1986. The events appear designed to inflame tensions with America and Britain, after several years of steadily improving relations.
The British embassy said a charge d'affair would attend tonight's performances in the absence of an ambassador. The guests are to watch a military parade comprising detachments of African, Arab and European troops this evening.
Some 80 aircraft, including two French Rafale jets, are to carry out a fly-past over the streets of Tripoli where the security services have imposed draconian security controls, closing the main roads and only allowing specially screened vehicles to pass checkpoints.
Tripoli's streets have been decked with thousands of multicoloured lights, and hundreds of Gaddafi portraits and placards paying tribute to the leader, including one saying: "May Glory Be Yours, Oh Maker of Glories." >>> Damien McElroy in Tripoli | Tuesday, September 01, 2009
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Colonel Gaddafi: 40 years since the bloodless coup that brought him to power >>>
