THE GUARDIAN: While Gaddafi makes a rousing speech to his followers, just streets away, his enemies are moving against him
He was meant to be hidden, hunted, done for, and with just a few hours left, shut away to rot in the underground bunker of Bab al-Azizia, a prisoner of his past and highly uncertain present. At one point on Friday, he was meant to be dead. But just before sunset on another dramatic day for Libya, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi reappeared, like an icon, high up on the wall of the great Arab fortress that looks on to Tripoli's Green Square. "Here I am among you," he shouted into the microphone. "Dance, sing, rejoice."
He was greeted by a roar from a crowd of several thousand people in the square. They had gathered there in the morning to shout to the world that Libya, or at least its capital, was still his.
Green flags fluttered beneath the palm trees. Horns were sounded. Bursts of machine gun fire were let off into the air – an indication that, all the same, this is a country at risk. The opposing factions are drawing ever closer to one another. The abyss of a civil war seems but a step away.
"Those who don't love me … It will be hell for them," Gaddafi warned, firing the hearts of his followers, but also sending a clear message to the entire international community.
Looking down on his adoring audience, he said: "Look, Europe. Look, United States. This is the Libyan people. This is the fruit of the revolution." >>> Fabrizio Caccia | Friday, February 25, 2011
