"When, on 20 October, Gaddafi was finally captured and then killed by NTC men, it followed Nato air strikes on a convoy of vehicles carrying leading members of the former regime as they tried to escape[?] from Sirte early in the morning. Had British soldiers on the ground had a hand in this? Nobody will
say yet" Mark Urban
It was an operation to eliminate the Libyan leader, planned by the North Atlantic alliance (I) - > http://libyasos.blogspot.com/2011/12/it-was-operation-to-eliminate-libyan.html
BBC (19. Jan 2012.)
" British efforts to help topple Colonel Gaddafi were not limited to air strikes. On the ground - and on the quiet - special forces soldiers were blending in with rebel fighters. This is the previously untold account of the crucial part they played.
The British campaign to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi's regime had its public face - with aircraft dropping bombs, or Royal Navy ships appearing in Libyan waters, but it also had a secret aspect.
My investigations into that covert effort reveal a story of practically minded people trying to get on with the job, while all the time facing political and legal constraints imposed from London.
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| NATO and NTC mercenaries in Libya |
In the end, though, British special forces were deployed on the ground in order to help the UK's allies - the Libyan revolutionaries often called the National Transitional Council or NTC. Those with a knowledge of the programme insist "they did a tremendous job" and contributed to the final collapse of the Gaddafi regime.
The UK's policy for intervention evolved in a series of fits and starts, being changed at key points by events on the ground. The arguments about how far the UK should go were thrashed out in a series of meetings of the National Security Council at Downing Street. Under the chairmanship of Prime Minister David Cameron, its key members were:
- Chief of the Defence Staff General Sir David Richards
- Defence Secretary Liam Fox
- Foreign Secretary William Hague
Mr Cameron's chief of staff, Ed Llewellyn, was a key voice in urging action following start of the Libyan revolution last February, say Whitehall insiders.
During the months that this project had taken to come to fruition, the slow grinding down of Gaddafi's forces by air attack had continued.Soon after the foreign trainers arrived, NTC units swept into Tripoli.
Some people close to the Libyan revolution say that the Qatari chief of defence staff claimed credit for coming up with the strategy of pushing simultaneously towards the Libyan capital from different directions. Certainly, the foreign special forces on the ground played a role in co-ordinating the different columns.
The SAS had meanwhile strayed beyond its training facility, with single men or pairs accompanying the NTC commanders that they had been training back to their units. They dressed as Libyans and blended in with the units they mentored, says someone familiar with the operation.
There had been concerns that they would be spotted by the press, but this did not happen. "We have become a lot better at blending in," says someone familiar with the D Squadron operation. "Our people were able to stay close to the NTC commanders without being compromised."
Instead, as the revolutionaries fought their way into Gaddafi's home town of Sirte, they were assisted by a handful of British and other special forces. Members of the Jordanian and United Arab Emirates armies had fallen in behind the Qataris too.
When, on 20 October, Gaddafi was finally captured and then killed by NTC men, it followed Nato air strikes on a convoy of vehicles carrying leading members of the former regime as they tried to escape from Sirte early in the morning. Had British soldiers on the ground had a hand in this? Nobody will say yet"
FlashbackFebruary 2011. Libya State TV releases British Ambassador telephone conversation with rebels about SAS in Libya -Implausible explanation of British Ambassador to Tripoli to senior Benghazi rebel politician Mustafa Abdel-Jalil.about the presence of armed SAS operatives near Benghazi.-
More mercenaries http://libyasos.blogspot.com/2012/01/how-amnesty-international-spread-rumors.html