LIBYAN BUSINESSMEN have placed a $2m (€1.4m) bounty on the head of the country’s deposed leader Muammar Gaddafi, as the government-in-waiting offered amnesty to any of his former loyalists who kill or capture him.
A group of Tripoli investors have clubbed together to offer the reward to anyone who can kill or arrest the former leader, against whose 42-year rule the ongoing campaign has been led.
The National Transitional Council, meanwhile, is offering amnesty to any of the leader’s former loyalists who agree to help in handing him over – in a bid to try and avoid a prolonged armed battle with loyalists, and in an attempt to learn the 69-year-old’s whereabouts.
The offer came as battles continued for control of Tripoli, though more and more of the capital now appears to have fallen to the hands of the revolutionaries.
Hoping to normalise their fledging rule of the country, though, individual officers of the National Transitional Council have begun relocating their operations to Tripoli from Benghazi, the eastern city which had doubled as a de facto rebel capital for months.
Tripoli remains far from secure, however, with loyalists blockading the main roads to the city’s airport and launching repeated attacks on Gaddafi’s private compound, which has now fallen to rebels who are using it as a logistical headquarters.
Speaking in Paris earlier, after a meeting with Nicolas Sarkozy, National Transitional Council chairman Mahmoud Jibril said he still had no idea where Gaddafi may be.
“He might be in Sirte or any other place,” Jibril suggested. Sirte is Gaddafi’s hometown, and is all of 250 miles from Tripoli.
Additional reporting by AP
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