Erdoğan abandoned Gadhafi: former aide

Moammar Gadhafi did not have any bad feelings toward Turkish people even though he was not happy about his relations with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, a confidant of the late leader has said.

“He does not have any bad feeling toward Turkish people though he is not happy with his relations with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan – he left Gadhafi isolated,” said Mansour Dao, who served as Gadhafi’s security chief and the former commander of Libya’s Revolutionary Guards. Last November, Erdoğan received the Gadhafi International Prize for Human Rights from the Libyan leader in Istanbul.

Gadhafi was angry after his convoy fell victim to a NATO strike, said Dao.

“He was angry and yelling at us and he didn’t seem to know what to do,” Dao said of the Libyan ex-dictator’s final moments before he was captured in Sirte two weeks ago. “I was with him in the car when our convoy was hit in Sirte. We were heading to the city of al-Jurf 30 kilometers southeast. He was escaping to avoid trial by court,” he told Anatolia news agency.

 Gaddafi was killed in his hometown of Sirte on Oct. 20, eight months after an uprising began against his four-decade rule.

Dao also talked about the eight-month uprising that toppled Gadhafi. “If a revolution takes the entire country in its hold and sends everyone onto the streets, then it means that something was obviously wrong,” said an exhausted Dao after eight hours of interrogation at a Defense Ministry building in Misrata ahead of a court trial by the new rulers of the oil-rich country.

“I hope that my trial will be fair. This is a revolution and revolutions call for justice for everyone. I am not happy that I worked with Gadhafi. His power just vanished in seconds,” Dao said.

Meanwhile, Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC) has pledged to continue with the previous regime’s program of destroying chemical weapon stockpiles, an international monitoring group said Nov. 4.

“The new authorities inherited the obligations of the old regime as a state party to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons,” the organization’s spokesman Michael Luhan said at its headquarters in The Hague.

Libya’s new prime minister said disarming former Libyan rebels could take months as weapons would not be taken by force. Newly appointed Prime Minister Abdurrahim el-Keib said the NTC, which is to lead Libya to its first free election within eight months, had not yet established full control over the country but was making progress.

The NTC declared Libya liberated on Oct. 23, three days after the capture and killing of Gadhafi.

Compiled from AA, AP and AFP stories by the Daily News staff.