The former Libyan Energy Minister has fled to Malta from the besieged city of Misurata, arriving by boat last Friday, it emerged yesterday.
A Foreign Ministry spokesman last night confirmed a report in the Associated Press on Omar Fathi bin Shatwan, who also served as industry minister and chairman of the Libya-Malta mixed commission before leaving the Libyan government in 2007. Mr bin Shatwan said he last had contact with Muammar Gaddafi in 2006.
He told AP that many current regime insiders feared for their safety if they fled. Members of Gaddafi’s inner circle wanted to defect but were too scared to do so as in some cases, their families were under siege, he was quoted as saying. Last week, Libyan Foreign Minister Mussa Kussa defected to the UK in a sign Gaddafi’s government was beginning to crack.
Mr Shatwan also told AP he spent 40 days bunkered down at his home in the central port of Misurata before escaping from Libya, and witnessed Gaddafi’s forces pounding the city with heavy artillery and relentlessly shooting civilians.
“There has been a big bombardment and there is total destruction. After this, they occupied some streets with tanks and put snipers in the buildings.
“I think the regime is just going mad,” he said. “Col Gaddafi has changed. No one would kill people in the streets in this way. Not even Hitler did that.”
He estimated at least 1,500 people are dead or wounded in Misurata but said it was almost impossible to know the exact figure as many people were missing. The ex-minister urged Nato to step up its military campaign. “The West should act quickly to finish the job, before there are a lot more people dead,” he told the AP.
The residents of Misurata, which lies to the east of Tripoli, have been suffering terribly as Gaddafi forces and rebels fight it out for domination of the strategic town.
NGOs have managed to get a few aid shipments out from Malta but the situation has been described as dire, with heavy casualties filling the hospitals and shortages of basic necessities including medicine.
Although a high profile figure, Mr bin Shatwan’s escape to Malta is not as sensational as the defection to the island of two pilots early in the Libyan conflict, who flew in with their fighter jets undetected.