Scores of Libyan army vehicles crossed the desert frontier into Niger in what may be a bid by Muammar Qadhafi to seek refuge in a friendly African state, military sources from France and Niger told Reuters on Tuesday. The United States said it believed the convoy was carrying senior members of Qadhafi's entourage but not the fallen leader himself.
The Libyan rebels who overthrew Qadhafi two weeks ago said they also thought about a dozen other vehicles that crossed the remote border may have carried gold and cash apparently looted from a branch of Libya's central bank in Qadhafi's home town. Details of the developments were very sketchy.
The military sources said a convoy of between 200 and 250 vehicles was escorted to the northern city of Agadez by the army of Niger, a poor and landlocked former French colony. It might, said a French military source, be joined by Qadhafi en route to adjacent Burkina Faso, which has offered him asylum. A spokesman for Qadhafi said, however, that he was still in Libya. "He is safe, he is very healthy, in high morale. He thinks very much that he is doing exactly what he should be doing," Moussa Ibrahim told Reuters by telephone.
He did not say where Qadhafi was or when he might next appear in public. He also said he had "no idea" about the reported convoy of military vehicles, saying only that it was normal for groups of travellers to cross the border. France, Niger and Burkina Faso, as well as Libya's new rulers and Nato, all denied knowing where Qadhafi was or of any deal to let him go abroad or find refuge from Libyans and the International Criminal Court who want to put him on trial. French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said it was for Libyans to decide the venue but that Qadhafi must not slip away quietly. "He will have to face justice for all the crimes he has committed in the past 42 years," he said.
AIMING FOR BURKINA FASO? In Washington, US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said Qadhafi was on the run and that he had no information as to where he might be. A French military source said 69-year-old Qadhafi and his son and heir Saif al-Islam might join the convoy later to head for Burkina Faso. France has taken a lead in the Nato action backing Libya's uprising and, with its Western allies, would be likely to have the ability to track any sizeable convoy in the empty quarter.
But Niger's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Adani Illo, told Reuters that such surveillance over thousands of miles of desert was still hard. "The desert zone is vast and the frontier is porous," he said. "If a convoy of 200 to 250 vehicles went through, it is like a drop of water in an ocean." Sources close to Niger's government said the head of Qadhafi's security brigade, Mansour Dhao, was in the capital Niamey. He was allowed in to the country earlier in the week.
Qadhafi has broadcast defiant messages since he was forced into hiding two weeks ago, and has vowed to die fighting on his own soil. But he also has long friendships with his poor African neighbours, with which he shared some of Libya's oil wealth. The sources said the convoy, probably including officers from army units based in the south of Libya, may have looped through Algeria rather than cross the Libya-Niger frontier. Algeria last week took in Qadhafi's wife, daughter and two other sons, angering the interim council now ruling Libya.
FUGITIVES Nato warplanes and spy satellites have been scouring Libya's deserts for months, raising the likelihood that any convoy of the size mentioned would have been spotted. But a spokesman for the Western alliance said it was not hunting Qadhafi and had a UN mandate only to stop his forces attacking civilians. "Our mission is to protect the civilian population in Libya, not to track and target thousands of fleeing former regime leaders, mercenaries, military commanders and internally displaced people," Colonel Roland Lavoie said in a statement.
Tuareg nomads living in the Sahara say those fleeing Libya include many black Africans, some of whom may have been fighters for Qadhafi and most of whom fear the anger and reprisals of Qadhafi's enemies among Libya's Arabs. NTC commanders last week said both Qadhafi and his son Saif al-Islam were in the tribal stronghold of Bani Walid, 150 km (90 miles) south of Tripoli. But that belief has evaporated this week after days of blockade of the town.
NTC officials said Saif al-Islam, for one, may have escaped south into the desert, toward the southern, pro-Qadhafi bastion of Sabha and perhaps on to Niger. Tracking him would be hard; fully 1,300 km (800 miles) of sand separate Sabha from Agadez, with a further 750 km of road to travel to Niamey. Near Sirte, Qadhafi's home town on the Mediterranean coast, there was the first sign of heavy fighting for some days. Combatants reported exchanges of shell fire and rockets to the east. Several NTC fighters were wounded in an ambush.
Though conditions in Tripoli were improving with the return of water supplies two weeks after rebels overran Qadhafi's headquarters compound, evidence of brutality during his battle to cling to power during the Arab Spring is also accumulating. Reuters journalists in the provincial town of Khoms found evidence Muammar Qadhafi had deployed squads which held suspected opponents in shipping containers, tortured them for information about insurgent networks and disposed of their bodies in unmarked graves.
AFRICAN JOURNEYS A spokesman for the NTC said banknotes in the convoy of gold and cash that the council believed had reached Niger had been stolen from Sirte's branch of the Central Bank of Libya. NTC official Fathis Baja told Reuters: "Late last night, 10 vehicles carrying gold, euros and dollars crossed from Jufra into Niger with the help of Tuaregs from the Niger tribe." It was unclear if these vehicles were separate from the much larger military convoy reported by the foreign sources.
Burkina Faso, once a French colony and a recipient of large amounts of Libyan aid, offered Qadhafi sanctuary last month but has also recognised the NTC as Libya's government. President Blaise Compaore, like Qadhafi, took power in a military coup. He has run the country for 24 years. Qadhafi has long touted his origins among the peoples of the desert. After largely turning his back on fellow Arab leaders, most of them allied with his Western adversaries, Qadhafi had portrayed himself as an African "king of kings."