There is no doubt that the TNC ground troops, which were recognized as Libya's government forces by Western countries, commit grave war crimes in their assault on the Libyan city of Sirte.
Many videos and photos show TNC ground troops firing heavy weapons on the city of Sirte, targeting opponent forces and civilians alike. Doing so they are committing the war crime of using indiscriminate force against populated areas.
This crime became so common for the TNC troops' behaviour that even NATO's propaganda mouthpiece Reuters described this war crime in one of it's recent reports from Sirte in detail:
Obaid pulled up in his pick-up truck keen to fire the multiple rocket launcher mounted on the back at Gaddafi loyalists holding out in the Libyan city of Sirte, but just as he was about to shoot, he stopped to ask which way to aim.
His comrades standing nearby loudly conferred with one another then pointed him to what they agreed was the right direction and Obaid fired four Grad missiles at the city.
They all cheered him and shouted "Allahu Akbar." Smoke rose above the already wrecked city, but no one could say if the Grad rockets hit the target, or even what the target was.
But there are more crimes. Telesur's reporter Diego Marin reported from Sirte, that one of NATO's TNC ground troops said to him that that anybody they catch in Sirte with a weapon would be executed.
Media reports indicate that the TNC's "government troops" are just committing the above mentioned war crime of the summary execution of prisoners of war. Like people know from the past about the war against Libya the western mass media seem to be complicit again by trying to cover up the crimes of the TNC forces and, like they did during the entire war, they try to blame those crimes on forces loyal to the Libyan government again.
To understand this, one just needs to crosscheck the propaganda of different NATO mouthpieces. Just read the Reuters report of October 12 describing that 25 bodies of executed people were found in Sirte's "neighborhood 2", some of them handcuffed:
The corpses of 25 people wrapped in plastic sheets were found on Wednesday in the city of Sirte by government forces, who accused militias fighting for deposed leader Muammar Gaddafi of execution-style killings. A Reuters team counted 25 corpses in plastic bags in a southern area of
Sirte called "Neighbourhood 2". Five corpses shown to the team had their hands tied behind their backs and gunshot wounds to the head. They wore civilian clothes. A commander with the National Transitional Council (NTC) said the corpses had been there for at least five days.
According to the Reuters propaganda it's pretty clear that the people were already dead for five days, and as the TNC forces conquered "Neighbourhood 2" just three days ago, the people loyal to Libya's green government are to blame for the murder.
However, when the Guardian - another NATO mouthpiece - reported on the same corpses a couple of hours later, the story changed in significant details:
The already angry mood towards the loyalists hardened with the discovery, in three locations in the city, of 30 captured men who had been cuffed and executed.
According to government (editor: meaning TNC here) commanders the men had been killed on Tuesday.
It's pretty clear that the Guardian wants to tell it's readers that the crime was committed by "loyalists." However, the Guardian forgot to tell it's readers where the crime was committed and just said "three locations in the city." But the Guardian reported now that the crime of the summary execution was committed just yesterday.
So what does this look like? Reuters reported that the crime was committed five days ago, because the location where the corpses were found was captured a couple of days ago by TNC forces. But in the evening it didn't add up because the corpses were fresh. So the Guardian told they were fresh, but didn't report where the corpses were found. The Guardian did so to be sure that readers couldn't draw the obvious conclusion that this is a crime of the TNC forces, just as Telesur reported that they announced they would commit the crime. In contrast to the corpses of executed prisoners, Getty published a photo of a TNC fighter who was captured by loyalist green forces as a prisoner of war. He doesn't look very well, but obviously he was not executed.
It's no surprise that the TNC forces commit grave war crimes in Sirte. Confronted with allegations of crimes and abuses of their forces even the top commanders of the TNC ground forces publicly declared that they have no control over their own troops.
NATO's excuse for these crimes to happen while NATO is engaged with a UN mandate "to protect civilians" is more than lame. NATO claims it is a neutral force protecting civilians and therefore not reponsible for the actions of TNC ground troops. However, as neutral as NATO claims to be, NATO has chosen its targets very one sidedly. While the TNC troops fired with Howitzers from the distance in the direction of Sirte, NATO has not prevented them from doing so, but instead helped the TNC troops massacre civilians with airstrikes on the city.
And there is evidence that NATO is more to the TNC ground troops than a neutral force. In recent weeks there were many reports of TNC troops saying before attacking a city they wait for green light from NATO. That effectively makes NATO top commander of the TNC troops. This is confirmed by logic. Given the organizational weakness of the TNC troops, any other configuration than having NATO being at the top of the command chain of the TNC forces doesn't make sense militarily.
But when NATO is at the top of the TNC command chain, then it's NATO's TNC ground troops committing the crimes and NATO's commanders are fully reponsible for the actions of their troops and should be held accountable for their war crimes. The argument that the grave and proven war crimes were committed by outsourced ground forces operating under a different flag is not convincing since these forces are still under NATO's control and command.
Thus the NATO criminals shall be brought to justice and punished for the war crimes they are responsible for.
Addendum Thursday, October 13th, 2011: The NATO propaganda outlets changed their story on the crime of the execution of prisoners of war in Sirte again. As it appeared that the executed prisoners of war were obviously people loyal to Muammar Gaddafi, journalist Rasmus Tantholdt from Danish TV 2 reports now, that the "rebels have a theory that it are Gaddafi's people who have executed their own soldiers." With this absurd statement the NATO propaganda efforts to blame these TNC crimes on Green Government loyalists should hopefully be regarded as completely exposed and debunked.
About Bandolero
Just an engineer from Germany, writing a bit of stuff in the internet.
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