Libya's prosecutor general charged on Wednesday that NATO air strikes in support of rebel forces since the end of March have killed more than 1,100 civilians and wounded about 4,500 others.

Mohamed Zekri Mahjubi told foreign journalists in Tripoli he was seeking to prosecute NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen in Libyan courts for "war crimes."

"As NATO secretary general, Rasmussen is responsible for the actions of this organisation which has attacked an unarmed people, killing 1,108 civilians and wounding 4,537 others in bombardment of Tripoli and other cities and villages."

He drew up a list of charges.

Apart from war crimes, Mahjubi accused Rasmussen of trying to kill Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi, "deliberate aggression against innocent civilians" and of "the murder of children."

Also, the NATO chief stood accused of "trying to overthrow the Libyan regime" and replace it with a rebel movement under its control to "take over the wealth" of oil-rich Libya.

earlier related report
Choking off Internet won't stop Arab Spring: US official
Regimes that choke off citizens' access to the Internet to try to quash pro-democracy movements in the Arab world are running scared and fighting a losing battle, a US diplomat said Wednesday.

"These are the acts of governments that fear their own people," Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights Michael Posner said at a forum that looked at the key role new technologies have played in the drive for democracy in the Arab world.

"In cracking down on the Internet, they expose their own lack of legitimacy," Posner said, using language similar to that used in recent days by the White House and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to describe President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.

Syrian security forces have cracked down violently on pro-democracy demonstrators, killing more than 1,300 civilians, activists have said on their Facebook page, which is one of the pro-democracy movement's main links to the outside world.

The Assad regime has barred foreign journalists from entering Syria to report on the four-month-old uprising and last month choked off the Internet.

But anti-Assad activists have reported regularly to the outside world via Facebook and YouTube about the situation in Syria.

"Free speech... is harder than ever to suppress in the digital age," and regimes that target new technology as they try to cling to power are fighting the wrong fight, Posner said.

"After all, Facebook does not foment dissent; people do," he told a packed meeting room at the New America Foundation in Washington.

"Don't shoot the instant messenger. Instead, address the underlying grievances of the people -- the corruption, the abuse of power, the environmental degradation, the lack of economic and political opportunity, the daily affronts to dignity by indifferent authorities," Posner said.

"It is this quest for dignity that has prompted so many young people to walk away from their keyboards and into the streets to demand their chance to build a better future," he said.

Tweet

Related Links