UPDATED: Gaddafi used Malta as a conduit for terrorists
Fathi Shqaqi travelled to Malta on a Libyan passport with a false name and was assassinated on Sliema's Tower Road.
Former Maltese ambassador to Libya Evarist Saliba’s letter (previous post) raised a point that many miss – the manner in which Muammar Gaddafi undermined Malta’s sovereignty for decades.
There’s nothing new there, but I find that very often, the obvious must be pointed out and that it bears repeating, particularly in the current situation where there seem to be so many people who don’t understand the precise nature of Malta’s embroiled relationship with the Gaddafi regime.
That regime sponsored terrorism in many ways, and not just by supplying Semtex to the IRA, with which it blew up British soldiers and civilians.
By issuing terrorists with Libyan passports bearing false names, the Gaddafi regime enabled safe passage through Malta, which was in his pocket and which did not require Libyans to have visas.
When Musa Kusa, then Libyan ambassador to the Court of St James, was expelled from Britain in 1980 for sponsoring the murder of Libyan dissidents there, he flew directly to Malta before flying on to Tripoli. The headline in The Times (London) read: ‘(Moussa Koussa) leaves for Malta’.
Evarist Saliba has had a letter published in The Times (Malta) today:
In my memoires, No, Honourable Minister, I recounted (p.303) how a foreign, high-ranking official had entered Malta in a clandestine way through the connivance of a foreign embassy in Malta and a hand-picked duty officer at our airport.
In the light of current events I feel the public should know that the embassy was that of Libya, and the high-ranking foreign officer was Mussa Kussa, then occupying the post of head of Libya’s External Intelligence Services, who soon after became Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was still Libya’s Minister of Foreign Affairs until he defected to London last week.
I wonder if during his debriefing he will shed any light on the purpose of his clandestine visit to Malta in the 1990s.
The Palestinian terrorist Fathi Shaqaqi travelled in and out of Malta using a Libyan passport issued to him under a false name: Dr Ibrahim Ali Shawesh. He was gunned down in 1995 on Sliema’s Tower Road by two men on a motorbike, thought to be Mossad agents.
Fathi Shaqaqi (Arabic: فتحي الشقاقي) founded and led the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and was the initiator of suicide bombings for the Palestinian cause. He was on his way back from Tripoli where he had met Muammar Gaddafi, who had promised to help further finance his mission.
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Turkish ship evacuates wounded from Misurata and Benghazi,
http://multimedia.lastampa.it/multimedia/nel-mondo/lstp/34722/
The world got to know that the assassinated terrorist was none other than Fathi Shaqaqi three days later because of the news was given by the Israeli Defensible Forces radio.
The world got to know that the assassinated terrorist was none other than Fathi Shaqaqi three days later because of the news was given by the Israeli Defence Forces radio.
Incorrect….the information was provided directly to the Maltese authorities by another nation.
Mintoff and KMB were the prostitutes of Gaddafi. Later prime ministers seem to have inherited that role.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/7254807/Mossads-licence-to-kill.html
The same tactics had been placed on stand-by on October 24, 1995, for the assassination of Fathi Shkaki who, like Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, had reached the top of Mossad’s target list as a result of his terrorist attacks.
Two kidon – code-named Gil and Ran – had left Tel Aviv on separate flights. Ran flew to Athens, Gil to Rome. At each airport they collected new British passports from a local sayan. The two men arrived in Malta on a late-afternoon flight and checked into the Diplomat Hotel overlooking Valetta harbour.
That evening, a sayan delivered a motorcycle to Ran. He told hotel staff that he planned to use it to tour the island. At the same time, a freighter that had sailed the previous day from Haifa bound for Italy radioed to the Maltese harbour authorities that it had developed engine trouble. While it was fixed, it would drop anchor off the island. On board the boat was a small team of Mossad communications technicians. They established a link with a radio in Gil’s suitcase.
Shkaki had arrived by ferry from Tripoli, Libya, where he had been discussing with Colonel Gadaffi what Mossad was convinced was a terrorist attack. The two kidon waited for him to stroll along the waterfront. Ran and Gil drove up on the motorcycle and Gil shot Fathi Shkaki six times in the head. It had become a kidon signature.
When the police came to search Shkaki’s bedroom they found a “Do not disturb” sign on his door – a signature that was repeated in last month’s Dubai killing.
This report is not factually correct. Some of the errors are self evident (the Diplomat Hotel does not overlook Valletta Grand Harbour). There is no evidence that the agents that were charged with the assassination resided in the same hotel as their intended victim.
Significantely, the term kidon, is misused here as Kidon is a department and does not refer to individuals.
Similarly, sayan has no significance unless you’re a mountaineer intending to go and climb the mountain of the same namesake in Asia or are an intrepid traveller and interested visitor of the remote village in Bali. The correct term is sayanim.
The necessity of a radio link with a boat that had dropped anchor off Malta is obscure, and frankly quite unnecessary, so in all probability is factually untrue.
And finally, the report that Shqaqi was shot six times in the head is untrue. This means, to me at aleast, that this report was drawn from interviewswith persons in possession of scant information in turn largely derived from nth source.
Er, sayan is the singular and sayanim is the plural.
What’s YOUR point?
Shortly after Fathi Shaqaqi was murdered, a small plane flown by a Maltese pilot and carrying at least one Maltese passenger (Matthew Aquilina) disappeared somewhere around Djerba. None of those on board were ever traced, nor was the plane itself ever found. The relatives of those on board were told that the plane ended up in the sea. I believe the incident occurred around the 2nd of December 1995 or 1996. Oddly enough, a wallet in very good shape, belonging to one of the victims, was returned to his family, who were told that it had miraculously been pulled up in a fisherman’s net.
What’s your point?