Gaddafi foe to be buried 19 years after vanishing

AFP/Tripoli

Leading Libyan dissident Mansour Rashid al-Kikhia, who disappeared 19 years ago under the Gaddafi regime, is to be buried today, weeks after his body was found in an intelligence services morgue, his brother said. Libya’s new authorities, who announced only last week that the body had been discovered, held a funeral ceremony yesterday to pay tribute to Kikhia. Kikhia will be buried in his native city of Benghazi, cradle of last year’s revolt that ousted now slain dictator Muammar Gaddafi, said the dissident’s brother Mahmoud al-Kikhia. He was “abducted in Cairo in 1993 by the former regime”, and his body was discovered in mid-October in a morgue inside a Tripoli villa that once served as a headquarters for Gaddafi’s infamous intelligence services, he said. Mahmoud added that DNA analysis of Kikhia’s body matched those of his brothers and sons. Gaddafi intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi, who is currently imprisoned by the country’s new authorities, acknowledged the dissident’s abduction and indicated the location of the body, the brother said. On the eve of his burial, Libya’s top brass attended a funeral ceremony to pay tribute to Kikhia. National assembly head Mohamed Megaryef and Prime Minister Ali Zeidan, a comrade-in-arms of Kikhia during years of exile and opposition to Gaddafi, attended the ceremony alongside other officials and diplomats posted in Tripoli. Megaryef and Zeidan hailed Kikhia as a “martyr for liberty” and spoke of his accomplishments during years of activism against Gaddafi’s regime. “The values and principles of justice for which strove are now being implemented thanks to the February 17 (2011) revolution,” that ousted Gaddafi, said Megaryef. Zeidan recalled that Kikhia had founded the Libyan human rights league and was abducted in Cairo in 1993 during a meeting of the watchdog. The foreign ministry issued a statement saying: “The tyrannical regime (of Gaddafi) abducted the dissident Mansour Rashid al-Kikhia, killed him, hid his body and did not bury it, proving it was more afraid of him dead than alive.” Speakers at the ceremony also urged officials to bring to justice those responsible for Kikhia’s abduction, both in Libya and in Egypt.