David Welch is going to be speaking at a March 31 forum co-sponsored by a Libyan agency in which Col. Muammar Qadhafi will be participating via video. I asked Mohamed El-Jahmi for his thoughts, given both President Bush’s repeated commitments to see his incarcerated brother Fathi — Libya’s leading dissident — released and given proper medical care for his ailments, and also given the Bush’s own statements about human rights and dignity. Mohamed’s response:
The day Satan preaches from the pulpit is the day Amb. David Welch cares about human rights. The President says he supports freedom in the Middle East, and the Vice President reiterated the statement. Why should Libya be exempt? Is Qadhafi a freedom lover? His regime, after all, is scared of a dying 66-year old man because he called publicly for democracy.
Ambassador Welch should be embarrassed by his record. In June 2005, he visited Libya and met with Qadhafi, even though two weeks earlier Daif al-Ghazal, a prominent Libyan journalist who spoke out against corruption, was murdered and his body mutilated.
Then, in Feb, 2006, eleven people were shot to death at a Libyan-government sponsored rally against the Danish cartoons, but the Near East Bureau stood silent.
The Near East Affairs Bureau also kept silent for nearly 17 months after Fathi Eljahmi was put in total incommunicado.
According to Foreign Minister Shalqam, “David Welch raised Fathi’s case during lunch and said ‘this [El Jahmi] is not worth anything.” Near East Affairs denies Shalqam’s account, but one wonders upon seeing that Welch is speaking alongside Qahdafi at the March 31 Middle East Institute event. By speaking at an event that is co-sponsored by the Green Book Research Center, Welch gains the distinction of being the only American official to twice promote the Green Book on American soil. He attended a similar conference in 2006 at Columbia University which discussed—often approvingly—Qadhafi’s claims that Libya is a democracy. Rather than ingratiate himself at the expense of U.S. interests like Welch has, on Libyan soil Senator Joseph Biden demanded democracy and held the Libyans accountable for Lockerbie.