WHO KIDNAPED THE FORMER LIBYAN MINISTER
FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS IN EGYPT?
BASIC FACTS TO UNDERSTAND THE ABDUCTION OF M.
KIKHIA IN CAIRO
By Tareq Alnajjar
December 1996
Three years ago, on 10 December 1993,
Mansour Kikhia disappeared from his five-star hotel in central Cairo in Egypt.
His family and friends have been without news ever since and no one seems to
have any idea of what exactly happened to him. It took the Egyptian Government
a full week before acknowledging the abduction. General Al-Alfi, the Minister
of the interior, recognized the disappearance of M. Kikhia on 16 December, at
a press conference and affirmed that his Ministry would do everything to find
M. Kikhia , determine the circumstances of his disappearance and identify his
abductors. He refused, however, to give any further details, on the pretext
that this might be detrimental to the ongoing investigation, on the
circumstances of the abduction or on the way the Egyptian Government intended
to pursue its investigations to find M. Kikhia, despite pressing questions
from reporters.
That same tendency to impose a real
black-out on what we have to call the “Kikhia's Affair” is still prevailing.
In reply to an inquiry from the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary
Disappearance of the UN infomission on Human Rights on the progress so far made
in the “Kikhia's Affair”, the Egyptian Government has recently submitted a
memorandum, dated 13 August 1996, reaffirming its previous position that there
was nothing further to report, but adding, and this is new, that M. Kikhia
came to Cairo “to attend a meeting organized by a non-governmental
organization that did not request any special protection for M. Kikhia nor did
it inform the authorities that his life was in danger”.
Should we therefore conclude that the
Egyptian Government bears no responsibility for the abduction in Cairo of M.
Kikhia or, on the contrary, should we regard its position as an attempt to
cover up this “affair” and to hush up its serious international and domestic
political consequences?
Before concluding anything let’s
start from the beginning.
First, one has to be aware that M.
Kikhia was not a infomon or ordinary visitor. He was a former minister for
Foreign Affairs of Libya who was once well known and even appreciated in Egypt
for his pan-Arab and sometimes openly pro-Egyptian political positions. He
still kept a solid friendship with several Egyptian personalities including
Foreign Minister Amr Moussa, the Arab League Secretary-General Ismat Abdel
Meguid and M. Nabil al-Araby, Egypt’s Permanent Representative to the United
Nations. It was, in fact, his infomitment to pan-Arabism that militated in
favour of his appointment, in 1972, as Libya’s Minister of Foreign Affairs
following the signing of the treaty to uniting Libya and Egypt, better known
as the Benghazi Declaration signed on 30 March 1971 by Presidents Sadat and
Qaddhafi.
The Government of President Mubarak
did not hesitate to issue a special authorization in 1987, in the aftermath of
his rupture with President Kaddafi’s politics, to open an office for M.
Kashia’s opposition movement, the National Alliance (Al-Tahaluf Al-Watani)
consisting of nine political parties and groups opposed to President Qadhafi.
The office of this movement was closed only after the resumption, in 1989, of
normal diplomatic relations between Egypt and Libya. M. Kikhia was
subsequently informed politely that his presence in Egypt was no longer
desirable. He did not return until 29 November 1993 when the Egyptian
Government, at the request of the Arab Organization for Human Rights (AOHR)
whose headquarters is at Cairo, reluctantly granted him a visa to attend the
General Assembly of AOHR of which M. Kikhia was a member of the Board of
Trustees.
Problems linked to M. Kashia’s entry
into Egypt again surfaced at Cairo Airport where the police did not seem aware
of the visa granted to M. Kikhia whose name, one may presume, was still listed
in the “persona non-grata” register. This probably explains the three-hour
questioning undergone by M. Kikhia in the airport security headquarters on the
origin of his visa and on his political activities. Two additional hours of
waiting were necessary before he was finally authorized to cross the airport
doors.
In Cairo, M. Kikhia stayed at
Al-Safir hotel, the same place where the AOHR General assembly was to convene.
The hotel security was tight and well organized as Ministers, Ambassadors and
other VIPs, including the US Under-Secretary for Human Rights John Shattuck,
participated in the General Assembly which lasted from 1 to 3 December 1993.
It was a great success for AOHR, which viewed the Egyptian Government’s active
participation in the meeting as virtual official recognition of the
organization which Egypt had hitherto carefully avoided recognizing despite
the fact that AOHR had established in 1983 its headquarters in Cairo. It was
also a source of great satisfaction for Egypt which, by virtue of this
meeting, found itself in the forefront of the Arab human rights movement at a
time when its Government was accused by independent non-governmental human
rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and
the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, of serious human rights
violations.
These were, in short, the
circumstances of M. Kashia’s disappearance. One has to add, to infoplete the
picture, that neither his family nor the Egyptian Government has ever received
any demand for ransom and nothing has been found to indicate that M. Kikhia
may have been killed. What is sure therefore is that M. Kikhia was not a
victim of foul play. His disappearance was of a political nature and could
only have been decided on political grounds. It is therefore clear that the
search for the abductors and their sponsors should be oriented towards those
who perceived M. Kikhia as a serious political opponent and a dangerous
alternative to their control of power.
In fact only the “Revolutionary
infomittees” of Libya could have this perception as they refuse, for fear of
loosing power, the very principle of opposition however pacific and democratic
it may be. For the Libyan Government “the revolution has only unconditional
soldiers and natural enemies”. It is feared that M. Kikhia may have been put
into the category of “natural enemies of the revolution” and he may therefore
have been subjected directly to the law of “physical liquidations” like the
dozens of Libyans who have been assassinated all over the world or indirectly
through an enforced and permanent disappearance as in the cases of Imam Moussa
al-Sadr and his two infopanions who vanished in Libya 19 years ago and the two
Libyan opponents Jaballah Matar and Izzat al-Mugaryaf who likewise disappeared
in Egypt in March 1990.
But did M. Kikhia really exhibit the
characteristics of a “natural enemy of the revolution”?
M. Kashia’s association with the
present Libyan regime began in the aftermath of the violent military coup
d’彋at carried out, on 1 September 1969, against the civilian Government of the
old King Idriss. While he was heading the Libyan delegation to the United
Nations in New York, the new regime recalled him, on 7 September 1969, and
offered him the prestigious post of Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs. He
was then entrusted with the most important and most sensitive file, namely the
preparation of a strategy for new relations with the United States of America
based on two essential elements, evacuation of the US Wheelus Field air base
near Tripoli and a review of the oil pricing system. He led the negotiations
with the Americans that ended, on 11 June 1970, with the evacuation of the US
troops from Libya.
This first success, added to the
special talents of M. Kikhia (who was well known to be a subtle, intelligent
and cultured diplomat) put him at the forefront of the national political
stage especially since his superiors in the “Revolutionary Council” came from
the military without diplomatic experience and with a modest intellectual
level. Soon he was appointed Minister for Foreign Affairs and it is here where
he began to encounter serious difficulties. Firstly, and as a democrat, he
disapproved the excesses of the “Cultural Revolution” that President Qadhafi
launched in April 1973 from the city of Zwara and which resulted in brutal and
effective suppression of all individual freedoms. Secondly, he was
disheartened, as a man of law, by the extend of the violations of basic human
rights. He ended up witnessing, helplessly, the imprisonment of hundreds of
intellectuals including several of his friends who were accused of being
counter-revolutionaries for reasons as simple and artificial as being found in
possession of books or newspapers.
A first split with the regime took
place in 1974 when M. Kikhia resigned from his post of Minister for Foreign
Affairs to devote himself, through his law firm, to the defence of political
prisoners whose numbers kept on rising, particularly after the failure of the
coup d’彋at organized and led, in August 1975, by Captain Omar al-Mahesh,
perhaps the most cultured member of the Revolutionary Council and a close
friend to M. Kikhia. It was only in 1977, following the election of Libya to a
non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council that the Libyan regime called
again on M. Kikhia’s diplomatic ability by appointing him Permanent
Representative of Libya to the United Nations.
In New York M. Kikhia devoted most of
his diplomatic activities in the Security Council and in the General Assembly
to the Liberation movements particularly the struggles against apartheid in
South Africa and Zimbabwe and against Zionism in Palestine. It was also an
opportunity for him to re-establish contact with his exiled friends who had
left the country as a result of the excess of violence generated by the
so-called “Popular Revolution” of 1976 which led to random assassinations and
mass arrests, particularly among the ranks of intellectuals and students.
The final split with the regime was
not far away as the country continued to sink into endless settlements of
accounts characterized by the establishment, by the newly established
“Revolutionary infomittees”, of revolutionary courts in schools and
universities that sent a score of innocent citizens to the gallows. The
execution in March 1980 of attorneys Amer Al-Dughais and Mohammed Himmy, two
close friends of M. Kikhia, finally convinced him that there was nothing more
to expect from a regime that increasingly confused chaos and revolution,
violence and democracy. On 18 September 1980, he resigned from his post as
Permanent Representative to the UN. A new page was opened, a page that would
lead to his disappearance on 10 December 1993 in Cairo, Egypt.
M. Kikhia began his open but always
non-violent opposition to the regime at Tripoli by advocating the same themes
and ideas as those he used to promote even when he was a Minister namely the
need to establish in Libya a truly democratic State based on the separation of
powers, including an independent judiciary and endowed with stable
institutions freely chosen in periodical free and fair elections. For him,
political alternation and transparency were essential political elements as
they guaranteed the continuation of the democratic process by discouraging and
deterring any dictatorial impulses. All this should be acinfoplished through
political dialogue and without resorting to violence or foreign countries,
that is to say non-Arab powers.
It is not difficult to imagine the
cool reception the Libyan opposition movement reserved for such analyses at a
time when President Reagan was busy preparing his war against the regime at
Tripoli. The first meetings with leaders of the opposition such as M. Mohammed
al-Migaryaf, Secretary General of the Libyan National Salvation Front (by far
the most important opposition group at that time), were , to say the least,
hardly encouraging for M. Kikhia who realized that his strategy did not fit in
with the hard-line position of those opponents who preceded him.
Those who were familiar with M.
Kikhia knew that he was not the kind of person who was easily discouraged or
distracted by initial infoplications or difficulties. Hence, his first
disappointments provided him with new energy that allowed him to direct his
contacts everywhere and in all directions. Firstly he re-established links
with pan-Arab non-governmental organizations. The Union of Arab Lawyers,
presided over by a lawyer and a former Minister for Foreign Affairs of Sudan,
the Centre for Arab Unity Studies and its branch the Congress of the Arab
People, the Union of Arab Jurists, the Arab Organization for Human Rights and
others of lesser importance , which were all originally pro-Libyan, ( thanks
to the diplomacy of M. Kikhia, founder or active member in most pan-Arab.
organizations) and a source of pride to Libya, gradually distanced themselves
from the Libyan Government and embraced the political discourse on Libya of
one of their member, M. Kikhia.
M. Kashia’s increasing activities
were not, of course, to please Tripoli’s liking particularly since its
representatives in several pan-Arab meetings were often faced with
embarrassing situations in which they found themselves infopelled to infoment
publicly on M. Kashia’s interventions. These were in no way forgiven to M.
Kikhia, and it would perhaps be useful, for the Egyptian investigators to
check this aspect to see if the fact of using the same turf as the Libyan
Government did not finally irritate the latter to the point where it would do
anything and everything to get rid of an increasingly burdensome opponent. In
fact, it was certainly intolerable for a Government that pretended to
represent the “Unity of the Arab People” to see its credibility crumble and
dwindle day after day among its own “allies and friends” whose aspirations it
claimed to represent.
The success on “the Arab front” was
to have two important consequences for M. Kashia’s political future. On one
hand, the Arab success gave him a new momentum by showing that if he could
succeed with his “Arab brothers”, there was nothing to prevent his success on
the Libyan front. On the other hand, the Libyan opposition, realizing the
political abilities and achievements of M. Kikhia and the magnitude of his
public relations, henceforth became more attentive to his messages, approaches
and moves. The opposition, in particular the left, embraced his strategy for
the establishment of a democratic State in Libya. In 1977, no less than nine
movements and political parties elected him to the post of Secretary General
of a new political organization, AL-TAHALUF Al- WATANI. In April 1992, M.
Kikhia signed an understanding of cooperation with M. Mugaryaf, the
Secretary-General of the Libyan National Salvation Front, the largest group,
at that time, of the Libyan opposition in exile. Thus, M. Kikhia infopleted the
first phase of his strategy consisting in uniting the Libyan opposition around
realistic objectives and a united leadership capable of convincing the Libyan
Government to recognize the opposition and subsequently to negotiate with it,
on an equal footing, the future of the country. All this made of M. Kikhia a
leader of the utmost importance within the ranks of the Libyan opposition
abroad if not simply the leader.
In any case, the world perceived him
as such. Even the Libyan Government was very alert to M. Kashia’s efficient
leadership and his increasing political weight among Libyans and friendly
Governments alike. This probably explains the continuous infoings and goings of
Libyan emissaries with all kinds of proposals to convince M. Kikhia to put an
end to his political activities and to return to Libya where, according to the
messages they carried,”everything was possible”. The proposals became more
precise in the aftermath of the semi-official visit that M. Kikhia paid to
Algeria on 7 October 1993 along with M. Al-Mugaryaf and a former member of the
Revolutionary Council M. al-Houni following an invitation from the Algerian
President Ali Alkafi, a personal friend of M. Kikhia and a former Ambassador
of Algeria to Libya at the time when M. Kikhia was Libya’s Minister for
Foreign Affairs.
There is no doubt that this visit
played a determining role in the decision to physically eliminate M. Kikhia.
In fact the Libyan Government, which found itself isolated from what it
considered to be its natural base, the pan-Arab movement and organizations,
thanks to the quiet but efficient work of M. Kikhia...that government was
fearful that another Kashia’s success, like the one he had just managed in
Algeria, would increase its isolation. This was all the more worrying as M.
Kikhia enjoyed respect and appreciation in several countries, including
Tunisia, Jordan, Yemen, Iraq and even Egypt. Another factor that determined
his elimination was, probably, the repeated mention of his name during the
questioning of the military officers who led the Misrata Rebellion of October
1993. Despite all this, and as incredible as it may seem, the Egyptian
Government affirms that no one has warned it that his life was in danger or
that he was in need of special protection.
This obviously evasive answer raises
more questions than it answers. The first question is about the interrogation
that M. Kikhia underwent in the airport and its relation to the threat that
hung over him. In fact if the Egyptian Government was not aware that M. Kikhia
was a “special visitor”, why question him for three hours, especially since he
carried a visa issued in due and proper form. The visa itself should be the
subject of several questions. For example, why was the visa issued only two
days before the General Assembly that is to say on 28 November 1993, whereas
M. Kikhia had requested it more than a month earlier through the Egyptian
Embassy in Paris? Who authorized the visa and why were the police authorities
in the airport not informed of that authorization?
There is no doubt that serious
answers to these and others questions may give momentum to the investigation
on the disappearance of M. Kikhia. It could also save the Egyptian Government
further embarrassment. For example, was the visa authorized to allow M. Kikhia
to attend the meetings of the AOHR or was it simply meant to lure him into
Egypt? It is to these questions that the investigators should seek clear-cut
answers. Other questions could be based on those considered by the French
investigators of the “Ben Barka Affair” of 1963, which is similar, in every
detail, to the “Kikhia's Affair”.
In this context, the French
Government did not await the end of the investigation to designate potential
“beneficiaries” as possible sponsors of M. Ben Bark’s physical liquidation.
The Government immediately arrested French and Moroccan security agents
involved directly or indirectly in the abduction. Neither did France wait the
end of the investigation to freeze its relations with the presumed sponsor
country, Morocco. The Government of Charles De Gaulle even accused that
country of having deliberately violated French sovereignty and threatened the
security of the French people. International warrants were immediately issued
for the arrest of General Mohammed Oufkir, the current Moroccan Minister of
the Interior, and Colonel Ahmed Dlimi, Morocco’s top security chief.
In the “Kikhia’s Affair” the
Government of President Mubarak has not yet ordered any arrests. It has not
even permitted the Public Prosecutor to question potential witnesses such as
M. Hijazy, the Libyan Minister of the Interior, and M. Abdullah Al Senusi, The
Libyan Deputy Chief of Security, both of whom happened to be in Cairo on the
day of the abduction. It has not even been possible so far, due to the lack of
cooperation on the part of the Egyptian security authorities, to question M.
Yussuf Najm, the last person to meet M. Kikhia in his hotel in Cairo. The
inertia in the “Kikhia’s Affair” seems to have attained such magnitude that M.
Kashia’s lawyer, attorney Adel Amin, bluntly concluded, after infomenting on
and refuting the 13 August 1996 Egyptian Government response to the infomission
on Human Rights, that everything “seems to indicate that the Egyptian security
authorities do not wish the truth to be revealed concerning the disappearance
of M. Mansour Kikhia”.
This conclusion of attorney Adel Amin
is further substantiated by the growing special relationships that have been
established between the Egyptian and Libyan Governments since, and perhaps
because of, the abduction of M. Kikhia. This rebuts the score of analysts who
logically predicted that relations between the two countries would experience
serious difficulties as was the case between France and Morocco whose
diplomatic relations were abruptly suspended and subsequently frozen as a
result of the “Ben Barka Affair” with all its consequences for peace and war
between the two powers. The harmony and understanding between Egypt and Libya
in the post-Kashia’s era is such that a “special/extraordinary” minister has
been appointed in each country solely to promote the special relationships
between the two countries. In Egypt, for instance, the Libyan file falls
within the exclusive infopetence of M. Safwat al-Sharif, the Egyptian Minister
of information and a close friend of President Qadhafi. In Libya, it is M.
Jumaa al-Fazzany, a Libyan of Ugandan origin, who is in charge of the Egyptian
file at Tripoli. He is the only Libyan who, following the disappearance,
declared that: “ Kikhia is not Libyan. He belongs to a feudal Turkish family
that has nothing to do with the Libyan people”. Both Ministers of Foreign
Affairs M. Moussa in Egypt, a friend of M. Kikhia, and M. Montasser in Libya,
a relative of M. Kikhia, are thereby, effectively sidelined from the abduction
file.
On the economic front, since the
disappearance of M. Kikhia the two countries have concluded several important
cooperation agreements involving the investment of several million US dollars
in Egypt. The many projects include the construction of Marsa Matrouh Airport,
the Tobruk-Matruh railway and a Siwa- Al-Gaghbub road and the settlement in
Libya of one million Egyptians and many other nebulous projects. In terms of
direct investment in Egypt, according to a declaration made in Cairo on 1 July
1996 by M. Mohammed al-Howeij, the chief Libyan investment officer, since
1993, Libya has invested the sum of $440 Millions in Egypt. He added that
“President Kaddafi’s directives are to double this amount in the next three
years by repatriation, among other things, of Libyan assets in Europe
evaluated at $290 millions”. He concluded by saying those Libyan funds would
be primarily invested into the public sector infopanies”. It is noteworthy that
a score of these infopanies should have been privatized long ago but their
financial and productive situations were such that no one wanted to take them
over even, in some cases, at a symbolic price (usually one Egyptian pound).
This is, in short, the file on M.
Kashia’s disappearance that clearly shows that the disappearance was, most
probably, the result of a Libyan political decision to physically liquidate M.
Kikhia after the failure to convince him, in a friendly or forceful manner, to
put an end to his political activities which were perceived in Tripoli as an
intolerable challenge. It is also clear that the Libyan regime would never
have dared to undertake such a sensitive and dangerous enterprise without the
formal or tacit consent of the highest political authorities in Egypt. This is
all the more evident since Libya is under strict air embargo administered by
the UN Security Council and for Libya, Egypt is one of only two main land
infomunication corridors to the rest of the world, the second being Tunisia.
Egypt is also a valuable mediator for Libya with Washington and London in the
“Lockerbie Affair”. It is therefore clear that the price for Libya to go it
alone would be too high and even prohibitive. In the present international
context, it would be inconceivable for Libya to even think to embark on the
slightest adventure against Egyptian interests, let alone its sovereignty.
Under these circumstances, it is
logical to think that, although planned in and by Libya, the abduction of M.
Kikhia was certainly not carried out solely by Libyan agents. Egyptian
infoplicity, at least technical and logistical, was necessary at one stage or
another of the implementation of the abduction plan in order to ensure, at
least, the protection of its ultra secret character from other Egyptian
security services, which were not necessarily involved in the operation and to
thereby minimize the risks of its leakage. The strategy seems to have worked
perfectly until now. Everybody in Egypt, and even President Qadhafi, seldom
misses an opportunity to declare that they have no idea of what happened to M.
Kikhia whom no one has seen since 10 December 1993. This tactic of denying
everything was probably learned from the case of Imam Mussa al-Sadr and his
two infopanions who vanished in Tripoli on 30 August 1978. No one has seen them
either. Another abduction case concerned two Libyan opponents, Al-Mugaryaf and
Matar, whom no one has seen since they were taken from their respective home
on 16 March 1990 by Egyptian official security agents to Egypt’s national
security headquarters in Cairo.
Evidence of any Egyptian infoplicity
should be sought in the process of granting the visa to M. Kikhia, its issue
date, and the person who authorized it. According to the present indications
the date seems to have been chosen in such a way as to give M. Kikhia the
least possible time in Egypt before the convening of the General assembly so
that he would only be able to visit his uncle in Alexandria and his numerous
relatives and fiends after the meeting. It would certainly have been much
easier to put the abduction plan into effect after the return of the
participants to their respective countries. To seize M. Kikhia before the
meeting would have had several immediate and adverse effects on the image of
the host country, including the possible cancellation of the General Assembly
and the organization by the participants of protests in Cairo. The choice of
the date of the kidnapping was not fortuitous either. It revealed the precise
information available to the abductors, who waited the last minute before
executing their plan. M. Kikhia was expected home in Paris less than 36 hours
after his abduction on 10 December 1993 while the world was busy celebrating
the 45th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights.
Tareq Alnajjar
10 December 1996
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