By Timothy Nsubuga

29^th Aug 2011:

Suspected mercenary killed in Benghazi

With blood seeping from a bullet wound near his ankle, a suspected Ugandan ‘mercenary’ is among those arrested by the National Transitional Council [NTC] rebels in Libya on suspicion of fighting on behalf of deposed Libyan leader Col. Muammar Gaddafi, South African newspaper the Mail & Guardian Online has reported.

The Ugandan, whose names we could not establish by press time, was among the 93 men in Mitiga hospital, some of whom felt that the time to speak openly had finally come.  “…In three darkened rooms at the back of a Tripoli hospital, Gaddafi’s wounded lay awaiting their fate.  Some writhed in agony, steel pins holding together their shattered bones; some lay, mummy-like, in bandages and plaster. Others shrouded themselves in olive-green blankets…shutting out the world”, the paper said.

Ali Ahmed, a soldier in the Libyan national army, said they simply understood things wrongly.  “…He [Gaddafi] wasn’t the man we thought he was”, he said.  Alongside him another former soldier, Khaled Khalifa, nursed a broken leg. He had the resigned gaze of a man who knew the game was up.

A Senegalese national named Ali Senegal said he had been in the wrong place at the wrong time when he was shot in the back of the neck in Abu Selim on Wednesday.  “…I swear by God I’m just a worker”, he said. The right side of his face had ballooned to twice its normal size and his jaw was clearly broken.

A hospital Supervisor however insisted that the Senegalese man knows that he was sniper.  The paper said there were three other non Libyans in the hospital, “…men from Mali, Niger and Uganda; all of them with a fate less sure than the wounded members of what was once a standing army”.

“…In a small room near the bloody emergency room, another rebel had been posted to keep watch on four other alleged Gaddafi men, one of them the Ugandan, who lay on a stretcher, his hands cuffed to a rail with plastic and blood seeping from a bullet wound near his ankle. He looked terrified”, the paper added.

On the 4^th of April this year, Uganda Correspondent published a story [See: Govt accused of ’selling mercenaries’ to Gaddafi] in which a newly elected and youthful Buganda MP told us that he knows a family in his constituency that had just buried their 26 year old son who was killed by pro-democracy Libyan rebels who were still fighting to oust the eccentric Libyan Leader Col. Muammar Gaddafi.

“…It is really sad that my own government is doing such things without seeking approval from us as the people’s representatives.  I was shocked when the dead soldiers father told me that although he was told officially by the UPDF that his son had died after bomb hit their base in Somalia, some of the soldiers who brought the body privately told him that his son was actually killed in Libya”, the MP said at the time.

That said, there are also growing fears that many of the black Africans being rounded up by the victorious rebels on suspicion of being pro-Gaddafi mercenaries may actually be innocent immigrant workers.  END.  Please login to www.ugandacorrespondent.com every Monday to read our top stories and anytime mid-week for our news updates.