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REUTERS/ZOHRA BENSEMRA THE SECRET PLAN TO TAKE TRIPOLI Libya’s rebels and their western backers spent months plotting the attack on Tripoli. Here’s the inside story BY SAMIA NAKHOUL The job was “easy,” he told Reuters last the rebel leadership on a series of flash TRIPOLI, SEPT 6 week. “I built good relations with officers. I memory cards. wanted to serve my country.” The first was handed to him, he says, by OLONEL MUAMMAR Gaddafi’s regime But in the first few weeks of the uprising, Gaddafi military intelligence and security was delivered by a caterer, on a memory he secretly began to work for the rebels. He officers. It contained information about stick.C recruited sympathisers at the nerve centre of seven key operations rooms in the capital, Abdel Majid Mlegta ran the companies the Gaddafi government, pinpointed its weak including internal security, the Gaddafi that supplied meals to Libyan government links and its command-and-control strength revolutionary committees, the popular departments including the interior ministry. in Tripoli, and passed that information onto guards -- as Gaddafi’s voluntary armed SEPTEMBER 2011 TRIPOLI SEPTEMBER 2011 military training Othman Abdel-Jalil, a scientist who became and money to the coordinator of the Tripoli plan. rebels. Before he fled, Mlegta had spent just under By the time two months working inside the regime, the rebels were building up a network of sympathisers. At ready for the final first, 14 of Gaddafi’s officers were prepared to assault, they were help. By the end there were 72, Mlegta says. so confident of “We used to meet at my house and sometimes success that they at the houses of two other officers... We openly named preserved the secrecy of our work and it the date and time was in coordination with the NTC executive of the attack: committee.” Saturday, Aug. 20, Brigadier General Abdulsalam Alhasi, at 8 p.m., just after commander of the rebels’ main operation most people in centre in Benghazi, said those secretly helping Tripoli broke their the rebels were “police, security, military, even Ramadan fast. some people from the cabinet; many, many “We didn’t people. They gave us information and gave militia was known -- and military intelligence. make it a secret,” said Mohammed Gula, who instructions to the people working with them, The data included names of the commanders led a pro-rebel political cell in central Tripoli somehow to support the revolution.” of those units, how many people worked in and spoke to Reuters as rebels first entered One of those was al-Barani Ashkal, each centre and how they worked, as well as Gaddafi’s Bab al-Aziziyah compound. “We commander-in-chief of the guard at Gaddaffi’s crucial details like the number plates of their said it out on the street. People didn’t believe military compound in the suburbs of Tripoli. cars, and how each unit communicated with us. They believe us now.” Like many, Ashkal wanted to defect, but was the central command led by intelligence chief asked by the NTC to remain in his post where, Abdullah al-Senussi and Gaddafi’s second son THE DIGITAL GIFT Alhasi says, he would become instrumental in Saif al-Islam. PLANNING BEGAN IN April, two months into helping the rebels enter the city. That memory card -- which Mlegta later the uprising. Rebel leader Mahmoud Jibril The rebel planning committee -- another handed to officials at the North Atlantic Treaty and three other senior insurgents met in the four men would join later, making seven in all Organisation (NATO) -- provided the basis Tunisian city of Djerba, according to both -- knew that the targets on the memory sticks of a sophisticated plan to topple the Libyan Mlegta and another senior official from the were the key to crippling Gaddafi’s forces. dictator and seize Tripoli. The operation, which National Transitional Council (NTC), as the The men included Hisham abu Hajar, chief took months of planning, involved secretly alternative rebel government calls itself. commander of the Tripoli Brigade, Usama Abu arming rebel units inside the capital. Those The three were Mlegta, who by then had Ras, who liaised with some cells inside Tripoli, units would help NATO destroy strategic fled Tripoli and joined the rebels as the head and Rashed Suwan, who helped financially targets in the city -- operation rooms, safe of a brigade; Ahmed Mustafa al-Majbary, and coordinated with the tribes of Tripoli to houses, military barracks, police stations, who was head of logistics and supplies; and ease the rebels’ entry. armoured cars, radars and telephone centres. At an agreed time, the units would then rise up as rebels attacked from all sides. The rebels called the plan Operation Dawn Mermaid. This is the inside story -- much of it never before told -- of how that plan unfolded. The rebels were not alone. British operatives infiltrated Tripoli and planted radio equipment to help target air strikes and avoid killing civilians, according to U.S. and allied sources. The French supplied training and transport for new weapons. Washington helped at a critical late point by adding two extra Predator drones to the skies over Tripoli, improving NATO’s ability to strike. Also vital, say western and rebel officials, was the covert support of Arab states such as Qatar, which gave weapons, THE PLOTTERS: Hisham Buhagiar, top, a senior military official in Libya’s ruling National Transitional Council, during an interview in Tripoli, in late August. Abdel Majid Mlegta, right, smuggled out information about the regime and then coordinated the military operations room behind the plan to take Tripoli. REUTERS/ANIS MILI, LOUAFI LARBI 2 TRIPOLI SEPTEMBER 2011 ON THE ROAD: Libyan rebel fighters at a field hospital near Misrata’s western frontline, June 21, 2011. After talk of a stalemate, rebels began to make gains in late June. REUTERS/ZOHRA BENSEMRA trained for the uprising, rebels in Misrata told Reuters in June. The leaders of two rebel units said “hundreds” of Tripoli residents had begun slipping back into the city by mid-July. Commander Alhasi and other rebel officers in Benghazi said the number of infiltrators sent into Tripoli was dozens, not hundreds. “This was not D-Day,” Alhasi told Reuters in his office. “THE OVERSEAS BRIGADE” MOST OF THE INFILTRATORS travelled to Tripoli by fishing trawler, according to Alhasi. They were equipped with light weapons -- rifles and sub-machineguns -- hand grenades, demolition charges and radios. “We could call them and they could call each other,” Alhasi said. “Most of them According to Mlegta and to Hisham the streets) in the uprising,” according to rebel were volunteers, from all parts of Libya, and Buhagiar, a rebel colonel and the committee’s colonel Buhagiar. HeCONTEXT joined the opposition Rebel fighters swept into theLibyans heart from of Tr overseas.ipoli and crowdsEverybody took wants to to do seventh member, the group initially drew up a National Front for the Salvation of Libya in something for the success of the revolution.” list of 120 sites for NATO to target in the days 1981 and has lived inthe the streets United to States celebrate and what they saw as the end of Muammar Gaddafi's four decades of powerAlthough, but a governmentTripoli was fightbackostensibly under leading up to their attack. trained as a special forces operative in both was reported as dawn brokethe on control Monda ofy Gaddafi loyalists, rebels said Rebel leaders discussed their idea with Sudan and Iraq. the security system was porous: bribery or French President Nicolas Sarkozy at a meeting There were already anti-Gaddafi cells in the other ruses could be used to get in and out. at the Elysee Palace on April 20. That meeting capital that the was one of five in Paris in April and May, rebels knew they according to Mlegta. Most were attended by could activate. the chiefs of staff of NATO countries involved “The problem REBELS TAKE TRIPOLI in the bombing campaign, which had begun in was that we After a six-month civil war, the fall of Tripoli came quickly, with March, as well as military officials from Qatar needed time,” a carefully orchestrated uprising launched on Saturday night to and the United Arab Emirates. the senior NTC coincide with the advance of rebel troops official said. “We feared that some Green Square Sunday “WE FEARED THAT Jubilant rebels waving units may go out opposition flags and Mediterranean Sea SOME UNITS MAY GO into the streets firing into the air drove OUT INTO THE STREETS in a spontaneous into the square way and they British would be Embassy AND BE QUASHED.” Italian quashed. We Embassy After presenting the rebels’ plan “from also needed United Nations Shari Fashloum A to Z”, Mlegta handed NATO officials time to smuggle Building State TV building three memory cards: the one packed with weapons, Sharia Omar al-Mukhtar information about regime strongholds in fighters and 500 km Tripoli; another with updated information boats.” TRIPOLI on regime sites as well as details of 65 In the early Tripoli Gaddafi officers sympatheric to the rebels months of the Bab al-Azizyah Monday LIBYA Tanks emerged from Gaddafi's who had been secretly supplied with NATO uprising, pro- stronghold and were shelling radiophones; and a third which contained the rebel fighters the area, Al Jazeera television plot to take Tripoli. had slipped out reported Sarkozy expressed enthusiasm for the of Tripoli and Rixos hotel Sunday 500 m A Reuters reporter said plan, according to Mlegta and the senior NTC made their way there was heavy and official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. to the north- sustained gunfire for hours The leaders slimmed the 120 targets down western city of Second Ring Rd Sunday Rebels made their entrance into to 82 and “assigned 2,000 armed men to go Misrata, where Tripoli driving in convoy through into Tripoli and 6,000 unarmed to go out (onto they were a western neighbourhood 3 Graphic LIBYA-TRIPOLI/ Date 22 / 08 / 11 Story LIBYA/ Reporter - Size 10 x 12 cm Research - Artist RNGS/Cabrera Code MIL © Copyright Reuters 2011.

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