TRIPOLI: Muammar Gaddafi’s Tripoli compound, the city within a city from which he orchestrated eccentric defiance of Western powers and disdain for his own people for four decades, is to be turned into a public park, Tourism Minister Ikram Abdusalam Bash Imam said yesterday.
The sprawling 6 square kilometre Bab Al Aziziya complex once housed a swimming pool, sports pitches, senior officials’ villas and gardens as well as an underground bunker, government offices and buildings belonging to the feared and pervasive security apparatus.
Some residents recall how they were too scared to look at it when they drove past to avoid harassment by security agents. But the revolution that toppled Gaddafi reduced it to rubble.
“We will soon start moving the debris from Bab al-Aziziya as well as conducting a security scan of the area,” Imam told a news conference.
“Bab Al Aziziya will be an area of greenery and we hope to start seeing the first signs of this project in two months.”
The complex was first bombed by US jets in 1986 in retaliation for the Libyan bombing of a discotheque in Berlin — but finally pulverised in August 2011 when Nato warplanes bombed it to help rebels to seize control of the capital.
Rebel fighters poured in, smashing statues, burning Gaddafi’s Bedouin-style tents and seizing weapons.
Within hours, ordinary Libyans also flooded through the once forbidding high concrete walls to inspect the villas, loot flat-screen televisions or simply gloat over Gaddafi’s fall.
Imam said the families living in Bab Al Aziziya would be moved to new housing after the fasting month of Ramadan.
However, the park’s long-term future is far from certain in a still-chaotic country run by a weak transitional administration.
“Bab al-Aziziya will remain a park until there are definite plans for the city,” Imam said.
REUTERS
