by Jane Briggs-Bunting; illustration by Paul Szep
As the ground and air war continues in Libya, I received an email from a former colleague and friend from the Detroit media. He related how he covered a story in the mid-1980s about a Gaddafi’s loyalist. Musa Kousa, who had attended school at Michigan State University studying sociology and following the Spartans’ sports teams. He sent me the link for the mid-1980s story he uploaded to You Tube.
Kousa returned to his homeland and then became the equivalent of the Libyan ambassador to the UK when he headed up the Libyan Mission in London. Back then, he was allegedly in charge of assassinating the exiled political opponents of Colonel Gaddafi. In 1984, during demonstrations in front of the Libyan Embassy in London, the crowd of demonstrators was sprayed with bullets from the embassy. Among those killed was a London police officer, Yvonne Fletcher. At that point, the Brits told Kousa to get out and shut down the embassy.
Kousa did and years passed though he evidently continued to follow Division I basketball at his alma mater. In the meantime, there was Lockerbie, international sanctions, nuclear and chemical stockpiling in Libya’s desert and other nastiness by the Colonel. Through it all, Kousa was a survivor. He became in many ways a fixer for Gaddafi, especially after 9-11, when the U.S. desperately needed better intelligence than it had on terrorists.
A 2006 edition of the Washington Monthly published an interesting article by Ron Suskind on Gaddafi’s decision to join in the fight against terrorism and rejoin the world community from his rogue status.
Kousa this past week made a return trip to the UK, this time as a defector. The Libyans deny this, saying he is only on a diplomatic mission.
Kousa had been one of Gaddfi’s most loyal supporters. Apparently his survival instincts are still strong as ever, and the relationships he has built up in his globe-trotting efforts for the Colonel have given him a safe harbor despite his murderous exploits on British soil.
International diplomacy does create some strange bedfellows.
Categories: Education, Freedom/Privacy, History, Politics/Law/Government, Religion & Philosophy, War/Security, World
Progressive Culture | Scholars & Rogues 
Im interested in Libya since the 80’s because of an experience I had. I was eating lunch in the MSU International Center in 78 or 79 and a pair of middle eastern students sat next to me in the cafeterias lunchroom and conversation was started and they tell me they are from libya. I remember saying I didn’t know anything about libya and they said the country was changing and it was the a country of ‘great freedoms’, and america wasn’t truly free, as I thought, but libya was truly free where you could live as a free man. I said something like cool, and good luck with all that or some such thing. They were being very animated while talking then suddenly their attitude toward me changed. one of men said I should come to libya and I must have showed no interest because his attitude changed again and he called me a ‘son of jesus’ with a demeaning sneer, almost a spit. I think I shugged my shoulders at that.
If koussa was one of those guys, then he is a prick