Exclusive: Conflicting accounts on the fate of Libya’s former U.N. ambassador

Libya’s U.N. ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi denied allegations that Libyan militia members attempted to murder Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi‘s former intelligence chief and U.N. envoy, Abuzed Omar Dorda, by tossing him off a second story building last week.

"We have credible information that when he learned that Qaddafi had been killed he tried to commit suicide and he jumped from the second floor and his hip was broken," Dabbashi said in his interview with Turtle Bay.

Turtle Bay first reported on Friday that Dorda’s relatives claimed that his jailers had tried to murder the 71-year-old former Libyan official by tossing him off the second floor of a building where he was being held in detention. Dorda’s son-in-law, Adel Khalifa Dorda, appealed to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and U.N. Security Council President U. Joy Ogwu to intervene with the Libyan government to ensure Dorda is not killed.

The incident comes at a time of mounting international concern over reports of abuses of Libyan loyalists in the final push to overthrow the Qaddafi regime. The U.N.’s special representative to Libya, Ian Martin, told the U.N. Security Council that "Muammar and Mutassim Qaddafi were mistreated and killed in circumstances which require investigation, and there are other disturbing reports that killings amounting to war crimes were committed on both sides in the final battle for Sirte."

Martin also expressed concern in a closed door meeting with Security Council members about the mistreatment of Qaddafi loyalists in detention. On Friday, a top U.N. official said that Martin had instructed his staff to look into the case. But it was unclear anyone had.

Dabbashi said that no one from the United Nations or any other organization has raised concerns with him about the fate of Dorda. But he said the Libyan government is committed to ensuring Dorda’s protection because "he has been involved in the killing of the Libyan people and it’s very important to keep him alive and bring him to court."

Dorda’s brother, Dr. Abdalah Dorda, who was allowed to visit his brother at the Libyan Mitiga military hospital in Tripoli on Friday, said that no one from the United Nations had visited his brother there. In a telephone interview on Saturday with Turtle Bay, Dorda called on the Libyan authorities to guarantee his brother’s protection, saying he remained under the control of the militiamen he claimed had mistreated him last week.

But Dorda provided a different account of the incident than his nephew, Adel Khalifa, had  presented to the U.N. secretary general last week. He said that his brother had actually jumped from the second story himself, but that he did so only after having been threatened by his jailers.  He said that he had fractured his foot and the socket in his hip and that his "medical condition is not good."

"He jumped out of the window to save his life," he said. "I think they pushed him to do something, saying they would do something bad. Maybe they threatened to kill him or do something and then he preferred to jump than stay." (For a more detailed account of the incident, see this report Mary Beth Sheridan and I wrote for the Washington Post.)

Dorda said his brother had received no visits from the United Nations or other international groups, but that he planned to urge the International Committee of the Red Cross to monitor his brother’s treatment. Dorda said his brother was able to speak but that he "was still under stress" because the same group of fighters that had captured him and held him in custody was responsible for his protection at the hospital. "I fear that they may kill him."

"We need to put him directly under supervision of the official government, this is a VIP, and ex minister, he is not an ordinary man."

Dorda was a well-known figure in U.N. circles in the late 1990s and early 2000s. And he played a role in helping Qaddafi mend ties with Britain and the United States, paving the way for the ultimate lifting of U.N. sanctions against Libya for its role in the 1988 terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people, mostly Americans. In Feb. 2000, the U.S. State Department authorized a visa for Dorda to travel to Washington, making him the first senior Libyan official to visit Washington since the two countries broke off diplomatic relations two decades earlier.

While U.S. officials declined to meet with the Libyan ambassador, Dorda addressed senior U.S. foreign policy experts at Georgetown University and the Woodrow Wilson Center on his nation’s desire to improve relations with the United States.

"This is the first time I have been permitted to come" to Washington, Dorda told me in an interview at the time, which was published in the Washington Post. "Many times I have been invited, but unfortunately I couldn’t get permission."

Dorda went on to become the chief of the Qaddafi government’s foreign intelligence agency. But his standing at the U.N. and Washington fell along with Qaddafi’s. Early this year, the U.S. Treasury Department and the U.N. Security Council imposed freezes on Dorda’s financial assets.

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