bjbjLULU JEFFREY BROWN: I talked with Lindsey Hilsum a short time after she filed that report.
Lindsey Hilsum, welcome once again. Tell us more about the takeover at the compound. It
sounds as though there was resistance in some parts of it, but not in others? LINDSEY HILSUM:
I think that that is right. There was certainly fighting around there pretty much all day,
huge explosions, heavy weapons being used, and smoke rising from the compound all through
the morning and the first part of the afternoon. One rebel fighter I spoke to who had been
in the compound said to me, though, that not all of that was, in fact, fighting. He said
some of that was just the rebels firing. His unit had not met with any resistance, but
he said, we're a bit chaotic. He said, we don't really coordinate. So rebels were just
firing around as they went in, partly in excitement, partly in case there was resistance. So, some
of that noise may just have been the rebels. But as I speak now, it appears that Colonel
Gadhafi's loyalists who were in that compound have fled. We think that they have fled south,
and the compound is in the hands of some very, very happy rebels. JEFFREY BROWN: And Gadhafi
and his family, of course, were not found there. What are the possibilities or conjecture
now as to their whereabouts? LINDSEY HILSUM: We really don't know. It was a tremendous
shock to many people when Saif al-Gadhafi, who had been reported to be arrested yesterday,
suddenly appeared in the Rixos Hotel, and then went down to that Bab Al Aziziya compound
in the middle of the night. So, had he been arrested? Did he escape? Was there some kind
of trickery involved? We have no idea. And where he is now, we don't know. That compound
has bunkers and tunnels. Have the family escaped through that tunnel? Or maybe they're heading
for Sirte. Sirte is on the coast east of Tripoli. It's Colonel Gadhafi's hometown. And that
one place is still very much firmly in his hands. It's possible that that could be the
place for their last stand, rather than the compound in Tripoli. But I have to say, I
am like pretty much all Libyans. I don't know where Colonel Gadhafi is. I don't know where
his family is. And until people do know where he is, they won't feel that this is 100 percent
over. JEFFREY BROWN: Well, in fact, in your piece, you talk about the shifting atmosphere
yesterday and today in the streets between celebration and tension. Give us a sense of
how it feels being there. LINDSEY HILSUM: Well, it goes one way or another. And you
go out on the streets as we did today and yesterday, and you're never quite sure what
you're going to find. But there are always local men there. These are the people who
rose up on Saturday night with their weapons, attacked Gadhafi's police and the remainder
of his soldiers and so on, drove them out of their neighborhoods. So this is a city
now which is under the control of different informal militia, people who know each other.
They know their neighborhoods. They have put up checkpoints and barricades. Anybody coming
in gets searched, gets questioned. And if they look a bit suspicious or they don't come
from that area, people are not sure who they are, then they may get detained. We came across
quite a few prisoners today. They didn't seem to be badly treated, but they were people
who they said, these men have a question mark over them. We don't know who they are. So
I think what we're seeing now is Tripoli divided into these different neighborhoods. And then
there are still some snipers. These are people loyal to Colonel Gadhafi, maybe the mercenaries
from other countries who he was paying to fight for him. They are in some buildings.
And every now and then, they shoot down in the streets. So there is a lot of tension.
People aren't safe. It will probably take quite a while, days, to mop all those different
places. But on the streets, the people say this is going fast in the direction that they
want. They say his rule is over. What we don't know, of course, is what kind of rule will
come next, because there is a power vacuum. The neighborhood men control the streets,
but nobody is in political power in Tripoli tonight. JEFFREY BROWN: And, finally, Lindsey,
coming back to the news of the day, the takeover of the compound, what of the symbolic value
and importance of that? LINDSEY HILSUM: Oh, it was an extraordinary symbol of his power.
This was the huge compound, which was partially residential and partly military, which nobody
could go in unless invited by the Gadhafis and people in his inner circle. Now, that
was where he would entertain world leaders. I think he entertained the former British
Prime Minister Tony Blair there once. And in the center of it, there was this statue
which he put up after U.S. jets bombed the compound in 1986. It showed a golden fist,
his fist, round an American jet. And what that said was: I am more powerful than the
Americans. I am the most powerful man. I will stay here forever. Now, those -- that kind
of symbol, seeing the rebel flag flying on it, seeing the rebels climbing all over it,
seeing them trashing the golden bust of Colonel Gadhafi's head, those are the pictures which
show Libyans that the era of Colonel Gadhafi is over. The symbols of his power are gone.
JEFFREY BROWN: All right, Lindsey Hilsum in Tripoli, thanks so much. LINDSEY HILSUM: Goodbye.
JEFFREY BROWN: And now to the other side of Libya, the eastern city of Benghazi, which
has been home to the rebel National Council since the uprising began this spring. Jon
Jensen of the international website GlobalPost is there. I talked with him a short time ago.
Jon Jensen, thanks for joining us. So what is the feeling there in Benghazi? Do they
think this is over or just about almost over? JON JENSEN, GlobalPost: Well, the mood in
Benghazi tonight is one of extreme jubilation. Residents here, as well as members of the
National Transitional Council, all believe that this six-month civil war is finally coming
to a close, after their rebel fighters stormed into Gadhafi's Tripoli headquarters tonight.
JEFFREY BROWN: Now, there have been some reports of a possible move of that council to Tripoli
within a couple days. What do you know? JON JENSEN: That's right. I'm hearing the same
reports. The NTC does want to eventually move to Tripoli. In a press conference earlier
tonight, the head of the council, Mahmoud Jibril, stated that, in some ways, the move
had already started. However, spokesmen off-camera will -- have said to me that the official
line is that the NTC will move to Tripoli when the conditions are right for it to move
to Tripoli. There are meetings tomorrow in Doha in Qatar, and after that, they will come
back to Benghazi and they will decide to go -- where to go from there. JEFFREY BROWN:
The whereabouts of Gadhafi and his family, of course, remain unknown. What are the leaders
that you're talking to there saying about -- about what will happen if and when he is
caught? Is there any sense of revenge, or what are they -- what are they planning? JON
JENSEN: The NTC has told me, spokesmen for the rebel authority have told me that, you
know, there will be a sense of revenge among some of the rebel fighters on the front lines.
They will want to do certain things to members of the tribe and Gadhafi himself if he -- if
and when he's caught. But right now, they're saying that the official line is that they
want to bring justice to Moammar Gadhafi after 42 years of injustice that he brought on the
residents of Libya. So, they're looking to find him and try him here in Libya. JEFFREY
BROWN: There was, of course, last night a lot of confusion when his son, Saif al-Islam,
showed up in Tripoli and was rallying supporters. That was after the council, the leadership,
had said he was under arrest. Have you been able to talk to them about what happened last
night? JON JENSEN: Rebel leaders here at the NTC have told me, frankly, it was a mistake.
They received information from commanders in the field, and they passed it off without
even checking the accuracy of these reports. Rebel leaders at the NTC actually tried to
spin their mistake today in a press conference earlier tonight, saying that the announcement
that Saif had been caught actually won them the defection of around 30 officers. So, they
are trying to spin this mistake to their advantage. JEFFREY BROWN: Is that celebration in the
background? JON JENSEN: Absolutely. There's tracer fire being shot into the sky. They're
actually lighting off TNT. So, it sounded at first this -- earlier this evening like
they were letting off mortars in the city. It's sort of a weird thing. You know, Tripoli
is where the fighting had been. We're 1,000 kilometers away from that, but it sounds like
a war going on here -- pure celebration. JEFFREY BROWN: All right, Jon Jensen of GlobalPost
in Benghazi, thanks so much. JON JENSEN: My pleasure. urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags
country-region urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags City urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags
place JEFFREY BROWN: I talked with Lindsey Hilsum a short time after she filed that report
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