Umar Muhayshi

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Umar Muhayshi
Personal details
Bornc. 1941
Misrata, Italian Libya
Diedc. January, 1984
Abu Salim prison[1]
Cause of deathBlunt trauma
Political partyLibyan Revolutionary Command Council
Alma materBenghazi Military University Academy

Umar Abdullah el-Muhayshi (Adyghe: Умар-Абдилахь, romanized: Wumar-Abdilah; 1941 – January, 1984), also transliterated as Omar al-Meheshi, was a Libyan army officer and a member of the Libyan Revolutionary Command Council that ruled Libya after the 1969 Libyan coup d'état.

Life[edit]

Born to a family of Circassian and Turkish origin,[2] Umar Muhayshi was said to be a childhood friend of Muammar Gaddafi and later a member of the group of army officers called the Free Officers Movement that brought the royal regime in Libya down on 1 September 1969.[3][4] He became a member of the twelve-member Libyan Revolutionary Command Council, headed by Muammar Gaddafi. He was promoted to the rank of Major after the revolution. After the establishment of the Libyan People's Court in October 1969, he represented the attorney-general at the court.[5] He was Minister of Treasury in 1970.[6] He later was appointed Minister of Planning and took issue with Gaddafi's wasting of Libyan resources on pan-Arab and anti-colonialist causes.[7][8] Instead, he wanted Libya to invest its oil revenues in agriculture and industry, particularly heavy industries, such as iron and steel, in his hometown Misrata.[9]

In August 1975, Gaddafi's regime announced that an attempted coup d'état had been forestalled. All thirteen leading conspirators were members of the Free Officers Movement and four of them (Muhayshi, Bashir Houadi, Abdul Munim el Houni and Awad Hamza) were members of Revolutionary Council.[10] By that time Muhayshi had already fled to Tunis.[8] Most of the other supposed conspirators were executed in March 1976.[4] In an interview with Al-Ahram, Muhayshi denied attempting a coup and stated that he had merely tried to "correct Gaddafi's error" and had asked Gaddafi to resign. In the same interview, Muhayshi referred to Gaddafi as a "dangerous psychopath."[9]

According to declassified diplomatic telegram sent from the US Embassy in Egypt to the State Department, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was using Muhayshi's radio broadcast to discredit Gaddafi and most of Gaddafi's Revolutionary Command Council (with the exception of Abdessalam Jalloud) had turned against him by 1976. In light of this development, Sadat's government considered several options: forming a Libyan government-in-exile headed by Muhayshi, using Saudi money to fund anti-Gaddafi dissidents inside Libya, or creating a Muhayshi-led government on Libyan territory (near the Libya-Egypt border), where Muhayshi could then appeal for an Egyptian "intervention" to remove Gaddafi by force either through arrest or assassination.[11]

Between 1976 and 1983, Muhayshi lived in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco. While he was in Egypt, some sources said that Gaddafi's regime tried in vain to assassinate Muhayshi more than once.[12] Most notably, Gaddafi allegedly offered ex-CIA officers Edwin P. Wilson and Frank Terpil $1 million in 1976 to recruit a group of Cuban exiles involved in Bay of Pigs Invasion to assassinate Muhayshi.[13][14][15] The Cuban exiles initially thought the target of the assassination would be Carlos the Jackal, then living in Libya under Gaddafi's protection, and they refused to partake in the plot when the target turned out to be Muhayshi.[16] Wilson was sentenced to 32 years in prison over his ties to Gaddafi, but was acquitted in 1983 on the counts of murder conspiracy and conspiracy to solicit murder in the Muhayshi case.[7][17] Terpil never stood trial as he remained a fugitive for the rest of his life.

Muhayshi remained in Cairo until President Anwar Sadat announced his intention to visit Jerusalem in 1979, which Major Omar al-Muhaishi publicly and vehemently opposed, resulting in the freezing of his activities and even with his expulsion from Egypt to Morocco in July 1980. [18]

In 1983, while Muhayshi was in Morocco, then under King Hassan II, the Moroccan authorities delivered Muhayshi to Gaddafi in exchange of Gaddafi promising to cut off financial aid to the Polisario Front.[19][4] Muhayshi was murdered in January 1984 under torture by Sa'eed Rashid according to Abdel Rahman Shalgham.[20][21] In another account, he was allegedly stomped to death on the airport runway as soon as he landed in Tripoli.[4][9]

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ "ليبيا المستقبل .. Libya Almostakbal".
  2. ^ Ahmida, Ali Abdullatif (2013), Forgotten Voices: Power and Agency in Colonial and Postcolonial Libya, Routledge, p. 79-80, ISBN 978-1136784439
  3. ^ Xinhua News
  4. ^ a b c d Anderson, Jack (13 November 1985). "Fighter Against Qaddafi Betrayed" (PDF). The Washington Post.
  5. ^ el-Magariaf, p.256
  6. ^ "LIBYE: Remaniements ministériels et nouveaux gouvernements" (PDF). AAN - Annuaire de l'Afrique du Nord. 26 July 2020. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2020-07-26.
  7. ^ a b Smith, Philip (1983-03-05). "Jury Acquits Wilson of Plot To Kill Libyan". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2023-02-01.
  8. ^ a b hradmin (2011-03-25). "Libya Since 1969". The History Reader. Retrieved 2023-02-01.
  9. ^ a b c Refugees, United Nations High Commissioner for. "Refworld | Libya: The role of Omar al-Meheshi in Colonel Qaddafi's revolution; his activities in the 1975 coup attempt and in developing opposition movements in Morocco and Egypt (1969 - present)". Refworld. Retrieved 2023-02-02.
  10. ^ el-Magariaf, p.228
  11. ^ "Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume E–9, Part 1, Documents on North Africa, 1973–1976 - Office of the Historian". history.state.gov. Retrieved 2023-02-01.
  12. ^ el-Magariaf, p.858
  13. ^ Smith, Philip (1983-03-04). "Lawyer Told There Was No Wilson Murder Plot, He Said". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2023-02-01.
  14. ^ "After less than a day and a half, the... - UPI Archives". UPI. Retrieved 2023-02-01.
  15. ^ Tyler, Patrick E.; Kamen, Al (1981-09-10). "Relationship With CIA Aide Gave Credibility to Arms Seller". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2023-02-01.
  16. ^ Kamen, Al (September 12, 1981). "Justice Dept. Sent Bribery Allegations". The Washington Post.
  17. ^ Woodward, Bob (1984-04-29). "Qaddafi's Authority Said to Be Weakening". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2023-02-01.
  18. ^ "ليبيا المستقبل .. Libya Almostakbal".
  19. ^ Al Wasat magazine
  20. ^ Alhayat Newspaper (Arabic Language)
  21. ^ el-Magariaf, p.469

References[edit]

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