The Libyan government has owned an embassy (read:
25-room mansion) in Englewood, N.J., since 1982. And Col. Moammar Kadafi, the country’s
sometime-pariah president, was planning to stay there – and pitch one of his
famous tents on the lawn – during his visit to New York next month for the
United Nations General Assembly. In preparing, construction workers were even renovating the place.
But the hero’s welcome that Kadafi gave last week to
Pan Am 103 terrorist Abdel Basset Ali Megrahi – the only man convicted of
killing 270 people by blowing up an airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 –
has infuriated the good people of New Jersey.
"People are infuriated that a financier of
terrorism, who in recent days gave a hero's welcome to a convicted terrorist,
would be welcomed to our shores, let alone reside in our city," said
Englewood Mayor Michael Wildes, the grandson of a Holocaust survivor. "My
citizens are furious, I am furious."
"I want him barred from New Jersey," agreed
Democratic Rep. John Adler. “Let him land at the U.N. by helicopter, do his
business and get out of the country."
Ditto Gov. Jon Corzine, up for reelection this year, who declared: "Kadafi is
not welcome in New Jersey."
The decision by the Scottish government to free the
terminally-ill 57-year-old on compassionate grounds infuriated families of
the Lockerbie victims, many of them from New Jersey.
And it has sent the State Department searching the law
books to see if the government can preclude the Libyan leader from pitching his
tent in New Jersey.
"We can impose restrictions on the use of
diplomatic residences," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said the
other day. "That's a very broad provision, and we're expecting that we'll
be able to come to some sort of agreement where all of these sensitivities are
respected."
Why a tent? Kadafi, who has camped out in such beautiful settings as the Elysee Palace in Paris, says the unusual sleeping arrangements help him stay true to his Bedouin roots.
-- Johanna Neuman
Photo Credit: Mel Evans/Associated Press
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THANK GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AMERICA IS AWAKING!!!!!!!!!!!!! THANK GOD!!!
WHAT WOULD BE THE ODDS RIGHT BEFORE SEPT 11, 2009!! I AM SURE IT IS NOT A "COINCIDENCE", BELIEVE ME!, HE SHOULD NOT EVEN BE IN ALLOWED IN THIS COUNTRY, HOW DARE HIM! NOW IF THE PRESIDENT ALLOWS HIM, WE KNOW WHERE HIS HEART IS, IT IS NOT WITH "THE UNTIED STATES OF AMERICA", I SPEAK FOR THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE, BELIEVE IT!! THANK GOD WE ARE FINALLY SEEING RIGHT THROUGH THESE PEOPLE! PLEASE STAY AWAKE AMERICA!
Posted by: TRISH KENNEDY | August 27, 2009 at 12:11 PM
Kadafi should never be allowed into this country. How many terrorist will he bring with him and leave them here to make plans to kill more americans?
Posted by: BQ | August 28, 2009 at 12:13 PM