A coalition of 45 human rights groups are calling on the United Nations to apologize for granting Libya’s recently deceased leader Muammar Gaddafi influential posts at the UN. Gaddafi, who ruled Libya for 42 years, was killed on Thursday by rebels after surviving a NATO airstrike in his hometown of Sirte, according to reports.

"It’s time for the UN to formally apologize for having legitimized Gaddafi’s regime by electing Libya to its Human Rights Council last year, to the Security Council in 2008-2009, and as General Assembly president in 2009," said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a Geneva-based organization.

UN Watch specifically called on UN chief Ban Ki-moon and human rights commissioner Navi Pillay "to acknowledge the UN was wrong to support Gaddafi by granting him key posts on its most influential bodies."

The appeal calls out Jean Ziegler from the UNHRC Advisory Committee who helped to create the Muammar Gaddafi Prize for Human Rights in 1989. According to UN Watch, a Swiss TV report confirmed Ziegler’s role in creating the Gaddafi prize and described it as "an instrument of propaganda for the dictator."

The Gaddafi regime, which gave up its nuclear weapons program in 2003, has a long history of terror not limited to the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. For decades Gaddafi’s government funded dozens of terror organizations in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.

 

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