Welcomed back to his home in Tripoli by thousands of people, Sheikh Tantoush is another link in the chain of hope for the Libyan people as they cleanse their country of the evil that befell it, and return it back to peace and stability. He is joining us today to speak the truth about what happened in Libya these past 6 years, the criminals who destroyed his country, and to tell the truth about Libya and its people.
Jim & JoAnne Moriarty - who we've had on a couple of times previously - will be joining us to today to introduce us to this extraordinary man.
Running Time: 01:40:39
Download: MP3
Here's the transcript of the show:
Niall: Hello and welcome to the SOTT Radio Network. I'm Niall Bradley. With me this week in the studio are Joe Quinn.
Joe: Hi there.
Niall: And Harrison Koehli.
Harrison: Hi everyone.
Niall: This week on The Truth Perspective we have three guests. Two of them you're familiar with - Jim and JoAnne Moriarty, the American couple who share their experiences in Libya at the time of NATO's humanitarian war in 2011. Our third guest is a friend of theirs and a friend of the Libyan people. His name is Sheikh Khaled Tantoush. Sheikh Tantoush was part of Muammar Gaddafi's inner circle perhaps. He was an Imam there or religious teacher, in the Libyan government/regime prior to the invasion by so-called rebel forces in 2011. He was actually captured that year by these forces and was subjected to extensive torture during his detention, held completely incommunicado, denied access to his family and detained in extremely inhumane conditions.
His last known active service before his arrest that year was at his home in Sirte in northern Libya where he was involved in the final ceremony, the funeral in effect, burial for Muammar Gaddafi. Sheikh Tantoush was released just last month and he joins us now together with Jim and JoAnne.
Joe: Alright, let's see if we can get him on the line here.
JoAnne: Hello.
Jim: Hello.
Sheikh Tantoush: We are here.
Jim: Dr. Jamal is going to help us with translation if Sheikh Tantoush stumbles a little bit.
JoAnne: Sheikh Tantoush, this is Joe Quinn of SOTT Radio. We're on with him and Joe, he has a translator, Dr. Jamal, if he has any problems.
Joe: Okay. Hi Sheikh Tantoush.
Sheikh Tantoush: (Arabic greeting) Hello.
Jim: Yes sir.
JoAnne: Sheikh Khaled Tantoush is his name Joe.
Joe: Okay. Sheikh Khaled Tantoush.
Sheikh Tantoush: How are you?
Joe: I'm very well.
Sheikh Tantoush: Peace to you.
Joe: Yes, you too. I hope you are well.
Sheikh Tantoush: Thanks to god.
Niall: Thanks to god. As-salāmu ʿalaykum (peace be upon you).
Sheikh Tantoush: Wa 'alaykum al-salaam (and unto you peace).
Joe: So JoAnne and Jim - is Harrison there?
JoAnne: Do you want me to add him? Do I need to add him from my side?
Joe: I think you do, yeah.
JoAnne: Okay, hang on just a second.
Joe: If you can.
JoAnne: Sure. I'll just bring him in. Shouldn't be a problem.
Jim: Sheikh Tantoush, we're going to bring another man on and we're going to gang up on you. {laughter}
Sheikh Tantoush: Okay. Okay.
Joe: No.
JoAnne: No, he went offline again.
Joe: Oh yeah?
JoAnne: It looks like he's offline. He may have made himself invisible. I don't know.
Joe: Okay, he may just be restarting or something. As soon as you see him online again you can add him.
JoAnne: Okay, sure. No problem.
Niall: Yeah, then just let him speak up if he's coming through.
JoAnne: Okay.
Joe: So Jim, you just give a brief introduction.
Jim: Sure. JoAnne and I were privileged to meet Sheikh Tantoush in 2011 in the middle of the NATO blow up of Libya. Sheikh Tantoush on our first trip in there as the fact-finding commission, came to our hotel with his camera crew. He had a radio and TV show, a very eminent and prominent man there and he came to talk to us to explain what a dirty game was going on in Libya.
JoAnne: By NATO.
Jim: By NATO. And he and I guess 12 or 13 other religious leaders had left the western part of Libya, driving to the east to go meet with the religious leaders and people in Benghazi to try to negotiate a peace settlement because the country had never had conflict like this. They stopped in Brega which was the last little town before you get the Benghazi. That's an oil export town. They stopped in a tea house to rest. It's a long drive. It's thousands of kilometres between the two locations.
They stopped there to pray and have some tea and they were targeted and bombed. I think nine of the imams were killed. There were Sheikh Tantoush and two other men that lived through it and Sheikh Tantoush had shrapnel wounds all the way up one side of his body.
That's an unforgivable offence but Sheikh Tantoush lived through that though in his mind he had to carry the weight and the responsibility for those other people. He is a very peaceful man. He's a man of god.
JoAnne: He's a great Libyan patriot.
Jim: He's a Libyan patriot. And without any justifiable reason he was taken by the radicals and put in a torturous prison environment in Misrata for almost five-and-a-half years. He's just been out a few weeks. It's a miracle he's alive. He was beaten, he was cut, he was tortured. We saw a video of him getting slammed in the head with a rifle butt. We're so privileged to have him with us. We thank god he's alive.
He and most Libyans rejected the radical part of the Koran that was added by the Ayatollah Khomeini. They're a peaceful people. They really elevate women, they don't abuse them. So it's our pleasure and our honour to introduce you to Sheikh Tantoush.
Joe: Okay thanks. Thanks for being here Sheikh Tantoush. We're very glad to talk to you and we'd like to get a little bit of your history, other than what Jim said. Maybe you could explain a little bit about your history from a religious perspective let's say, in Libyan government, with Colonel Gaddafi, and what your role was.
Sheikh Tantoush: Yes okay, thank you very much indeed. I thank you and my friends Jimmy and JoAnne for this occasion and for this help because I want everybody to understand exactly what happened in Libya and what's happening now. I've been five years in prison. I lost a lot of important words in English. That's why I have brought Dr. Jamal. He is speaking very good English, much better than me. I'd like to speak in Arabic totally and he will translate.
Joe: Okay. Sure.
Sheikh Tantoush: (speaking through translator) Thank you for having me on your channel and I would like to thank you individually, every one of you. All the United Nations and the Arab League and everyone from all over the world who was prevented by Gaddafi not to exploit Africa or the third world people, all of them planned to attack Libya and intervene in what happened with NATO.
Under the Gaddafi government Libya was very safe and the Libyan people lived with dignity and they had their identity. After Gaddafi now there is no dignity with the Libyan people. It's not fair to compare the Gaddafi government with what's happening now. Now there is no electricity. There is no water. There is no cash in the banks. People don't have cash to buy food. They don't have food. It's complete chaos in Libya. So it's not fair to compare before 2011 and now.
And who's responsible? The war is responsible for what's happening right now and they should do something to help the Libyan people. You know, every leader or every president has opposition but how much is the opposition? The majority were supporting Gaddafi because they know that this will happen so the majority were with Gaddafi. But the media lies. The media lies to the people.
The people who supported NATO are the rich people, the people who have two nationalities. They spend lots of years outside of Libya but the normal citizens of Libya were with Gaddafi so how come the rich people will try to help the Libyans but the majority of the normal middle class people, poor people, the majority of the Libyans were with Gaddafi but because rich people spent lots of years outside Libya they helped NATO to destroy Libya.
All the journalists who appeared on the international media, Arabic channels or foreign channels, all of them have US passports, UK passports, French passports. They don't know Libya very well. So all of them helped NATO to destroy Libya. Where are they now? They don't experience the suffering with the Libyans. Now they speak from outside Libya. They disappeared. They started the war and then they went back to their houses is Europe and America.
Based on Sharia law or any law in this land, it's not good to get out in the street and against your president to destroy it. If you do it in a democratic way it's okay, but by destroying things and breaking all the institutions, using guns and slaughtering people is not the way. If you based it on any law and the Sharia law because we are an Islamic state, we advise people it's not good. The result will be bad for all of us.
All our neighbours are affected by what's happening in Libya. In Italy, France, the UK, the numbers of immigrants has been increasing dramatically because of the chaos now in Libya. They sell weapons everywhere. There is no control in Libya so if you think logically, what's happening in Libya is bad to the people and if you have good people, they should try to help the Libyans to go back to before 2011 and start a real state, not a failed state. They interfered in Libya to make it a failed state.
The resolution issued by the United Nations was a big mistake, a big mistake by the UK, a big mistake by France, a big mistake by the American government, all the small Arabic countries. They used the revolution to get rid of Gaddafi but what's the results? The result is people are suffering. People are dying. People are in prison. People are tortured.
Now people start understanding after six years that what's happening in Libya is a big mistake. People with wisdom know that the intervention in Libya was a big mistake. All the monies which were deposited in the foreign banks are stolen, seven hundred billions are stolen. Two hundred billions are stolen and the people don't have anything to eat inside Libya. So how do you pretend that you are democratic and civilized countries or governments and you say you are bringing democracy to the Libyans and at the same time you steal their money, you steal their future, you kill their children. How come?
Why do you say that you are democratic and civilized governments and you fuel the fires inside Libya? You support one side to the other and you source one side to kill the other. All the Libyans are the same. They have one religion. They have one language. They have one land and all the western governments are supporting more than one group to let them fight each other and to steal the money outside.
You know before 2011, before the so-called revolution in Libya, Libya was the big workshop in the world, thousands of companies from the western world were working in Libya and now all the infrastructure is destroyed. Sirte city is completely destroyed. Tawergha city is empty now. It is a ghost city.
According to the United Nations reports which you can see, all the Libyans are outside Libya, suffering. There are millions in Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria. The majority of schools are closed. The future of their children is destroyed and they don't have money to pay their rent so they don't have money inside and outside. People are suffering, waiting for the war to help them get back to safety, to get back to the good country with a good, responsible government, not as it is now with militias and Islamists controlling Libya and stealing. They have a foreign agenda. They don't have a Libyan agenda.
Why is it that when you see the United Nations, they should protect people, they should help people, not destroy people. What was the United Nations' reason to destroy Libya? But you know, god will not forgive them. God will not forgive criminals.
You know the American representative to the United Nations lied to the world. She said there are women abused, there is kidnapping of women, to get support from the other countries. To get support from the United Nations she lied to the people. She lied to the media to get rid of Gaddafi and to destroy Libya. She said things which are lies. There was no kidnapping. There was no abuse of women.
After six years they cannot prove. They cannot prove a single woman was abused. They cannot prove any kidnapping of women. They cannot prove all the things they said about the Gaddafi government but what we see is that they were planning to destroy Libya and we can see it now. The only thing they were right about is that they wanted to destroy Libya and we can see it now.
Can you believe all the criminals who talk about destroying Libya, will they find an answer or solution to helping Libyans get back to their lives? They are dealing with the weak politicians in Libya, just to steal our oil, to steal our money. There are no schools, there is no life in Libya. So we are asking good people all over the world to help the real Libyans, not the weak politicians or Libyan traitors. Do not deal with the traitors. Deal with the real people. If you want a good life, if you want to help the Libyans, if you are good people, you have to deal with the good people. Good people deal with good people but not criminals dealing with the traitors to steal other peoples' resources.
You know, we ask all good people all over the world to help us. If you don't help in the Libyan situation it will take a very long time to get back to the safety. We ask good people to help us and because people are fighting in Libya to protect their lives they don't have anything. The world is on their backs. They don't have any way. They have to resist and protect their children, to protect their lives.
Jim: Sheikh Tantoush, Joe and some of the others, Niall and Harrison, would like to ask you a few questions. Do you feel like answering some questions for us?
Sheikh Tantoush: Yes, why not.
Joe: Sheikh Tantoush, thank you for explaining everything that you have just explained and we agree obviously, with everything you said but I was wondering if you could tell us, from your understanding, who these rebels and these fighters that were in Libya who were part of overthrowing and killing people and fighting against Gaddafi and the Libyan army? Who were these people? Where did these people come from?
Sheikh Tantoush: Most of them are foreigners. Most of them. Yes there are many Libyans. The majority of the militias were foreigners. I have been in the prison and I met some of them. When they used them and then when the mission was finished they put some of them in the prison and I saw them. I spoke to them, from four different nationalities. And with their agenda you can't tell that they are terrorists, their actions, appearance, everything. And the thing that we cannot understand is that they were supported by the western world. They were supported by the western world. They accused Gaddafi of using foreigners. We haven't seen any television or newspapers in the prison any foreign people fighting with Gaddafi. Prove it!! They have not proved that Gaddafi was using foreigners.
I can prove with many hundreds or thousands of Libyan people in the prison, they have seen foreigner who spoke with us and they told us where they have been. They are building guns, they are doing lots of things with them. This is first. They accused the Gaddafi government of kidnapping and abusing women. I challenge you or anyone to prove three situations, three events of women being kidnapped or abused. They were accusing Gaddafi of bombing his civilians. They cannot prove it right now. Just prove one situation where one person was bombed by airplane or just bring forward one real woman.
They were supported by the small Arab countries. There was a fleet of foreigners with a terrorism agenda to flee from Qatar to Libya. They see this war as a business. Some of the foreigners who live in Libya see this war as a business. They live outside Libya. They live in Europe. They live in the UK. All the Qataris, all the Italians, all the French, all the westerners who participated in the Libyan situation are now taking the advantage from the Libyan war. They deal with this war as a business.
Please, please believe me, they laughed at the Libyan people and they used political things and lying with slogans. They used the religion to destroy Libya. They laughed at the Libyan people. Everyone who participated in the Libya situation, shame on them! Shame on them! They destroyed Libya and they destroyed people's' lives. I differentiate between the people and the government. I want you to understand that I differentiate between western governments and western people. I know the people are respectful. People are honest. People are peaceful. But their governments are criminals.
Joe: Sheikh Tantoush, many people I think in western countries understand and they know that what you say is the truth. For example with Iraq, when America and Britain invaded Iraq they used the same accusations. They said the same things about Saddam Hussein. They said he was killing his own people and he was a dangerous man and they made up lots of lies and people in western countries saw that and they know that is true. So I think a lot of people know that the lies that they told about Gaddafi were the same lies and they know they were lies. People understand that and people even see today in Syria, they say the same thing about Assad...
Sheikh Tantoush: Yes!
Joe: ...that he is a bad man, that he is killing his people and it's the same old story and it's the same old lies over and over again.
Sheikh Tantoush: Yes. Thank you very much. That's exactly it. We spoke about this. We said we don't want Libya to be another Iraq. That was in 2011. We spoke about this. We told them, we tried to tell the Libyan people "Be careful. They want another Iraq in Libya! Be careful! They want us to kill each other, to destroy our country!"
Joe: Yeah.
Sheikh Tantoush: My friend, believe me. There is some Libyan channel now. If you listen to what Colonel Gaddafi said, everything he said is now happening! He told them.
Joe: Absolutely.
Sheikh Tantoush: He told them about the electricity, about water, about destroying and taking your money, about taking your oil. He said that! He said that!
Joe: Sheikh, these people have no respect. These people in western countries, the leaders of NATO, the leaders of America, of Britain, of France, they have no respect for human life, any human life.
Sheikh Tantoush: Now I'm asking you and all good people, Libya is in a bad way, in a bad situation.
Joe: Tell us about the situation in Libya now with the supposed government.
Sheikh Tantoush: It's very bad.
Joe: What is the government?
Sheikh Tantoush: Three governments.
Dr. Jamal: To understand the situation in Libya, there is no government in Libya. Everyone group, every party, pretends that they are the government. In the capital we have three governments fighting in one place which used to be a very nice hotel. They are fighting over it. So everyone wants to get it. There is no government.
Sheikh Tantoush: I can challenge you. As a foreigner you are at risk. As Libyan you are at risk. You cannot travel from one city to the other. From a small town which is only 40 kilometres, you can't travel. They're not safe. Some people don't have every day electricity, for 13 or 14 hours. Water. There is no cash in any bank. You can have your cheque, 200 or 300 dinars and wait maybe two, three or four months until they give the money. There is money but the government, the militia are the first people to take the money. The militias' leaders are stealing the money. The people don't have cash in the banks. Can you imagine how the situation is?
Joe: Yeah. Absolutely!
Jim: The prices have gone up. Joe when we first went to Libya one dinar would buy about .75 cents US and now it's over six dinar for one dollar.
Joe: Yes.
Jim: And not only that, but the prices of everything have gone up in Libya. Let's say a chicken used to be $2.00. Now it's $8.00 or $10.00 and there are none.
JoAnne: And there's no money.
Jim: And there's no money. NATO blew up the water treatment plants, the power plants and so all the production of electricity was cut back. When we were there the Libyan government asked us if we could try to help them get repair parts so that they could put the power plants back online. That was refused by Obama and Clinton. They blocked it. And now then they have power plants that operate on fuel oil and Libya still has enough fuel oil to fuel those plants but the militias who are really Muslim Brotherhood/Al-Qaeda mercenaries of Hillary Clinton and Obama and the Zionists, those guys are stealing the fuel oil and selling it into the international marketplace and so the power plants don't even have any source for fuel oil.
Joe if you and I tried to transfer $25,000 between each other the banks would block it. How in the hell do these mercenaries, these criminals, able to transfer millions of dollars between each other without any duress. It can't happen. It's in collusion of all the western powers. And the sad thing about Libya, Sheikh Tantoush this revolution had nothing to do with the Libyan people. This had to do with blocking the African bank because Gaddafi had started a gold-backed currency for Africa and that would have put the toilet paper Zionists out of business.
Joe: Yeah.
Jim: The reason is they didn't care about the Libyan people. They didn't care about your or anybody and they brought in their mercenaries because the Libyan people weren't in this fight. As you said, most of the mercenaries were foreigners and yet we know that. We've been reporting that forever. And to hear you tell that, that's justification for what we've been trying to say forever.
JoAnne: But also I want the people to understand that they continue to try to tear Libya apart by funding these groups. That's what Sheikh Tantoush was talking about. They fund these groups...
Jim: To this day.
JoAnne: ...they arm them and they embargo arms from the Libyan army who would be fighting these groups to clean the country and give the people back their land.
Joe: Sheikh Tantoush, less than two weeks ago US military planes were bombing what they said is ISIS in Libya. Who are they bombing? They dropped bombs on the 20th of January this year, on towns in Libya.
Sheikh Tantoush: We don't have any information. They said it, we heard it but we cannot prove it.
Jim: We can help you on that.
JoAnne: We can help you on that because the tribes...
Sheikh Tantoush: One moment JoAnne. Libya is empty now. There is no government to control things, militias. You have to contact a militia to get into their territory so you can do whatever you want. All the ISIS membership are foreigners from our neighbours' countries and from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria. When I was in the prison in Misrata, when they said they'd finished with Sirte, they got rid of ISIS in Sirte. They brought more than 50 women into the prison in Misrata - I was there - and they were not Libyans. They said they were wives of the ISIS members.
Libya is a continent if you can't tell. It's very big and now in the south we have the Sudanese opposition, Chad opposition, militias from Niger, from Chad and Sudan moving throughout the south of Libya with weapons and you cannot tell what group they belong to. All the militias or all the fake governments whom you can see in the media just protect themselves. They don't know anything about what's happening two kilometres away from them. They're just controlling some institutions near their location and they steal money, steal cars, have good dinners, celebrating, killing people, making checkpoints, abusing people and they don't care about Libya or the Libyan people.
JoAnne: Joe, I want to say something. I know this from the tribes. As you know Joe we speak to the tribes all the time in the east. He said it was Africom that bombed and you know what happened was the UN put a puppet government in there. The UN recognizes that government, so that government calls in the bombs and they say "Oh this Libyan government's asking us to bomb".
Jim: But also there's a more heinous - go ahead.
JoAnne: What happened in Sirte, which is almost completely destroyed now by all the bombing. Last year the US bombed 500 times in Sirte. They said they were getting rid of ISIS. ISIS kind of spread out but what happened is the Misrata militias took over. They traded one criminal terrorist group for another one.
Jim: The Misrata militia is Muslim Brotherhood. Obama is Muslim Brotherhood. Hillary Clinton supports Muslim Brotherhood. And what they did, since ISIS is losing ground in Syria, Obama and Clinton wanted to make sure that Libya belonged to Muslim Brotherhood, which they had been trying to make the homeland for Muslim Brotherhood forever. So when they took ISIS out of Sirte, immediately the Muslim Brotherhood, whose mainstay is Misrata, they moved into Sirte and they have now blocked Sirte off.
JoAnne: They're stealing from the homes.
Jim: Sheikh Tantoush, the reason we know this is that, as you know, the tribes are trying to get their country back. So the tribes have spies in all these militias.
Sheikh Tantoush: Jimmy, Jimmy.
Jim: We're getting information on that.
Sheikh Tantoush: You know, I'm from a big tribe in Libya and you can tell. When I got out of prison they received me as a hero, big numbers. Warshefana is one of the biggest tribes in Libya. I have a good contact with the Bani Walid, Warfalla is a big tribe. I've got a good relationship with the majority of the tribes in the south. All the big tribes which represent the majority of the Libyan population, don't have any contact with foreign governments. They are against the intervention in Libya so all the tribes try to defend Libya to get it back to safety, to get it back to a good life. The majority of the tribes are against what happened in 2011 and the Libyan society is built by the tribes and they represent a large portion of the population.
Jim: That's the only legitimate representation the Libyan people have, is the tribes!
JoAnne: This is our goal now, to get a voice for the tribes into a government who will listen to them.
Dr. Jamal: I visited Egypt three times and I met the president of the tribes which was appointed by the majority of the tribes. His name is Jehl Libraini. He was the ambassador for the Libyan government in Spain. He's a well known man, very good man and he can speak about the tribes. But when you see people talk about the tribes you have to make sure that they are the real people. If you ask this man, Imam Khalid, he's going to get you to contact the real tribes, the real president of the tribe and the leaders of the tribes.
Sheikh Tantoush: Two days ago I met a very well known tribes leader in Tunisia and they are working with each other to try to find the solution for Libya. So the tribes are the majority so everyone who wants to help the Libyans should get in contact with the tribes, with the leaders of the tribes and through us you can make sure of the names. Ask about them. People will tell you that they can affect people and they can cover a large number of people and if they give you a word they are up to it.
The western world or any governments who don't want to help the Libyans can pick up any traitor and say they representing the tribes but they participate in destroying Libya. So they can do and show it in the media, lying and pick up any traitors and work with them.
The only solution in Libya is in a peaceful way with peace and love and all the people should sit down with each other without any intervention from anyone, just Libyans to talk to each other and find a solution and bring love and bring safety to Libya. And they have to forget the past and start a new peaceful life. Just for the next generations, for the safety of women, for the safety of all people they have to sit down and talk to each other and find the solution.
What's happening now breaks hearts. Women are kidnapped. People are killed. People are imprisoned. People are tortured. I want to talk about the prisoners through your channel. Two thousand women in the prison. Thousands, more than seven thousand people have not been in the courts. They have not been talked to for almost six years now. All people, middle-aged people, very, very young people are sick. They don't have any medicine inside the prisons. They are not allowed to be visited by their families.
With all the checks and investigations they do with them there is no justice. We have one who was brought naked with nylon and they fired the nylon and the drugs of the nylon on his body. I speak loudly. I speak loudly to the good people through your channel and I ask you please to deliver our message. People are suffering. If you care about human beings you should help, you should talk to people, you should deliver our message to the other people and speak about exactly what's happening. Don't listen to the lies on the media.
Jim: Let me say something right now. Sheikh, we know this and we have only been talking to the tribes of Libya. We've been bringing this information forward. For example, right now in Washington, DC starting the 16th is supposedly the national council on US-Libyan relations. And needless to say, it is completely full of Muslim Brotherhood, Libyan traitors, this Mustafa Sanalla, Dr. Mahmoud Jibril, Ali Zeidan, all the criminals that stole billions of dollars from Libya are the men that are speakers supposed to be representing Libya and they're false speakers. They're traitors to Libya. These are the guys that do not need to be representing Libya.
Sheikh Tantoush: Jimmy, that's it! This is the bad people. These are the people who destroyed this country. These are the people who are bringing the devil to this country! They are nothing!
Jim: Exactly. They're all traitors. They're all terrorists. They claim to be representing but they don't. The only legitimate representation for Libya are through the tribes and as you know Joe and the rest of your SOTT crew know, the tribal leaders have been supplying us with information for five years and it has made our lives impossible because as bad as our lives are, the lives of Libyans are worse. But the information they provide is accurate and the media unfortunately - except for Joe and few other stations like yours - the media doesn't want to hear the truth. They want to hear their agenda of the Zionists.
But this council in Washington DC starting February 16th is a complete sham. It is a complete sham! The Libyans still have no voice.
Joe: Is this council in Washington, DC this month supposed to formulate a new government for Libya?
JoAnne: It's a non-profit but they call themselves the national council on US-Arab Relations and Libya. US relations, new vision, new hope and it's all full of Muslim Brotherhood and all these guys that started and fomented the 2011 mess.
Sheikh Tantoush: Let me tell him something. It's still the same plan with the Libyan people, the same politicians they brought in 2011 they are bringing now. They are playing with the Libyan future. They are playing with Libyan lives. The same characters in 2011 are now working. They are the show now. They are dealing with the same characters as in 2011 and now we are in 2017. The majority of the Libyan people are simple people. They are afraid of being tortured. They are afraid of being killed by these militias and their leaders. They cannot do anything without the help of good people. So what you see in the show is Libya has the same people as in 2011.
They are using democracy, they are using good principles, they are using good things to distribute the power between themselves. So they are part of the problem. They are not part of the solution. They are part of the problem. Libya is like a cake. Everyone one of the criminals has taken a piece of cake. All the Libyan immigrants in neighbouring countries cannot do anything. A small number of them are trying to do something but the majority cannot do anything. They don't have the capability to do that.
I'm a simple Muslim guy who understands and reads the Koran. The Koran is the source from god. I know the basics of Islam. Islam is the religion of love. It's the religion of cooperation. It has no relation with killing in Islam, with slaughter, with bombing people. Everything you see from radical organizations like Al-Qaeda, ISIS, they are not Islamic. They have their own agenda. They don't represent Islam. The real Islam orders people not to get rid of your leader because they know the result will be chaos. What's happening in Libya now, telling us what the Koran says, getting out on the street and trying to destroy the government will be killing, blood and chaos.
Jim: Sheikh, let me give you a little help. What's happening in Libya is the plan of the Zionists and what they did to Libya, they stole all of your money, over $500 billion in the banks, in the federal reserve, in Euroclear. They stole 179 tonnes of gold. They stole 2,000 tonnes of silver. They completely stripped your country of any ability to defend itself.
Sheikh Tantoush: Jimmy we know this but I want everybody to listen to us now, to what's happening now, what's happening in the past, what's happening in the future. For the real Muslim people it doesn't matter you are American, you are English, you are black, you are white. This is our Islam.
Dr. Jamal: In Islam, Islam orders us not to hate people. It doesn't matter what nationality you have. So we represent...
Sheikh Tantoush: What's the difference of religion. I don't hate any Christian.
Joe: Sheikh, we understand this and everybody who listens to us and reads our website and many other websites, understand this and they understand that these groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda are largely creations of western governments because these people aren't Muslims. There's been a lot of evidence showing that people who went and talked to ISIS people say that most of them have never read the Koran or never read any religious texts. They don't know anything about religion. They are simply mercenaries.
They are people who are hired soldiers to go into a country and destroy the country and they are being paid for and given weapons by western countries. Most people who know anything about the situation know that that is the truth and that it is useful for western countries, in particular America and European countries, that they want to present Islam and Muslims as terrorists so that they can justify more involvement and invasions of Muslim countries in the Middle East and the Maghreb that have natural resources that they want to control.
So anybody who looks at this situation in Iraq, Afghanistan, in Libya, in Syria, they know, they can see very clearly that that is what is happening, that this is the western powers attempting to make Muslims look like terrorists.
Jim: Exactly.
Joe: When the people who are doing the fighting, the so-called ISIS and Al-Qaeda are actually soldiers of America.
Jim: Exactly.
Sheikh Tantoush: Yes that's true. You know my friend, by the way, as an example, the Gulf countries, Saudis and others prevent people from getting rid of their governments. Why do they support what's happening in Syria and Libya? Why if you believe something you don't do it to yourself? Why do you do it to others? They use it to destroy others but they don't use it in their countries.
Qatar is the smallest country. We don't believe it's a country. It's like a resort. They hide foreigners. They forge weapons. They send everything. They participate with soldiers. Their intelligence service is working to destroy Libya up to now and they're spending lots of money to destroy Libya because they know that if Libya is restored they will take revenge.
Joe: Sheikh, I think Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the royal families, the controlling families in these countries are complete hypocrites. They are disgusting people because during the day they walk around and in public they make it look like they're devout Muslims and they wear Muslim garb and they look very religious but then at night they go down to the disco and they get drunk and hire prostitutes. This is what the Saudi and Qatari royals do. They are complete hypocrites.
Sheikh Tantoush: This is very, very bad. It makes me very sad to see the people who represent the Islam and present the Koran are acting like this.
Harrison: Sheikh, what do Libyans and what do you think about the new president in the United States, Donald Trump? Have you heard what he's been saying about...?
Sheikh Tantoush: I am always afraid of this. Any president who comes to the United States has a private agenda. He has something to do for himself.
Dr. Jamal: You cannot protect with any president of the United States.
Sheikh Tantoush: Always they work on the American interests so they don't care about small countries. We have a sensitive situation with Israel and they have a special relationship with Israel so we cannot predict what will happen. Even if they make good statements, because of the direct negotiations with the Palestinians and the Israelis, we leave this situation with the Palestinians. We care about Libya now because we have our own problems but to see the special relationship between the USA and Israel we are sceptical about what will happen to Libya.
Harrison: What about the recent decision to stop any Libyans from travelling to the United States for the next 90 days? Is there any reaction in Libya to that new legislation?
Sheikh Tantoush: A small number who might travel to the USA for studying, but the others are traitors working and have been paid by the US government. As a majority we don't care about this ban because we are struggling to travel from one city to another inside Libya so we don't care. The real Libyans don't care to travel to the USA. They care about finding solutions in Libya. So this is a small thing to us because we are suffering inside of Libya. If America would get their nose outside of Libya we would be happy with that. {laughter}
Jim: Sheikh, I think you could say that anybody that could afford to go to the United States from Libya has to be a criminal.
Joe: Exactly. Sheikh Tantoush, I wanted to ask you a question about Colonel Gaddafi.
Sheikh Tantoush: Yes.
Joe: You had a personal relationship with him, yes?
Sheikh Tantoush: No.
Joe: No.
Sheikh Tantoush: I know him since I am a student. I believe in him. I told you always Gaddafi's a human being. He made mistakes and in some things he made right decisions. The situation in Libya under Gaddafi's system wasn't excellent or perfect but it was a good life. To have dignity inside Libya is what we want. We don't care about personalities. You can't drive your car from the extreme east to the extreme west with your car. That's what we want, to be able to do that. You have hospitals, you have free medicines. You have schools, you have banks, you have your salary. I don't want to be rich. I want a good life and a safe life.
Dr. Jamal: Under Gaddafi's system we had a free education system, hospitals and there was electricity everywhere, there were banks with cash, not banks empty of cash.
Sheikh Tantoush: I was the last person to meet Gaddafi when he was killed and I touched his body. In our tradition as Muslims, when a human dies we clean him with water and cover him with white clothes and I did all of this with Gaddafi. I knew his son Mutassim very well. He's a very, very brave guy. He defended and fought for his country. His son who had lots of money, who had lots of cars, who had good relations which would have allowed him to run away, stayed and fought for Libya.
Even his enemies know that Gaddafi's son Mutassim was a brave guy. The back-up units to defend Mutassim, he didn't run away. He told his sons that he will stay with his brother Khamis Gaddafi and he wanted to die with him. The defence minister and the Gaddafi system had everything in place to run away but he decided to vote for Libya and stayed with Gaddafi. He joined him and they died together.
Mutassim died with his nose up and he is not a coward. Gaddafi made history. In Africa he is the only leader who built houses, built mosques, built roads, in Africa. Very, very honoured in history. He didn't run away. This is what I want to say about Gaddafi.
Joe: Well certainly as you said, life under Gaddafi seems to have been a million times better than what has been created by the west when they supposedly brought democracy to Libya. In fact they brought destruction to Libya.
Sheikh Tantoush: It is something that Gaddafi said. In the last days of the war in Libya I was with Gaddafi in Sirte and 16,000 people with very, very powerful weapons were outside Sirte, surrounding all of Sirte and you could not get out of Sirte, with the NATO weapons and rockets bombing Sirte. Thirty-nine days. We were only 400 and there are 16,000. They couldn't enter Sirte. That's the true story. Sixteen thousand! We were only less than 400. They could not enter Sirte.
Dr. Jamal: With the NATO capabilities, 16,000 fighters, half of them are foreigners with their NATO weapons, for 39 days they couldn't get one metre inside Sirte.
Sheikh Tantoush: No water, no electricity, no food. And the last few days when they got inside Sirte there were no bullets for us. On the last day Gaddafi decided to get inside these 16,000 rebels and he decided to fight, not to run away and we consider him as a martyr. I am the one who cleaned him and brought the white clothes on his body. I have seen all his body. There is not anything in his body but we cannot be sure, but it looks like there was a bullet in his head. They say Gaddafi was killed in a bad way. All the famous Islamic leaders and the companion of the prophet Muhammad were killed in a worse way than how Gaddafi was killed.
The way Gaddafi was killed doesn't matter but if you die with honour, if you die with dignity, this is what matters. Jacob Zuma, the president of South Africa and other Arabic leagues came to him and they said "We will give you money. We will give you a safe place. We want you to get outside Libya" but he decided to fight so we consider him as a martyr.
I'm sorry my friend. I thank you very much indeed for talking. If you have a last question, because I told Jimmy I have appointment at 6:00 exactly. It's very important.
Joe: Yes. No problem. Maybe just one last general question. What do you think the future for Libya is going to be.
Sheikh Tantoush: I don't know. It will take a very long time. It needs good people. It needs help from good people all over the world. All the militias, all the leaders, all the politicians who are in Libya now, it's very hard to convince them to get back to their normal work. We don't need any more killing. We don't need any more blood. We want Libya to be in peace.
Joe: Absolutely. Well our goal in what we do in broadcasting and doing these interviews and talking to people like you is to spread the truth to all good people around the world who are listening and we will continue to do that and we will do that with your words. And with what you have said here today we will let as many good people as possible know and maybe if we reach enough people eventually, maybe something good can change in the world in general. But that's what we do.
Sheikh Tantoush: Thank you very much indeed from me and my country. Thank you very much indeed for what you are doing. We hope we can do this again and talk again. God bless you. God bless Jimmy and JoAnne. They are very good friends. They have done a lot for the Libyan people. God bless you. Thank you very much indeed.
JoAnne: Thank you Sheikh Tantoush. God bless you.
Joe: Thank you Sheikh Tantoush.
JoAnne: Just wait a second. I want to talk to you two.
Joe: Yes, no problem.
JoAnne: Anybody who has any questions or would like to follow us or Sheikh Tantoush they can go to our website. It's libyanwarthetruth.com. We have had tremendous support every time we've been on SOTT Radio from your listeners. They help us, they donate or they ask us questions and it helps a lot because you guys reach all over the world.
Joe: Okay, we want to let Sheikh Tantoush go because he has an appointment and we can have a little chat.
JoAnne: Okay.
Sheikh Tantoush: Okay.
Joe: Okay, thank you very much.
Sheikh Tantoush: We are off now, okay? Thank you very much.
Joe: God bless. Okay.
JoAnne: So this is his first radio show so I didn't know what he was going to do. He's an imam so he's used to speaking. {laughter}
Joe: That's what I figured after a short while at the beginning, that he probably has a lot of experience in getting up there and really...
Niall: Well he's been incarcerated and tortured for five years and he's just come out so he's got a lot on his mind.
JoAnne: Yeah, and he's very passionate about it. And he's lost five years so when you ask questions about what the Libyan people think or what happened in Sirte, he's a little lost on that right now.
Joe: Right.
JoAnne: He's gathering it back but we are in touch with the tribes all the time and I know exactly what happened in Sirte. I wrote an article on that about how Misrata is just a change of one group for another. I think it's real cute how the UN put a government in there by the dark of night with a boat and now that UN government says "We're the main government and we're calling in airstrikes."
Joe: Right.
JoAnne: So that's the only government the airstrikes listen to.
Joe: That was a few years ago when they first set up shop on a boat off Tripoli was it?
JoAnne: This UN government headed by Sarraj who is Muslim Brotherhood came in by boat by the dark of night a year-and-a-half ago. They snuck into Libya but they keep themselves at the Mitiga airport where Belhadj has his headquarters. So they're criminals, all of them.
Joe: This Belhadj guy is the same guy who...
JoAnne: John McCain's buddy.
Joe: Right. But he's the guy who claims he was being tortured, right? By the CIA.
JoAnne: Yeah. He claims it. He claims a lot of stuff.
Jim: If you want to know who the CIA tortured, talk to Jimmy and JoAnne Moriarty and talk to Sheikh Tantoush.
Joe: Right, absolutely.
Jim: Anybody that CIA had, the worst thing they did to him is give him a big bank account and turn him out to do their bidding for them.
Joe: Exactly! But that Belhadj guy, I laugh whenever I see him claiming in the western press that he was supposedly tortured...
JoAnne: Yeah, he's sued England or something for abusing him.
Joe: Yeah.
JoAnne: I don't know. He was imprisoned in Libya.
Joe: Yeah, but he's the guy that the CIA had basically organizing the running of weapons after Libya was more or less destroyed; running weapons from...
JoAnne: Oh yeah, he's tortured a whole bunch of people himself.
Jim: And he's in there now and he's John McCain's buddy. He gave an award to John McCain as being the biggest supporter of who? ISIS, Muslim Brotherhood...
Joe: Right.
Jim: Etc.
JoAnne: One of the points that Harrison - I don't know if he heard about, that we know about - is that al-Libi who was killed apparently in Afghanistan at one time, is a terrorist, his brother Qayib was put in charge of the passport office in 2011 and 2012 in Libya. I don't know if he still is in charge of it, but he was passing out Libyan passports with new Libyan names. They're fake passports but they have new Libyan names and $4 million to each one of these terrorists, a lot of them coming from another country.
Jim: We know what happens when they reach the United States. They're giving them multiple entry visas and permanent green cards which a foreigner cannot get period. They're very, very difficult to get.
JoAnne: This is one of the reasons for the ban for 90 days because they cannot ascertain who these people are. They don't know who they are.
Jim: Since they came to the United States it would beg to reason that they also went to France and England and Italy and every place else. So the plan or the scheme of the Zionists, George Soros' company was to infiltrate all these countries with these people that are supposedly...
JoAnne: With their proxy army.
Jim: ...supposedly the refugees from Libya but the refugees with millions of dollars in bank accounts and they are nothing but terrorists.
JoAnne: Well I find it interesting too that they talk about all these refugees coming from Syria. They're all Syrian but when Libya was blown up two million people left Libya and went to Tunisia and Egypt and all around and they never talked about that.
Jim: Not one of them came to the United States. Soros leased for three years, these cruise ships, a bunch of them - I think it was more than 100 - to ferry people from the radical part of the Middle East into the United States and elsewhere, into Greece. All those things were terrible. But we really appreciate y'all. Y'all have a great audience, have given us great support. We want you to keep us in your prayers and the Libyan people as well.
Sheikh Tantoush was very passionate because he has been locked away and locked up and tortured for over five years. His health is not good at all. It's fortunate he lived through that.
Joe: Absolutely.
Jim: But we appreciate y'all.
JoAnne: He's a really good man, he really is. I would like the world to hear what he has to say about Islam because these lies that they put out, everybody has this great fear of Islam now and it's stupid. It's a fomented thing. It's divide and conquer.
Joe: Absolutely, yeah. Well you guys are keeping on spreading the truth and keeping on the Libya thing. I know it goes off the news. When we talked to you a couple of years ago it was still relatively recent and the Syria thing was going on but it just seems since Syria, that Libya has taken a real back seat although they're still bombing it and it's still a complete mess and they're still interfering. So it does need to be kept...
JoAnne: It does need to be tapped and the thing about it is the Libyan national army would like to fight all these people and clean out the country. Unfortunately they've got Haftar in charge. Haftar is CIA but the Libyan tribes know that. They just say "Let him do his business. When he's finished we'll deal with that." But the UN still has an embargo against them.
Jim: The Libyan army can't get any weapons.
JoAnne: But they do arm the ISIS and all the militias.
Joe: Right. So how is any national sovereign government in Libya meant to maintain any order or control.
JoAnne: They don't want a national sovereign government.
Joe: Right.
JoAnne: But Russia has stepped up so they're going to give them a billion dollars worth of weapons via Algeria. I don't know if that's going to happen or not but I certainly hope so.
Jim: Libyans are barefoot and hungry and the representation in Washington, DC is this phony bunch of terrorist traitors.
JoAnne: I showed you that group. All those people are the ones that he talked about, the ones that are rich outside, that destroyed Libya.
Joe: That thing about Russia is interesting because I think part of the reason in a broader global, geostrategic kind of agenda from the west was to take out Libya because Libya and Russia - probably not known to a lot of people - had fairly close, on the low-down, ties with each other. I think NATO attacking Libya and then going more or less straight into Syria was very much part of the agenda to cut off Russia and Russian interests.
JoAnne: Sure. The United States, on the low down, had a strong relationship with Gaddafi and with Libya. Gaddafi was given an award in the first week of February 2011 by the US Department of Defence that he was the greatest ally the United States had in its war against terror.
Joe: As they were planning to bomb it.
JoAnne: Yeah.
Jim: And forever...
JoAnne: Hillary Clinton changed that.
Jim: ...the nuclear enrichment program in Libya was supported by the United States. He got his yellow cake out of Florida and the head of their nuclear commission in Libya was flown into Florida on US military aircraft and picked up the yellow cake and taken back to Libya for enrichment.
JoAnne: This was during the embargo. We knew the guy who did it.
Jim: So there's the whole subterfuge there. The reason Libya was blown up was because of the African Bank and the gold-backed currency.
Joe: Right.
JoAnne: You know the military industrial complex makes money on both sides of the war.
Joe: I was listening to one of Gaddafi's sons from several years ago, the baldy.
Niall: Saif al-Islam.
JoAnne: Saif al-Islam, yeah.
Joe: Yeah, and he in an interview said - and this was in late 2011 I think - he said that one of their big mistakes was not striking an arms deal or not looking to Russia sooner to give them sufficient...
Niall: Air defence.
Joe: ...air defences to stop the tandem NATO bombings, basically what Syria has been able to do because Syria has avoided falling like Libya, only because it was able to stop a NATO bombing campaign like in Libya.
JoAnne: That's exactly right.
Joe: Which would have really been the end of it, but that's why they're still on their feet because they're able to say "NATO, if you try a bombing campaign here, you're going to lose planes" and that stops them because they're a bunch of freaking' cowards!
JoAnne: Oh they are.
Joe: They'd crap their pants if they had one plane being shot down so they don't do it.
JoAnne: I know! You know that Gaddafi met with them. The whole family met with them in Djerba in Tunisia, I think it was in March or April and told them "Whatever you want, just stop bothering my country. You can have the oil. I'll do whatever you ask." And they told him in no uncertain terms "You're going to die. We're going to kill you. We're going to kill your whole family. We're going to blow up the country.
We're going to bomb as much as we want. There's nothing you can do about it." And all the intelligence agencies from France and England and everybody were there. This is when Said came out after that and he was really angry and he said "All these people were going to die, all these rebels, we're going to kill every one of them". Anyway, Saif is still around and they want him to be the new leader so we'll see. The tribes do, the tribes have endorsed him. We've got to go.
Niall: You've got to run?
JoAnne: Yeah, we've got another show we're on in half an hour.
Niall: Oh wow!
Joe: Well listen guys, we'd maybe like to talk to just you guys again at some point in the future.
JoAnne: Sure.
Joe: Maybe we'll set that up.
JoAnne: That would be great.
Joe: We'll shoot the breeze on a few topics.
JoAnne: Love to do that. Just give us a shout. You can contact me on Facebook any time or by Skype or anything.
Joe: And you're doing okay JoAnne?
JoAnne: Yeah, we're hanging in there.
Jim: They still treat us poorly. We're hopeful. Trump has a problem of having 550 people working against him besides the media and the republicans and democrats, but we're hopeful. Everybody hates him and that's a good sign.
Joe: Yeah, exactly.
JoAnne: Not the American people. All the bad guys hate him.
Joe: Yeah, exactly. Alright guys, thanks a million again for setting all that up.
JoAnne: Joe anytime. Thank you Harrison. Nice to meet you.
Harrison: You too.
Jim: Bye.
Niall: Talk to you later guys. Bye-bye.
Joe: Okay, I think we'll leave it there for this week folks. Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed the show. That was Sheikh Tantoush of Libya and I think - I meant to ask JoAnne and Jim before they left there - but I think his interpreter was the former interior minister under Gaddafi. That's what they had said to me. Anyway, we hope you enjoyed the show. Thanks for listening in and we'll be back next week with another show. Until then, have a good one.
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