By Michael Shields
VIENNA, April 30 (Reuters) – Libya’s former prime minister
and oil minister Shokri Ghanem, a prominent defector from
Muammar Gaddafi’s government, drowned in the River Danube,
Vienna police said on Monday and a Libyan security source
suggested he could have been murdered.
Ghanem’s fully-clothed body was found in the Danube in
Vienna on Sunday, a few hundred meters from his home. According
to a preliminary autopsy there were no indications of foul play
or suicide, spokesman Roman Hahslinger told reporters.
A Libyan security source said they were investigating the
death and believed he could have been pushed into the Danube by
former Gaddafi agents.
His body was found at 8:40 a.m. (0640 GMT) on Sunday by a
passerby near the entertainment area known as Copa Cagrana,
where a footpath winds along the riverbank. He had spent
Saturday evening watching television with his daughter.
The daughter noticed at around 10 a.m. that her father was
no longer at home, police said.
The former Gaddafi confidant, who was also close to
Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam, was privy to potentially damaging
information including on oil deals with Western governments.
Ghanem, 69, had been chairman of Libya’s state-owned
National Oil Corporation (NOC) before defecting last year
several months after opponents of Gaddafi had risen up against
the Libyan leader and begun a rebellion.
Saad Djebbar, a UK-based Algerian lawyer who knew Ghanem and
advised the Libyan government during the Lockerbie affair, told
Reuters Ghanem was not the sort of man to kill himself.
“It’s a very mysterious death,” he said.
“He was worried about the future course of politics in Libya
but he would not be the kind of man for suicide. He was very
well introduced internationally and had lots of connections.”.
“Shokri Ghanem definitely is one of the guys who knew a lot
and was one of the most powerful guys in the old regime,” said
David Bachmann, an Austrian Chamber of Commerce official based
in Tripoli who knew Ghanem well.
As NOC chairman since 2006, Ghanem helped steer Libya’s oil
policy and held the high-profile job of representing Libya at
OPEC meetings, often visiting Vienna for meetings in that role.
After making a final break with the Gaddafi administration
last year, Ghanem first appeared in Rome, saying he had defected
because of the “unbearable violence” being used by government
forces to try to put down the rebellion.
He had been working of late as an energy consultant in
Vienna, where two daughters and their families also live.
Hahsinger said police had been unaware of any “concrete”
threats against Ghanem.
Ghanem was still closely associated with Gaddafi’s rule by
Libya’s new leaders and had ruled out returning home.
“Definitely there were people there who did not like him or
who thought that he had stolen billions and now he is in safety
in Vienna, having a nice life,” Bachmann said, adding it was
common knowledge that Ghanem was often in Vienna.
Bachmann said he would not have been surprised to read that
former Libyan rebels had taken revenge on Ghanem, but said
Gaddafi allies could also have held a grudge.
“The problem was he was sitting between the chairs. For the
old guys (in the Gaddafi regime) he was a defector, a kind of a
rat. For the rebels he was also a rat because he did not defect
early enough,” Bachmann said.
A woman who answered the phone at his home in a high-rise
apartment block and identified herself as his daughter said:
“Today we are still in a state of shock…right now I’m sorry I
can’t talk more.”
Bachmann said Ghanem had many friends in Austria and Italy
and spent time shuttling between Vienna and Rome while trying to
lead a quiet life.
“He was 69 and was not a stupid guy. You figure out you have
no political future and at a certain moment you say ‘OK, let’s
finish this Libya story and try to enjoy my family and my
grandkids and that’s it’.”
Ghanem, who studied at the Fletcher School of Law and
Diplomacy in Boston in the early 1970s, stood out among his
fellow graduate students for his sharp intellect and infectious
humour.
While American students there worried about soaring petrol
prices during the OPEC oil embargo of 1973, he eagerly explained
and defended the Arab view of the emerging new world energy
order.
At an alumni reunion in 2004, he impressed his former
classmates with his insider’s account of the economic reforms he
planned to introduce with the help of Gaddafi’s son Saif
al-Islam, whom he had mentored at OPEC headquarters at a time
when the now-captured son wanted to make a name for himself
outside of Libya.
Ghanem said Saif al-Islam had persuaded his father to reform
but he wasn’t sure how far reforms could go. He said he only
wanted to stay in office as long as he could modernise the
economy. If Gaddafi didn’t keep him, Ghanem said, he would
happily retire to write one or two books on economics he had in
mind.
(Reporting by Michael Shields, Tom Heneghan, William Maclean
and Marie-Louise Gumuchian; Editing by Samia Nakhoul)
