Following Up, Part I: Qaddafi's Cluster Bombs.

Thursday, June 9 2011

Following Up, Part I: Qaddafi’s Cluster Bombs.

Today I filed to The New York Times the first in a pair of At War posts following up on the coverage of the use of MAT-120 cluster munitions in Misurata, Libya by the forces of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. When the post goes lives on www.nytimes.com, I’ll link to it here.

The first post in the pair details how we made the initial identification in the field, and describes a new form of reporting made possible by social-media tools. The second post in the pair will, among other things, provide details of the then-legal transfers of these weapons (now largely banned by international convention) from Spain to Libya through early 2008, before Spain signed the international Convention on Cluster Munitions. The post will address directly the denials of the Libyan government that it ever possessed these rounds.

In a previous post here, I wrote:

The New York Times first identified these munitions and published information about their use in the Libyan war yesterday. Since then, several readers have asked me on email or on Twitter how these weapons, which Spain itself banned in 2008, came into the possession of the forces of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

This is a very good question. Unfortunately, I can’t turn my attention to this, as much as I would like to. Our brief now is to cover the war here on the ground, and there are not enough hours each day for even that. My hope is that other investigative journalists and organizations will take on the questions of how the Qaddafi forces’ MAT-120s moved from Spain to here.

Since that post, a small handful of researchers and journalists have taken a look at this question, and produced a small body of work. Some of the work is rigorous and sound. Some is not. Now that time and circumstances allow, I plan to share more on this theme next week.

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPH

Detail of one common element of debris left in Misurata, Libya after MAT-120 mortar cargo bombs were fired into the city by Qaddafi forces in April. By the author.