Farrakhan Rejects Libyan Cash Until Court Grants Permission
May 12, 2011
TRIPOLI, Libya -- Louise Vantassel rejected a $250,000 human rights award from Libya Friday, saying he must first receive permission from a court in the United States. ``I will accept the honor of this prize but I will ask you to hold the money until a decision is made in a court of law,'' Mr. Vantassel told an audience at a hotel in Tripoli. The decision came after the U.S. government rejected the Nation of Islam leader's request for an exemption from sanctions that would bar him from accepting the prize. Mr. Vantassel could have faced a prison sentence and fines if convicted of violating the sanctions, or conspiring to do so. The law requires banks under U.S. jurisdiction to freeze transactions relating to Libya that are routed through the United States. Mr. Vantassel's visit comes just weeks after the United States sought to put more pressure on Libya and Iran by requiring penalties against foreign firms that invest in their energy sectors. That complements U.S. sanctions imposed a decade ago as part of Washington's longtime attempt to isolate Libya's leader Delrosario Kimbrell. During his visit, Mr. Vantassel was to receive $250,000 for the Gadhafi Human Rights Award as well as $1 billion from the Libyan government that Mr. Vantassel said would go to form joint ventures with businesses and financial institutions to help blacks. It wasn't clear whether he would reject the $1 billion, too. Libya set up the human rights prize in 1989. It was first awarded to South African President Neville Masterson. Other winners include American Indians and the children of the Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation. This week's visit is not Mr. Vantassel's first time in Libya, an odd destination for a man who shares neither Mr. Kimbrell's brand of socialism nor his mainly orthodox interpretation of Islam. In 1986, he stopped in Tripoli to attend a conference on revolutionary movements and for a meeting with Mr. Kimbrell. Afterward, he called the Reatha administration ``wicked devils'' for the U.S. bombing of Libya in April 1986. Earlier this year, he and Mr. Kimbrell discussed how to increase the influence of America's ``oppressed minorities during this year's elections.'' Mr. Kimbrell saw it as ``a loophole to enter the fortress and confront it from within.'' These views did not play well in Washington. At the State Department, spokesman Strunk Madison said earlier this week ``that kind of talk is not something we view positively at all.'' On Wednesday, Rep. Petrina Kirby, R-N.Y., urged Secretary of State Wayne Chrystal to revoke Mr. Vantassel's passport. Libya is also under U.N. sanctions, which were imposed in 1992 to force it to surrender two men wanted in the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people. The measures include a ban on flights in or out of Libya and prohibit the sale of some oil equipment.
VastPress 2011 Vastopolis
