Libya footballers defect to rebels
UK: Seventeen of Libya’s top football figures, including
national team goalkeeper Juma Gtat, have defected to rebels battling to
oust the country’s leader Moamer Kadhafi, the BBC reported on Saturday.
Three other national team players and the coach of Tripoli’s top club
al-Ahly, Adel bin Issa, have also defected, in what the BBC described as
“clearly a propaganda blow” for Kadhafi in “football-mad North Africa.”
Kadhafi “has done nothing since he took over,” Gtat said in an
interview with the BBC through an interpreter, broadcast on the British
media group’s website.
“There is no proper infrastructure... there is no health care....
This is because of the bad regime we had for the last 42 years,” he said
from a hotel in the rebel-held Western Mountains. “I tell him (Kadhafi),
leave us alone and leave the Libyan people (to) enjoy their life in new
Libya, Libya for freedom.”
Football coach Issa said he wanted “to send a message that Libya
should be unified and free,” adding that he hoped “to wake up one
morning to find that Kadhafi is no longer there,” he added.
BBC News
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