Muammar Gaddafi’s Tripoli compound is to be turned into a public park, mentioned tourism minister Ikram Abdusalam Bash Imam. The sprawling Bab al-Aziziya complex once housed a swimming pool, sports pitches, senior officials’ villas and gardens as well as an underground bunker, government offices and buildings.
“We will soon start moving the debris from Bab al-Aziziya as well as conducting a security scan of the area,” said Imam. “Bab al-Aziziya will be an area of greenery and we hope to start seeing the first signs of this project in two months.”
A statue of a golden fist crushing a fighter jet, erected by Gaddafi outside a building bombed in 1986 that he dubbed the ‘House of Resistance’, was moved to the coastal town of Misrata, which withstood a three-month siege by Gaddafi’s forces. Imam said the families living in Bab al-Aziziya would be moved to new housing after the fasting month of Ramadan, currently under way.
However, the park’s long-term future is far from certain in a still-chaotic country run by a weak transitional administration. “Bab al-Aziziya will remain a park until there are definite plans for the city,” Imam said.
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