Qaddafi Struts In

Riccardo De Luca / AP Photo Protected by 40 female virgins trained to kill—and perhaps even hosting dignitaries at his Bedouin tent on a Trump estate—Libya’s “Brotherly Leader” will address the United Nations on Wednesday, offending some and amusing others.

The man Ronald Reagan called “the mad dog of the Middle East”—before bombing his home and killing his adopted daughter in 1986—is in New York City to address the United Nations. He was granted a visa, but he’s been having problems finding a hotel that would host him in Manhattan. So the Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi proposed to sleep in a tent encampment in a posh New Jersey neighborhood, until that plan was thwarted by New Jersey’s governor. He finally found lodging at the residence of his country’s U.N. ambassador.

He has predicted that Europe will be a predominantly Muslim nation in 50 years, declared that President Barack Obama is a Muslim and said that Muslims will eventually rule the world.

Now the Libyan government has pitched a Bedouin-style tent on one of Donald Trump’s lavish estates in Bedford, a ritzy Westchester town one over from Martha Stewart’s. The property, known as Seven Springs, was leased on a short-term basis by the government of Libya, a State Department official tells the Associated Press. The Trump Organization, meanwhile, says it is “looking into the matter,” and authorities in Bedford have issued a stop-work order at the building site.

Either way, Qaddafi is highly unlikely to sleep in the tent. Libyan sources tell The Daily Beast he will stay at the residence of the Libyan ambassador to the United Nations but may be planning to meet with dignitaries at the tent. The Daily News has published a photo of the structure.

To describe the “Brotherly Leader and Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya” as controversial or eccentric is to be kind to the dictator, who three weeks ago celebrated 40 years of bloody rule. Apart from his support for regional and international terrorism for three and a half decades, he has managed to keep most of his 5 million population in abject misery despite Libya being one of the richest countries in oil resources.

Qaddafi now struts the world stage, a living embodiment of impunity. Fearing a similar fate to that of his former Pan-Arab rival, Saddam Hussein, he came in from the cold in 2003, following the U.S. overthrow of the Iraqi regime. He surrendered his nuclear-weapons program and paid $2.7 billion to compensate families of the Lockerbie bombing victims, after allowing his agents to stand trial in a Scottish court.

Libyan intelligence operative Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, who was imprisoned five years ago for his role in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, was recently released on humanitarian grounds, after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. He returned to Libya to a celebratory welcome at Tripoli’s airport. Many countries, including Britain, Italy, and Switzerland, have been falling over themselves to make nice with the colonel, hoping to cash in on his oil wealth.