Is this tent the future home of M. Gadaffi?
From the department of You Can’t Make This Stuff Up comes news that Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi plans to (literally) pitch his tent on the front lawn of kind-of-rich guy Donald Trump. Trump owns the Seven Springs estate in Bedford, NY, on the lawn of which a large tent has been erected which reportedly will be the local headquarters of Muammar Gaddafi while he is in town visiting the United Nations.
Local residents are up in arms over the idea of the man behind the Lockerbie bombing camping out in their township. Local town attorney Joel Sachs has served workers with a stop work order on the pretext that the tent violates town ordinances, but claimed to be unable to communicate with workers because they didn’t speak English.
Families of those killed in the bombing were already upset that Gaddafi had been granted a visa in the first place. Pan Am flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, killing all 240 passengers and 16 crew members aboard. Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, who was convicted in the bombing plot, was recently given compassionate leave by a Scottish court after being diagnosed with a terminal illness. He received a hero’s welcome on his arrival in Libya.
Libya has mostly refrained from further involvement in terrorism since the Lockerbie bombing, and U.S. and British authorities are eager to both reward him and gain access to Libya’s underdeveloped oil assets.
For the first time since the Lockerbie terrorism incident, Gadaffi has been granted a visa to address the United Nations at its headquarters in New York. He had been expected to stay at Donald Trump’s extravagant Seven Springs property, and a lavish tent was being erected in the front yard to house him.
Trump claims that the tent is not for Gadaffi at all. A spokesman said the property “was leased on a short-term basis to Middle Eastern partners, who may or may not have a relationship to Mr. Gadhafi. We are looking into the matter.”
The Trump Seven Springs property can be seen on Google Earth at coordinates 41.16568800, -73.69551300.
