A group of community activists organized by the Lebanese American Center in Dearborn traveled to New York on chartered buses to protest Qaddafi’s visit to the UN. They demanded the Libyan leader release Imam Musa Al Sadr, a Lebanese religious leader who is believed to have been kidnapped with two other travelers by Libyan authorities in 1978.

Supporters and family members of Imam Musa al-Sadr, the Lebanese religious leader who disappeared in Libya on August 31, 1978 on a state visit to that country, traveled from Dearborn to New York by bus this week to protest the Libyan leader Mu’ammar al-Qaddafi’s first-ever appearance at the United Nations. While the United States has officially removed Libya from their list of nations which sponsor terrorism, thus allowing his appearance, there are thousands of followers world-wide of the Imam who believe the Libyan leader should be held accountable for the “disappearance” of the Imam along with Sheikh Muhammad Yacoub and journalist Abbas Badreddin. On that day 31 years ago, they were last seen leaving their hotel with presidential escort for a meeting with Qaddafi.They have been missing since.
According to an ad placed by the group in The New York Times running the day of Qaddafi’s U.N. appearance, “All entreaties to the Libyan government have come to no avail, despite persistent reports that the Imam and/or his companions are alive. Instead, there have been alternating threats of bodily harm and offers of financial bribes to the families of the missing and their lawyers; total denial and stonewalling from the Libyan authorities; and the deliberate planting of disinformation that the Imam left Libya and went to Italy on the night of August 31. Twice, in 1979 and in 1982, investigative judges in Italy have denounced these fabrications. Mostly the pattern of the Libyan authorities has been a continued denial of the kidnapping, despite a televised address of Qaddafi in August 2002, wherein he acknowledged that ‘the Imam had disappeared here, in Libya.'”

On August 21, 2008, a Lebanese court case resulted in “indicting the accused Mu’ammar al-Qaddafi… for conspiracy in kidnapping and sequestering” the Imam and his two companions. On the basis of that investigation, arrest warrants have been issued for Qaddafi and seventeen others involved in the disappearing of the Imam and his two companions.

The group protested outside the U.N. building, calling for the arrest of Qaddafi on the basis of those warrants.