Burning trash thrown onto Libyan property, mayor says they had it coming

Someone apparently threw a bag of burning garbage onto the Englewood estate where protestors last month prevented Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi from pitching a tent during his current visit to the United Nations. According to Englewood Mayor Michael Wildes: “This is what happens when we invite a financier of terrorism on our shores.”

Jerry DeMarco

09/24/2009 2:29 p.m.

Wildes made the comment to the Bergen Record, then confirmed that statement to CLIFFVIEWPILOT a short time later.

Earlier today, he said: “Taxpayers of my community have to pay for the criminal investigation” into the incident, which authorities have classified not as a hate crime but as criminal negligence.

Wildes speaks at last month’s protest

Wildes was one of several public officials and politicians who made speeches during last month’s protest of what originally were plans for Qaddafi to greet visitors in the tent, which is now causing similar outrage at the replacement site on an estate owned by Donald Trump in Westchester.

Protestors in both towns expressed outrage over the way Libya greeted Abdel Baset al-Megrahi — who was convicted in the Pam Am Flight 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland that killed 270 people — after he was released after serving only eight years in prison. He has terminal prostate cancer.

Wildes said the 25-room stone house wasn’t damaged and the blaze was out before emergency workers arrived.

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