Britain: Ghadafi will not attend Olympics

Moamar Ghadafi and his family will not attend next year's Olympic Games in London, despite snaring close to 1,000 tickets to the event, a British official said Wednesday.

Nearly one million Britons missed out on tickets to the Olympics in an initial ballot but Games organizers were obliged to give Libya tickets because the International Olympic Committee has failed to expel the regime, The (London) Daily Telegraph first reported.

To make matters worse, the head of the Libyan Olympic Committee is Ghadafi's eldest son, Muhammad.

"Foreign VIPs are invited to the Games by their own country's National Olympic and Paralympic Committees. All international visitors are subject to immigration controls," a spokesman for the Department of Media, Culture and Sport told Sky News.

"We have regular discussions with the International Olympic Committee about matters of accreditation. Muhammad [Ghadafi] is banned from entering the EU and will not be coming to the Olympic Games."

It remains unlikely that Ghadafi himself will be seen in the crowd at the opening ceremony in July next year as he is subject to an international travel ban and an International Criminal Court arrest warrant.

Other "pariah states" such as Zimbabwe and Burma have also been granted tickets, although Syria, currently embroiled in widespread civil unrest, did not apply.