Occupied Libya: Lawless Playground for Western Capital

Africans held prisoner in the US-led and trained occupied Libya., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Snatched and detained: Libya's "jungle law"

10:28am EDT
By Marie-Louise Gumuchian

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Abdulnasser Ruhuma was asleep in his bed when the militia fighters barged into his Tripoli home. The shouting woke the Libyan bank worker and he rushed downstairs to find around 40 men pointing their rifles at him.

Moments later they started beating him. Ruhuma's wife and relatives begged the intruders to stop but they dragged him and his uncle away. Punched, hit with rifle butts and cut with knives, Ruhuma was taken to a makeshift detention center in the middle of the night.

In a stark reminder of the lawlessness that prevails in Libya eight months after the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, the gunmen never told Ruhuma why they abducted him. He says it stems from a family issue - a relative wanted revenge, so he called on the help of an armed brigade.

"We weren't told anything, we were just beaten - our hands, our legs, our bodies," the 42-year old father-of-two said.

"I thought I would never make it out alive."

Libya's aspirations to replace Gaddafi's repressive rule with an ordered, democratic nation are being undermined by increasingly wayward volunteer militias who operate outside the control of fragile state institutions.

The militias attract most attention when, mounted on their battered pick-up trucks with anti-aircraft guns welded to the back, they fight pitched battles in city streets against rival groups, usually over some perceived slight or a dispute over territory.

But it is their less visible activities that have done the most to puncture the sense of euphoria and freedom that followed Gaddafi's downfall.

Human rights groups have documented a series of cases of militias going to people's houses, spiriting them away and, often, beating and torturing them.

Ruhuma was released only after his relatives called government security forces for help. They found him a few hours later.

"We hear on television that Libya is secure, but after what I have seen, there is no security. How is this possible? There are armed gangs pretending to be revolutionaries," Ruhuma said.

"This is some kind of jungle law."

THE REAL POWER ON THE GROUND

Militias spearheaded the rebellion that ended Gaddafi's rule. While many have scaled back their activities, gone back to their home towns or merged into national security services, others have yet to lay down their arms.

The lack of an effective national police force and army mean many of the militias have more power on the ground than Libya's official rulers.

In the last few weeks, Reuters reporters have heard of cases of Libyans taken from their homes or from the street by armed groups. One of Reuters' Libyan members of staff was briefly detained and beaten following a dispute over a parking space.

"We have received complaints about people being tortured - taken, detained for a few hours," said Abdelbaset Ahmed Abumzirig, deputy head of the national council for freedom and human rights.

"Some have been passed on to the police and prosecutor general and we are following them up. We know that the authorities are weak."

International campaign groups have identified armed militias as one of the biggest challenges to stability as Libya's new rulers try to build new institutions and prepare for the first election in a generation on July 7.

In the last month, Tripoli's international airport was seized by an armed group for several hours. One person was killed and several injured when militiamen protesting outside the prime minister's office started shooting.

Deputy Prime Minister Mustafa Abu Shagour told Reuters the government planned to increase security on the streets and set up more checkpoints to stop people bringing heavy weapons into cities.

"This revolution came to eliminate the era of human rights violations, but unfortunately these incidents have happened, these are crimes," he said.

On top of the rise in abductions, rights groups say they are also concerned about the fate of thousands of people captured by the authorities and militias during and immediately after the uprising.

Human Rights Watch says at least 7,000 are still in detention, citing government officials and the United Nations. Roughly 4,000 of them are held by various militias in both formal and secret detention facilities. The rest are in facilities run by the government.

The U.N. human rights agency and aid groups have accused brigades of torturing detainees, many of them sub-Saharan Africans suspected of fighting for Gaddafi's forces last year.

Accusations of the mistreatment and disappearances of suspected Gaddafi loyalists are embarrassing for Libya's ruling National Transitional Council, which had vowed to make a fresh start after Gaddafi.

It is also awkward for the Western powers that backed the rebellion and helped install Libya's new leaders.

"The government, essentially the police through ministry of interior has to develop its capacity to check that. It's not acceptable of course," the U.N envoy to Libya, Ian Martin, told Reuters when asked about the abductions.

"I don't think there's a problem of will to deal with that, I believe the intentions of those in authority in Libya is one that wants to protect human rights but more needs to be done."

"THE HONDA CIVIC"

The good intentions may be there. But the abductions have continued.

Al-Amin Al-Sahli was at home when four men from a brigade arrived in a pick-up truck and asked him to go to their headquarters. They did not say why.

The 38-year-old, a state employee living in Libya's third largest city Misrata and the brother of a Reuters cameraman, decided to comply and arrived at the base half an hour later.

"They took my phone, my things and then led me through the back door to another office. Then they covered my eyes and tied my hands," he said as he lay in hospital after his ordeal.

"They started beating me, torturing me. They put me on a device - they called it a Honda Civic," he said, describing it as a metallic frame to which his arms and legs were tied.

"They beat me with cables and sticks and everything they had on my back, my legs and all sensitive areas of my body."

The 38-year-old, covered in bruises and whip marks, said his detention stemmed from an old argument over a piece of land. He was only freed after other militia groups arrived demanding his release.

During his detention, he said he was put in a cell with other prisoners, some of them with broken legs. "I've never seen anything as criminal as this before."

(Additional reporting by Reuters Television; Editing by Andrew Heavens)


Libyan judge who ordered arrest of Qaddafi’s interior minister killed

AFP
Benghazi

Libyan judge Jumaa Hassan al-Jazwi, who ordered the arrest of Moamer Qaddafi’s ex-interior minister after he defected to lead rebels last year and died in mysterious circumstances, was murdered on Thursday, his son said. “My father was killed (today) on his way to afternoon prayers in the mosque of Shaheed Ahmed Sharif,” in the eastern city of Benghazi, cradle of the revolt that toppled Qaddafi’s regime, said Ali al-Jazwi. A local security official said the judge was killed in a drive-by shooting. “Those who killed judge Jumaa Hassan al-Jazwi opened fire from their vehicle as he was heading to perform afternoon prayers,” said the official who declined to be named.

An official at the Benghazi Medical Centre confirmed the death, saying the corpse had been delivered with “signs of a bullet entering from his right side and exiting through the left.”

Jazwi was said to have signed the arrest order for General Abdel Fatah Yunes, who was summoned for questioning from the front line in the city of Brega last July and killed in mysterious circumstances.

Interim leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil said afterwards that Yunes was killed by an armed group on his way to questioning in Benghazi.

Other officials of the then-rebel leadership issued differing statements on the circumstances of his death against a backdrop of public anger and tension.

Yunes was part of the group that helped bring Qaddafi to power in 1969.

He defected in February 2011 to join the popular uprising that escalated into a NATO-backed rebel insurgency that led to Qaddafi's ouster and death.

Yunes, who became the commander in chief of rebel forces, was viewed with suspicion by some for switching sides and delivering no major victories.

The spokesman of the local council of Benghazi said the judge had been suspected of playing a role in the murder of Yunes.

“He was primary suspect in the case of (rebel) commander-in-chief Abdel Fatah Yunis,” Khaled Jazwi, who has no ties with the deceased, told AFP.

Libya’s general prosecutor Walid Swany said the judge chaired the panel tasked with investigating Yunes when he was detained and killed last July.

“He was one of the defendants in the case,” he said.

Ali al-Jazwi said his father had never been “questioned by anyone over the case” and charged that there had been a “cover up” after the murder of Yunes.
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