Torture Widespread In Occupied Libya

Africans in US-NATO occupied Libya have been arrested, beaten, tortured and killed by the CIA, MI-6 trained counter-revolutionary rebels. The armed groups have targeted dark-skinned people for liquidation., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

1 October 2013
Last updated at 14:26 ET

Torture 'widespread' in Libyan jails - UN report

Torture and ill-treatment, sometimes resulting in death, is "widespread" in occupied Libyan jails, a new UN report says.

The report says torture is most frequent used "immediately after arrest and during the first days of interrogation".

The UN estimates about 8,000 people are still being held in relation to the 2011 counter-revolutionary war of regime-change which resulted in a massive Pentagon and NATO bombing campaign and the overthrow and brutal lynching of revolutionary leader Col Muammar Gaddafi.

The vast majority are being held without due process, the report says.

Torture is being used "as a means to extract confessions or other information", the UN says.

The United Nations Support Mission in Libya says it has recorded 27 deaths in custody since late 2011 "where there is significant information to suggest that torture was the cause", with 11 of the cases occurring in 2013.

The report does note however that the use of torture is happening "despite the efforts of the Libyan authorities which are committed at the highest level to ending torture and to ensuring the proper functioning of the criminal justice system".

It notes that a "major factor" in ill-treatment and torture of detainees is the "current situation of prolonged detention and interrogation at the hands of armed brigades".

It recommends that detainees held by the brigades be handed over to "effective state control". Yet there is no effective state control established since the rebels were installed by the imperialist states and their allies.

Libya's rebel government has struggled to tackle the presence of armed militias since Col Gaddafi's assassination on October 20, 2011.

In June, Libyan rebel army chief of staff Youssef al-Mangoush resigned after 30 people died in clashes between protesters and a militia in Benghazi.

Earlier in the year, militiamen surrounded several government ministries in the capital Tripoli.