Prisoners held by Libyan militiamen told Amnesty International they had been beaten for hours and given electric shocks. Photo: AP
THREE months after the killing of Muammar Gaddafi, concerns are mounting about the mistreatment and torture of prisoners held by Libyan militiamen. The militia are operating beyond the control of the country's transitional government and officially recognised security bodies.
Amnesty International warned that prisoners from Libya and other African countries have been subject to abuse.
The warning comes against a background of anxiety in Western capitals about Tripoli's failure to tackle security and political issues. Detainees told Amnesty they had been beaten for hours with whips, cables, plastic hoses, metal chains, bars, wooden sticks and given electric shocks. It said the detainees, both Libyans and foreigners from sub-Saharan Africa, were tortured soon after they were seized by armed militias in officially recognised detention centres in places such as Misrata.
Misrata withstood a devastating siege by Gaddafi's forces during last year's uprising. Its fighters later unleashed a fierce attack on the dictator's home town of Sirte, where he was killed on October 20.
This week's fighting in Bani Walid, a former stronghold of the Gaddafi regime to the south of the capital, has fuelled fears that tribal rivalries could explode into a wider conflict. Last week, the president of the National Transitional Council, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, was mobbed by demonstrators in his Benghazi office.
Ian Martin, the UN's special envoy to Libya, told the security council that the Bani Walid fighting did not indicate a resurgence of pro-Gaddafi sentiment. But he added this warning: ''The former regime may have been toppled, but the harsh reality is that the Libyan people continue to have to live with its deep-rooted legacy.'' . . .
The rest of the article can be read at the Sydney Morning Herald, here.
Within two years, we will probably be speaking of "the former Libya", just as in the Balkans we came to speak of "the former Jugoslavia". Meanwhile, there will be much hand-wringing in the West, and laments like, "Why can't these people just be like us?"
There is nothing more naive and foolish on God's earth than a member of the Western liberal elite.
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