Re: Civil War in Libya
Are you refering to the August 29 discovery of 53 bodies at a warehouse that was used by the 32nd Brigade?Originally Posted by Viking
Sure. (WARNING: Content is what you would expect.)
Like many in the press, I'm just trying to find them. For a genocidal regime bent on death and destruction, there have been shockingly few executions of prisoners or civilians, both in areas controlled by the government and those retaken, and even fewer that can be even tangentially linked to the regime proper as opposed to individual actions at lower levels.
TRIPOLI, Libya — Where are all the dead?
Officially, according to Libya’s new leaders, their martyrs in the struggle against the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi should number 30,000 to 50,000, not even counting their enemies who have fallen.
Yet in the country’s morgues, the war dead registered from both sides in each area so far are mostly in the hundreds, not the thousands. And those who are still missing total as few as 1,000, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Those figures may be incomplete, but even if the missing number proves to be three times as high, and all are dead, the toll would be far short of official casualty totals.
...
The new authorities say the confirmed death toll will rise with the discovery of mass graves where the Qaddafi government hid its victims, both during its final months and as it collapsed and fled Tripoli and other population centers.
Mass graves of recent vintage have indeed been found — 13 of them confirmed by the Red Cross, or “about 20” found by the government, according to the Transitional National Council’s humanitarian coordinator, Muattez Aneizi. More are being found “nearly every day,” Mr. Aneizi said.
“Mass” is slightly misleading, however, because the largest actual grave site found so far, in the Nafusah Mountains of western Libya, had 34 bodies. In many of the others, the victims numbered only in the single digits. Many are not even graves, but rather containers or buildings where people were executed and their bodies left to rot.
The Red Cross counted only 125 dead from the 13 sites it confirmed, with 53 of those found in a hangar near Tripoli’s airport. While the rebels may not have died in the numbers their side has claimed, there is no doubt that many were killed, often horribly, after having been taken prisoner. As the Qaddafi government collapsed and its die-hards fled from Tripoli and other strongholds, such war crimes happened in many well-documented cases. They just did not happen in many thousands of cases, judging from the available evidence.
There has been no explanation of the basis for either the council’s tally of 30,000 to 50,000 dead, or the number preferred by the new government’s minister of health, Naji Barakat, a more modest 25,000 to 30,000.
Dozens or hundreds? That's a big discrepency. Also, can you highlight this effort in 'mass extermination'?
In any event, claims of mass graves in Libya, like all information coming from the NTC, have been greatly exagerated.
TRIPOLI, Libya — Libya's interim rulers were busy this week: They cheered the imminent fall of Moammar Gadhafi's hometown, ordered trigger-happy revolutionary fighters out of the capital, formed a new caretaker Cabinet and announced the discovery of 900 corpses in two mass graves.
Only problem was, all those moves turned out to be premature, exaggerated or patently false.
The National Transitional Council, the interim body recognized by the United States and most U.N. members as Libya's highest authority, suffers serious credibility problems. Political grandstanding and the lack of clear military command have fueled a pattern of disinformation that exposes cracks in the council's veneer of leadership.
...
And then there's the issue of mass graves. Tripoli security officials passed out surgical masks and brought a forensics expert Wednesday on a bus tour for journalists to one of the supposed gravesites in Tripoli. The site consisted of long ditches in a normal cemetery. The trenches were empty, with not a corpse in sight and no sign that any had ever been there.
Officials explained that locals had reburied the bodies in other plots in the cemetery because of the stench; they produced grisly photos of rotting bodies that they said were snapped by Libyan locals who wanted to document the scene. That, however, was a lie. At least some of the photos were shot by a New York Times photographer, and from totally different sites.
When confronted with the discrepancy, officials changed their version, saying the bodies were from various "mass graves" — one with 35 bodies, another with 98, and so on. The math did not add up to the stated figure of 900. They promised to look into the source of the photographs.
The security forces also urged skeptical journalists to check out another purported gravesite, in Tajoura, on the outskirts of Tripoli.
"That one has 300," one official said. "Definitely."I can forgive the misplaced faith in the early media hysteria over this event, but now you're operating in fantasyland. You see, Hussein actually engaged in ethnic cleansing. Not imaginary genocide, but real, documented genocide. The only thing resembling his actions in the Libyan war so far has been on the rebel side towards the black population.
TAWERGHA, Libya — This town was once home to thousands of mostly black non-Arab residents. Now, the only manmade sound is a generator that powers a small militia checkpoint, where rebels say the town is a "closed military area."
What happened to the residents of Tawergha appears to be another sign that despite the rebel leadership's pledges that they'll exact no revenge on supporters of deposed dictator Moammar Gadhafi, Libya's new rulers often are dealing harshly with the country's black residents.
According to Tawergha residents, rebel soldiers from Misrata forced them from their homes on Aug. 15 when they took control of the town. The residents were then apparently driven out of a pair of refugee camps in Tripoli over this past weekend.
"The Misrata people are still looking for black people," said Hassan, a Tawergha resident who's now sheltering in a third camp in Janzour, six miles east of Tripoli. "One of the men who came to this camp told me my brother was killed yesterday by the revolutionaries."
On Tuesday, Amnesty International issued a report on human rights issues in Libya that included claims that the rebels had abused prisoners, conducted revenge killings and removed pro-Gadhafi fighters from hospitals.
Dalia Eltahawy, an Amnesty researcher, said the Tawerghis "are certainly a very vulnerable group and need to be protected." She called on the rebel leadership to "investigate and bring people to justice" for those abuses "to avoid a culture of impunity."
But rebel leaders, in their response, made no mention of Tawergha, though they promised to "move quickly ... to make sure similar abuses are avoided in areas of continued conflict such as Bani Walid and Sirte."
"While the Amnesty report is overwhelmingly filled with the horrific abuses and killings by the Gadhafi regime, there are a small number of incidents involving those opposed to Gadhafi," the rebels' ruling National Transitional Council said in a statement. "The NTC strongly condemns any abuses perpetrated by either side."
There's no doubt that until last month, Tawergha was used by Gadhafi forces as a base from which to fire artillery into Misrata, which lies about 25 miles north.
Misratans say, however, that Tawergha's involvement on Gadhafi's side went deeper: Many of the village's residents openly participated in an offensive against Misrata that left more than 1,000 dead and as many missing, they say.
"Look on YouTube and you will see hundreds of Tawerghi men saying, 'We're coming to get you, Misrata,'" said Ahmed Sawehli, a psychiatrist in Misrata. "They shot the videos themselves with their cellphones."
The Tawerghis do not deny that some from the town fought for Gadhafi, but they say they are victims of a pre-existing racism in Libya that has manifested itself violently during the revolution.
The evidence that the rebels' pursuit of the Tawerghis did not end with the collapse of the Gadhafi regime is visible, both in the emptiness of this village and that of the camps to which the residents fled.
At one, in a Turkish-owned industrial complex in the Salah al Deen neighborhood of southern Tripoli, a man looting metal from the complex simply said that the Tawerghis had "gone to Niger," the country that borders Libya on the south where some Gadhafi supporters, including the deposed dictator's son Saadi, have fled.
Abandoned blankets and mattresses littered the area, and laundry still hung drying. Aside from some extinguished cooking fires and piles of trash, there was little else to suggest human habitation.
Lafy Mohammed, whose house is across the road from the complex, said that on Saturday a group of revolutionary militiamen from Misrata, 120 miles east of Tripoli, had come to the camp and evicted its tenants.
"They arrested about 25 of the men," Mohammed said. "They were shooting in the air and hitting them with their rifle butts."
"They took the women, old men and children out in trucks," he said.
Mohammed said that it was not the first time the revolutionaries from Misrata had come after the people in the camp.
"A week ago they were here, but (the people in the neighborhood) begged them to leave them alone," Mohammed said.
Mohammed said some of the Tawerghis may have been taken to another nearby camp, in a Brazilian-owned industrial complex. On Tuesday, that camp was empty as well, with the gate locked.
Reached by phone at the camp in Janzour, Hassan, who did not want his last name used, said he had escaped from the Brazilian company camp on Saturday, when it, too, was raided. He said about 1,000 Tawerghis were now at the Janzour camp.
"They arrested 35 men, but they let me go because I was with my family," Hassan said. He blamed a brigade of fighters from Misrata.
In Tawergha, the rebel commander said his men had orders not to allow any of the residents back in. He also said that unexploded ordnance remained in the area, though none was readily apparent.
Most homes and buildings in the area appeared to have been damaged in the fighting, and a half-dozen appeared to have been ransacked. The main road into the village was blocked with earthen berms. Signs marking the way to the village appeared to have been destroyed.
On the only sign remaining "Tawergha" had been painted over with the words "New Misrata."
On one wall in Tawergha, graffiti referred to the town's residents as "abeed," a slur for blacks.
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks