Article

2011-08-27 Africa North

Gaddafi loyalists were also targets of apparent extrajudicial killings. Those deaths have cast a dark shadow over Libya's newfound freedom and call into question whether the rebels will break with Gaddafi's blood-soaked style of governance or merely mimic it.

"In Tripoli, we are seeing the same pattern in recent days that we saw earlier in the east," said Diana Eltahawy, Libya researcher for Amnesty International. She described a record of abuse, torture and the extrajudicial killing of captured pro-Gaddafi fighters that has followed the rebels from east to west as they have taken over the country.
High marks for consistency.
In the wreckage of a Tripoli fire station and field hospital on Friday, five fighters loyal to Gaddafi lay in agony and blood, apparently left to die by their vanquishers. They had been without food, water or medical attention for two days.

Rebel fighters patrolling the compound knew the men were there, but scarcely seemed to care. "We would take them to the hospital, but there are no hospitals," said Salah Mansoor, a law school graduate and shopkeeper dressed in a Liverpool soccer shirt. "There are no cars to take them," he added, as a taxi cruised by.
That car doesn't count. No, not that one, either. Who knew those guys would hang on for so long?
A few minutes' drive from the fire station, at least 15 bodies, most of them Gaddafi's black African supporters, lay rotting in the sun at a traffic junction outside his Bab al-Aziziyah complex. Several of the dead wore green pieces of cloth wrapped around their wrists to signal loyalty to the Gaddafi regime. The men may have died during Tuesday's battle for Bab al-Aziziyah, and several were wearing military fatigues. But two dead men lay face down on the grass, their hands bound behind their backs with plastic cuffs.
Shot trying to escape, no doubt.
The worst treatment of Gaddafi loyalists appeared to be reserved for anyone with black skin, whether they hailed from southern Libya or from other African countries. Darker-skinned prisoners were not getting the same level of medical care in a hospital in rebel-held Zawiyah as lighter-skinned Arab Libyans, Eltahawy said.
At least the author named his source. He's prolly dead by now, tho...
Rebels say Gaddafi employed gunmen from sub-Saharan Africa to shore up his army against his own people, and those fighters have elicited intense enmity from Libyans. But many of the detainees in Zawiyah told Amnesty International they were merely migrant workers "taken at gunpoint from their homes, workplaces and the street on account of their skin color," Eltahawy said.
Will the Libs howl in protest, wring their hands, or just not read that part?
The civilian leaders of the anti-Gaddafi uprising have publicly condemned reprisals against loyalist troops. But the officials are in the eastern city of Benghazi. Even in the east, the civilian leadership appears to have had little success in preventing fighters from carrying out revenge attacks. The reprisals could become a powerful element in persuading Gaddafi loyalists in the holdout city of Sirte to fight to the death.
If the State-run TV - or the rebel radio - would tell them what happened to the others who "surrendered". Seems unlikely, doesn't it?

Posted by Bobby 2011-08-27 08:18|| || Front Page|| [11141 views ] Top

#1 Even in the east, the civilian leadership appears to have had little success in preventing fighters from carrying out revenge attacks.

Hmmm...wonder if this is what US Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, meant when she said "there will be growing pains...".

Posted by DepotGuy 2011-08-27 09:08|| 2011-08-27 09:08|| Front Page Top

#2 wow. A merc army used to violently control the populace faces retribution when the roles are reversed? Whoa thunk it?

Posted by Frank G 2011-08-27 09:27|| 2011-08-27 09:27|| Front Page Top

#3 Tripoli, Libya (CNN) -- Hundreds of Islamist militants were among the prisoners freed from a notorious Tripoli prison this week, according to a former Libyan jihadist.

The freed militants had been imprisoned in Tripoli's Abu Salim prison by Moammar Gadhafi's regime during the height of the insurgency in Iraq, according to Noman Benotman, once a senior figure in the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. Benotman said he believes as many as 600 militants may have been among the prison population at Abu Salim.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/08/26/libya.militants.analysis/index.html

Posted by It will get worse 2011-08-27 10:13|| 2011-08-27 10:13|| Front Page Top

#4 I'm sure Amnesty International will be just as concerned with 'collaborators' being killed in Paleo territory or Pak territory or Afghan territory. /sarc off
Not that the French or Dutch were too upset after their liberation in WWII with capping some collaborators as well.

To paraphrase the Condottieri Carmagnola to the Swiss at Arbedo - men who did not give quarter did not deserve to receive it.

Posted by Procopius2k 2011-08-27 10:54|| 2011-08-27 10:54|| Front Page Top

#5 Those deaths have cast a dark shadow over Libya's newfound ~~freedom~~ license

Here, fixed it.

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2011-08-27 12:13|| 2011-08-27 12:13|| Front Page Top

#6 I take it the MSM has no clue how the winners clean up in the final days of a civil war.

Posted by Steve White 2011-08-27 17:22|| 2011-08-27 17:22|| Front Page Top

#7 Rebel forces mopping up the last remnants of Gaddafi regime resistance in Tripoli have discovered a warehouse containing the charred and still warm skeletons of scores of prisoners killed and burned as troops fled.

Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2011-08-27 18:00|| 2011-08-27 18:00|| Front Page Top

#8 I take it the MSM has no clue how the winners clean up in the final days of a civil war.

Nah. Everything is supposed to be nice and orderly, with Jimmy Carter jetting in to supervise the elections and some lefty actress there to look pretty and clueless.

Posted by Pappy 2011-08-27 23:08|| 2011-08-27 23:08|| Front Page Top

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