Herland Report: “Killings and torture are being committed with impunity by all sides in Libya, according to a UN report. Human rights violations carried out by armed groups battling for control of the country could amount to war crimes, the report says.
Victims include detainees, journalists and human rights activists. Scores of people have been tortured and killed,” wrote BBC back in 2016. Since then, no improvements have been carried out to better the situation by the Western backed militia leaders who rule Libya.
Hundreds of armed groups are battling for control in Libya, the UN report says, and many are guilty of a wide range of abuses.
The wide abuse has long been addressed. Also by The Supreme Council of the Libyan Tribes, pointing out that many children have been left in these prisons since 2011 and up to today. Not to mention the alleged massive looting of Libyan state funds.
The Ain Zara A prison: 45 condemned to death
Now, in the Ain Zara A prison in Tripoli, 45 young men are awaiting the death penalty.
Allegedly and according to sources on the ground, the notorious war lord and ruthless Libyan militia leader, Abdalraouff Ghnewa Kikli is responsible for pushing the courts to place the death penalty on the men.
The EU said in the statement, in agreement with heads of diplomatic missions of the European Union to Libya, that the sentences issued last week by the Criminal Chamber of the Tripoli Court of Appeal was worrying. The family of the condemned men, protest in Tripoli in this video.
The youngest among the condemned is Rami Mersel, born in 1990, he was arrested at the age of 15, over a fight at a football match, where one of the employees of the militia leader Ghnewa Kikli was present.
After a fight with the employee, he was reportedly taken from his home and tortured so heavily that he was forced to sign a plea of guilt that he participated in killings during the 2011 war. Since then, the boy has been in prison, now condemned to death.
For a long time he was in the Bouslim prison, later transferred to the prison in question, Ain Zara A. The Ain Zara B prison in Tripoli used to be called Rwhimi, and infamously after the Rhwimi massacre, where prisoners freed by the Libyan courts were massacred by the order of militia leaders, changed name to Ain Zara B.
What is peculiar, again, is that Rami Mersel is also from the Tawhargha tribe in Libya, the tribe that have darker skin and more resemble the traditional African heritage. The gross racism against blacks in the Middle East is an overlooked issue by the media, and the suffering of the black Libyans after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi as well. Almost all the 45 now condemned, are black Libyans from the Tawhargha tribe.
Another prisoner is from Misrata and a former Gaddafi supporter, Mohammed Amin, who was taken and forced to admit to being guilty of killing in 2011. Also Mohamed Ali Ousman Marzouk, who is a father of two childen of 7 and 9.
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Militia reign of fear: Sexual assault, torture, killings
Reports from the ground in Libya state that the militia war lords are notorious criminals and master mind of torture schemes, sexual abuse, using threat and violence as well as overdosing the prisoners and using terrifying torture, giving order to others in their circle to enforce torture of civilians in order to incite fear in the population.
These allegations remain to be properly examined. Arabic Facebook and YouTube is flooding with pictures of abuse and crime
reports by civilians. Libyans are pleading for the UN to react, not only in vocal condemnations, but to have the abuse stopped.
They allegedly also track down the mothers and sisters of the prisoners and rape them. A flood of pictures circulate on Arabic Facebook sites and Arabic YouTube sites, showing beheadings, rape, torture and war crimes in the most explicit way.
Such images and the multitude of personal stories of regular Libyans speak of war crimes post 2011 that must be dealt with by the UN, EU and international community.
There are numerous humanitarian pleas, also including from the UN, imploring the international community to take responsibility for the destruction of Libya that NATO instigated in 2011.
There are pleas for the ICC courts to indite Haitam Al Tajouri, the militia leader in question regarding the overturning of the Libyan courts’ who freed the 45 condemned men, Ghnewa al Kikli, Tripoli’s notorious war lord Hashim Bishir, Osama Al Jwilli and Al Raouff Kara.
Lawless militia control over the prisons
These main militia leaders mentioned are ruling over the Libyan courts and dictating the outcome of lawsuits, and taking advantage of the lawlessness in Libya. According to reports from the ground, they have full control over the internationally recognized Libyan government.
The militia rule of horror is allegedly mainly in areas and places not controlled by the Libyan National Army.
The violations take place in areas controlled by militias affiliated to the internationally recognized Presidential Council, asserts some.
The aim of the work, both locally on the ground as well as international efforts to have these militia leaders stopped and sent to the International court in Luxembourg, the ICC is now an ongoing process.
The aim is to stop the militia rule of terror over the Libyan courts, to stop the unfair death sentences and open a case against the culprits of the El Rouimi crime and many others.
Reports from the ground state that there are at least around 30 000 prisoners in Libya, most of them former supportees of Gaddafi, that are incarcerated without law and order, and many in prison since 2011. There are women as old as 80 years, and children as young as 15. Women give birth in the prisons and horrifying rapes regularly take place, allegedly in prisons controlled by Rghnewa and Kara.
Law and order needs to be reinstated in Libya
The boys in the picture to the left, are among the 45 now sentenced to death in the Ain Zara A prison. They were, according to local witnesses, taken from Nasser street in Buslim. All of them from Tawhargha or Fazan, and allegedly an arrest based solely on the current purging attempts by the militia to rid the country of the dark skinned Libyans.
The United Nations, in the form of its specific Libyan body, the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) expressed its ‘‘strong condemnation of the violence, intimidation and obstruction to the work of Libya’s sovereign institutions by militiamen’’.
The unusually strong and rather brave condemnation using the seldom-used term by UNSMIL, ‘‘militia’’ came in a statement issued recently.
The statement continued, adding that ‘‘members of brigades nominally acting under the Ministry of Interior of the Government of National Accord are attacking sovereign institutions and preventing them from being able to operate effectively’’, reports The Libya Herald.
The Secretary-General of the UN agency for International Cooperation, Eya Essif said that the UN intends to send an independent and impartial international fact-finding commission to investigate the developments.
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