LIBYA: An Amnesty International report on the six month bloody civil war highlights abuse on both sides of the conflict

Record ID: 334625

  • Title: LIBYA: An Amnesty International report on the six month bloody civil war highlights abuse on both sides of the conflict
  • Date: 13th September 2011
  • Summary: TRIPOLI, LIBYA (RECENT - AUGUST 28, 2011) (REUTERS) ( ** GRAPHIC IMAGES **) BODIES ON THE GROUND WITH HANDS TIED AFTER BEING EXECUTED MORE OF BODIES WITH HANDS TIED
  • Embargoed: 28th September 2011 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Libya
  • Country: Libya
  • Topics: Conflict
  • Reuters ID: LVA92ESOMO9CZT9ZDRJ3C7CJ112Z
  • Story Text: Forces on both sides of the Libyan war have committed war crimes and the country risks descending into a bloody cycle of attacks and reprisals unless order can be established, human rights group Amnesty International said on Tuesday (September 13).
    Muammar Gaddafi's attacks on civilian protesters were a crime against humanity, while arbitrary detentions, torture of prisoners and widespread abductions were war crimes, the London-based charity said in a report.
    Amnesty also criticised Libya's opposition forces and said Gaddafi's fall from power after 42 years had left a "security and institutional vacuum" that they exploited to carry out revenge killings and torture.
    Speaking in the Libyan capital Tripoli after Amnesty's investigation had been concluded, Claudio Cordone, the organisation's senior director for research and regional programmes said the report looked at possible abuses from both sides of the conflict.
    "We looked at the abuses from the side of the Gaddafi forces, any war crimes, possible crimes against humanity, but also there have been abuses by the fighters who oppose Muammar Gaddafi that have included, especially in the initial days people that have been lynched that were Gaddafi soldiers, and in the following weeks people that have been suspected of being part of the Gaddafi security forces, so called mercenaries, many black Africans have been automatically assumed to be mercenaries and others. And we're concerned now about the situation in the prisons and detention centres," said Cordone.
    Amnesty has urged Libya's interim rulers, the National Transitional Council (NTC), to investigate the abuses on both sides and to put human rights at the top of their agenda.
    The 112-page report was compiled by an Amnesty team after visits to Libya between February and late July.
    Amnesty collected evidence of indiscriminate attacks on civilians by pro-Gaddafi forces using rockets, mortars, artillery and tanks.
    The report also accused pro-Gaddafi fighters of hiding tanks in civilian areas to protect them from air strikes, a practice that Amnesty said breaches international humanitarian law and constitutes a war crime. It also criticised their indiscriminate use of anti-personnel mines.
    Amnesty officials saw the bodies of opposition fighters who had been shot in the back of the head with their hands tied behind their backs with metal wire, the report said.
    They also saw video footage - filmed on mobile phones seized from captured Gaddafi soldiers - of opposition prisoners being shot dead.
    Amnesty said anti-Gaddafi soldiers were also guilty of human rights abuses, although on a smaller scale.
    They have abducted, arbitrarily detained, tortured and killed Gaddafi loyalists and foreign nationals wrongly suspected of being mercenaries, the report said.
    Cordone said that in the Tripoli area alone there were at least 1,000 people being kept in detention, but accurate figures were hard to calculate. Many people are missing and families search for their loved ones with little information to go on.
    "We know that in detention, just in the area of Tripoli there's more than 1,000 people, and that's a conservative estimate, but it's difficult to come up with figure of detainees and also those that have been killed," he said.
    While many people in detention are pro-Gaddafi fighters, Cordone says many are incarcerated with little evidence, many people from sub-Saharan Africa worked in Libya before the conflict and it is almost always assumed to be mercenaries - fighting on the side of Gaddafi for money.
    "It's very difficult to say who are the people who have been detained, some of them must have been fighters on the side of Gaddafi, but many of them its seems are migrant workers that are automatically assumed to be mercenaries especially if they come from countries in sub-Saharan Africa, there are also black Libyans who are automatically assumed to be traitors unless proven otherwise, and then maybe some private settling of scores going on," he said.
    With the anti-Gaddafi National Transitional Council (NTC) fighters now in control of the majority of the country, Cordone says the county's new leadership needs to take control of the security situation to prevent further abuse taking place.
    "At the moment the only people in control of the detention centres are the fighters of the various brigades. The Transitional National Council hasn't yet established control of the detention centres which is what we hope they will be able to do as soon as possible."
    As a matter of urgency, the NTC, Cordone said, needs to establish the country's justice system rather than leave it in the hands of localised militia.
    "I think that it is important, despite all the great challenges that they have, that they prioritise the situation in the detention centres…..people are at risk of abuse, there is no judicial process and it is important that there is a central authority that takes care of all the detention centres. They must start reporting to the Minister of Justice, the prosecution, as would normally be the case, as opposed to being in the hands of locally run, effectively military brigades and so on."
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