An End to Gaddafi’s Tyranny: The Liberation of the Hated Abu Salim Prison
27.8.11
With Libya’s former dictator Muammar Gaddafi in hiding, the uprising against his 42-year rule that began on February 15, and that, almost since it began, has been contentiously supported by NATO, has finally succeeded in providing a shadowy glimpse of a new life for the Libyan people. Huge difficulties lie ahead — preventing recriminatory horrors by the rebels, creating a new government and civil society out of nowhere after four decades of iron-fisted control by one man and his family, and ascertaining what the West wants and working out how to prevent it from destroying liberated Libya like the supposedly liberated Iraq of eight years ago.
For now, however, I am delighted that his main compound in Tripoli and his gaudy palaces have been ransacked, and, in particular, that his main prison, Abu Salim, has been liberated. My interest in Libya stems not only from a general revulsion at the barbarity of dictatorships, but also through my friendship with Omar Deghayes, the former Guantánamo prisoner who came to the UK as a child in the 1980s after his father, a lawyer and trade union activist, was murdered by Gaddafi.
Through Omar, I met other Libyans, like the brave filmmaker Mohamed Maklouf, and also learned about the single most outrageous act of Gaddafi’s dictatorship — the massacre of 1,200 prisoners at Abu Salim on June 29, 1996. I wrote a detailed article about the massacre on its 13th anniversary, in 2009, and as the uprising against Gaddafi began in Benghazi, in February, I found it appropriate that the spark for Libya’s revolution was the arrest in Benghazi on February 15 of Fathi Terbil, a lawyer who represents the families of those killed in the Abu Salim massacre, and who lost three family members, including his brother, in the massacre, as I explained in my article, “How the Abu Salim Prison Massacre in 1996 Inspired the Revolution in Libya.”
As I stated at the time, drawing on an NPR report, for years Fathi Terbil “held an often solitary weekly protest in front of the courthouse, demanding justice,” and “was arrested seven times” and “repeatedly tortured.” On February 15, however, his arrest (even though he was subsequently released) prompted thousands of people to protest, igniting an unstoppable movement within just 24 hours. He told Lindsey Hilsum of Channel 4 News:
We, the Abu Salim families, ignited the revolution. The Libyan people were ready to rise up because of the injustice they experienced in their lives, but they needed a cause. So calling for the release of people, including me, who had been arrested became the justification for their protest.
Below are a number of videos covering the liberation of Abu Salim. The first is an 11-minute unedited video, in Arabic, and below that is a short report from CNN. The videos are followed by cross-posts of two articles containing the reflections of former prisoners, as published in the Washington Post and on CNN.
Libyans find freedom at Moammar Gaddafi’s Abu Salim prison in Tripoli
Thomas Erdbrink, Washington Post, August 26, 2011
In the 14 years that Islamic activist Saad al-Eshouli spent in a small cell in one of the most notorious prisons of Moammar Gaddafi’s Libya, the outside world had become a distant memory.
So when rebels opened the gates of the Abu Salim prison Wednesday and he joined the other 2,500 detainees pouring out, he was amazed by novelties such as mobile phones and satellite dishes.
The prison had been the black hole of Gaddafi’s reign — many went in, but few came out. The Libyan autocrat used the facility to make his political opponents disappear. In 1996, when prisoners revolted over living conditions, some 1,200 inmates were massacred.
It was the arrest in February of a lawyer representing the families of those killed that sparked the uprising that toppled Gaddafi this week.
Within the prison, Eshouli’s life revolved around conversations with his eight cellmates, who shared a shower, small kitchen and toilet in a 100-square-foot room. He was not allowed to receive visitors, and he had no contact with his twin brother, Mehdi, who was arrested with him in 1997 but was released five years later.
As time passed, the guards and interrogators forgot why Eshouli, 40, was imprisoned. He started thinking that Abu Salim, one of the many concrete detention facilities that dotted Libya, was his final destination.
“This room is where I expected to die,” he said Friday, standing in front of cellblock 13, which was lined with mattresses and plastic bags containing inmates’ belongings.
Largely unaware of the storm that had broken Gaddafi’s four-decade-long grip on the country, Eshouli thought the rattling of gunfire and thuds of explosions this past week were God’s trumpets heralding the moment of his death.
“We expected another massacre,” he said while guiding rebels and journalists through the now-deserted prison. Instead, the guards suddenly ran off.
There are moments of happiness that are unexplainable, Eshouli said, and this was one of them. “There is no way to describe how great it felt to be free,” he said.
A day later, he was reunited with his twin brother, who had come from Benghazi to search for him.
The two men stood next to each other Friday. One was pale. The other’s skin was dark from years of exposure to the sun.
“I thought he was dead,” Mehdi said.
The brothers had arrived at the prison a year after the massacre. Ali Maktouq, another former inmate, pointed Friday to the site where he said the victims had been buried in a mass grave.
“First they killed those who they wanted to kill,” said Maktouq, 41. “Then they lined us up against a wall, cocking their weapons.”
Maktouq was spared, however, and he was freed sometime later.
He said the guards made the survivors clean the blood from their cells. After earning his freedom, he remained in the neighborhood and visited the prison every day to show solidarity with his former cellmates.
Now that the rebels control the vast majority of Tripoli, Maktouq said, he wants them to convert the prison into a park, or a university, or anything that builds society instead of crushing it.
Already on Friday, he was learning to stand in the prison without feeling fear. For the first time, he said, the prison’s walls symbolized freedom.
“I can’t believe I am here, in this place, speaking my mind,” Maktouq said. “I am no longer afraid.”
Witness to Libyan prison massacre seeks justice for victims
Moni Basu, CNN, August 27, 2011
Hussein Shafei prepared Saturday for a journey back to a place of darkness in Libya.
Soon, he plans to stand again in Cell 14, Block 2 at the Abu Salim prison in Tripoli. Only this time, the metal door will not slam behind him, caging him in a bathroom-size cell.
He will be a free man within the confines of what became a potent symbol of Moammar Gadhafi’s repression — Libya’s Abu Ghraib.
Shafei wants to return to the place where he witnessed a massacre that fuels his nightmares. Sometimes, he said, his wife would wake him up in the middle of the night, saying, “Hussein. You are screaming. You are scaring the kids.”
As many as 1,200 prisoners were killed at Abu Salim in the summer of 1996, according to Human Rights Watch. Without justice, the infamous event festered in Libya’s national psyche and eventually acted as tinder to spark the flame of revolt in February of this year.
Rebels stormed the prison a few days ago, freeing those held inside, including an American journalist.
“I am so excited about Tripoli,” Shafei said of the distinct possibility of the capital falling under rebel control. “This is the moment I have been waiting for for so many years.”
Since his release in 2000, Shafei had thought about Abu Salim’s dead. Where were their bodies? What was it like for their children to grow up without their fathers? For a wife to not know what happened to her husband?
He vowed to expose the carnage of that June day.
Then this week in Benghazi, he watched a video posted on YouTube that purportedly showed the storming of Abu Salim. Shafei, now working with the opposition in Benghazi, knew he had to return there.
He was waiting to board a plane to Tripoli. Or perhaps, with the fighting still raging in places like Gadhafi’s hometown of Sirte, he will have to go by boat.
With the Libyan regime on the brink of collapse, Shafei hopes the truth about Abu Salim will finally be known. He is hardly alone in his wish.
The shooting went on for almost three hours
Shafei was a teenage college student when he was arrested for offending the regime. Inspired by perestroika reforms in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, he spoke out in favor of greater freedoms in his own country.
Shafei’s mother, Najia, clearly remembers that day in 1988 when she returned to her home in Benghazi to find her daughters wailing. Her son was gone.
“We had no idea where he was,” she said from her home in Atlanta. “Whether he was alive or dead.”
Nineteen months passed before Najia Shafei learned, through contacts, her son’s whereabouts. After that, she occasionally made the long trek west from Benghazi to the prison in Tripoli.
The guards would drag her son out of his cell and into a warehouse at the entrance of the jail, where mother and son met.
If she was lucky, she got 20 minutes with him, she said.
She could never ask him about his situation. There were always guards listening in. He could never tell her about what he knew was going on in that jail — beatings, torture, deaths.
Shafei spent eight years that way, in a cramped cell, without his family or the education he should have finished. His father died in 1994 and he was released for three days to attend the funeral. That was the extent of his freedom.
Then, on June 28, 1996, prisoners rioting over poor conditions and restricted family visits seized a guard and escaped from their cells.
“Five or seven minutes after it started, the guards on the roofs shot at the prisoners who were in the open areas,” Shafei said in an interview with Human Rights Watch many years later.
Security officials ordered the shooting to stop and feigned negotiations. But Shafei told Human Rights Watch that the officials instead called in firing squads to gun down about 1,200 people.
He said a grenade was thrown into the courtyards where the prisoners were gathered.
“I heard an explosion, and right after, a constant shooting started from heavy weapons and Kalashnikovs from the top of the roofs,” he said. “The shooting continued from 11 until 1:35.”
Much later, while buying lamb at a slaughterhouse in the United States, Shafei commented to his brother Nabil: Not even here can they kill at the rate Gadhafi’s men did that day.
“I could not see the dead prisoners who were shot, but I could see those who were shooting,” Shafei told Human Rights Watch. “They were a special unit and wearing khaki military hats. Six were using Kalashnikovs. I saw them — at least six men — on the roofs of the cellblocks.”
The next day, Shafei was ordered to clean the blood-smeared watches taken off the wrists of the dead.
Human Rights Watch said it had no way to verify Shafei’s story but another description of the incident from a report by the opposition National Front for the Salvation of Libya corroborated Shafei’s account.
Gadhafi’s government did not acknowledge the killings and denied any crime had taken place. More than a decade after the Abu Salim incident, the United Nations Human Rights Council noted that the Libyan government was unable to provide any information on its investigation of the allegations.
But the families, mostly from Benghazi, now the de facto rebel capital, did not abandon their longing for answers.
Some of them filed a complaint in a Libyan court in 2007. The Gadhafi regime offered them compensation in exchange for their silence, according to Human Rights Watch.
But the families refused the money, considering it a bribe. Instead, they boldly began to protest each Saturday in Benghazi, an action unprecedented in Gadhafi’s four decades of rule.
“It was radical,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, director of the Middle East and Africa division at Human Rights Watch.
The government began informing some of the families that their loved ones were dead. But no bodies was ever returned nor a cause of death given.
Among those waiting to find out more are three brothers in Atlanta whose father, opposition activist Izzat Almegaryaf, was plucked from his home 20 years ago.
The Almegaryaf brothers know their father was detained at Abu Salim — they received letters from him in the early 1990s. But the letters stopped a few years into Izzat Almegaryaf’s imprisonment. His sons do not know whether their father was among the massacre victims.
Tasbeeh Herwees, a Libyan-American journalism student in California, recalled in a blog post the funerals for the Abu Salim victims held in the summer of 2009 when she visited Benghazi.
“Inna lillahi wa ilayhi rajioon,” each family said. Verily, we belong to God, and to God we return.
Herwees tripped over the words in Arabic, but by the end of her stay she had repeated the phrase so many times that she was fluent.
“I spent more time in tents that summer than in my own home, the cloth of my black abaya sticking irritatingly to my skin from the Saharan humidity,” she wrote. “In the faces of the family of the dead, I detected relief in the sea of sadness. ‘At least now we know,’ they said.”
Then in February of this year, the regime arrested Fathi Terbil, a human rights lawyer who represented some of the Abu Salim families. Hundreds of people jammed the streets of Benghazi to protest.
Terbil was released but the demonstrations did not stop. A revolution took root.
“The memories of that summer come rushing back as I watch the present events in Libya unfold from my home in Cypress, California,” Herwees wrote. “It was, after all, the Abu Salim families who kick-started this revolution. It was they who initiated protests in Benghazi in front of police headquarters when their lawyer, Fathi Terbil, was mysteriously detained by security officials.”
Exposing the carnage
After 12 years at Abu Salim, Shafei was released in 2000. He often cried openly, with flashbacks triggered by something as small as macaroni reminiscent of Abu Salim chow, said his older brother, Nabil Shafei.
He eventually made his way to the United States, where Nabil lived.
“Hussein came here and had a mission,” Nabil Shafei said. “He wanted to expose the massacre of Abu Salim.”
Hussein Shafei told Human Rights Watch about the carnage he witnessed. He even approached the State Department, which includes the Abu Salim massacre in its statements on human rights abuses in Libya.
As the civil war raged this year and Benghazi blossomed as a city free of Gadhafi’s grip, Shafei, now 42, returned there from Charlotte, North Carolina. He took his wife and three children with him.
He has been working with the opposition television station and telling the world about the dark secrets of Abu Salim. Now, as the newly freed prisoners began returning home to Benghazi, Shafei knew the time had come for him to go back to the prison.
It is part of his own healing. The nation must heal, too, he believes. The first step will be to hold Libyan leaders accountable for what happened at the prison.
Najia Shafei is wary of her son’s trip to Tripoli. She remains fearful about what might happen to him as long as Gadhafi is still alive.
But Hussein Shafei is determined to complete his mission. He owes it to all those who survived Abu Salim. But mostly, he owes it to the souls of the dead.
Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, on tour in the UK throughout 2011, and available on DVD here — or here for the US), my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.
Who's still at Guantánamo?
60 Responses
Andy Worthington says...
On Facebook, David Suntoro wrote:
Please let me share, thank’s
...on August 27th, 2011 at 11:18 pm
Andy Worthington says...
No need to ask, David. Sharing is what it’s all about!
...on August 27th, 2011 at 11:18 pm
Andy Worthington says...
George Kenneth Berger wrote:
Digging, Andy. Thanks for all you are doing.
...on August 27th, 2011 at 11:19 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Ted Bowen wrote:
“providing a shadowy glimpse of a new life” yeah, courtesy of goldman sachs a new life of debt based currency.
...on August 27th, 2011 at 11:19 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Leigh Meyers wrote:
Do you really believe they’re going to be ‘liberated’ by these NATO and CIA-fronted thugs? They’ll be ‘liberated to visit the West (There’s a bunch of new N. African faces in my California coastal town just like Cyrillic was heard a lot on the streets here after the Central Asian wars) and bring the looted wealth of their country with them so they can ‘tourist’.
al-Gadaffi’s regime INSTIGATED a revolution when they ousted King Idris. His “Green Book” was practically an Anarcho-Syndicalist manual on how to run a society… And it worked.
The “‘revolutionaries” are REALLY counter-revolutionaries. Some even have family ties that go back to King Idris, Italian rule, and the Ottoman Empire.
...on August 27th, 2011 at 11:20 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, George. And thanks for all you’re doing too. And Ted and Leigh, I’m aware that there are people with vested interests behind all this, but I have elements of sometimes foolish hope in me that surface at times and are only quenched when the bleak realities become undeniable.
...on August 27th, 2011 at 11:21 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Rob Weaver wrote:
Good points Leigh.Andy’s constant promulgation of the official LIES makes me strongly suspect him as controlled fake opposition.This was not a “popular uprising”,this was a CIA/NATO coup with Al Qaeda fighters paid,supplied and directed by US/CIA as ALWAYS! Here Andy is simply one of the Imperial war propagandists.
...on August 27th, 2011 at 11:21 pm
Andy Worthington says...
And Leigh, Gaddafi’s regime may have “worked” if you weren’t a political opponent of any kind. Otherwise it was a death sentence or a recipe for disappearing into black holes like Abu Salim. I can’t for a moment defend any regime that contains that kind of oppression. In addition, I’ve met far too many intelligent, educated Libyans to buy the “counter-revolutionary” line. That’s an element, for sure, but it’s not the whole story.
...on August 27th, 2011 at 11:22 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Rob Weaver wrote:
bullshit. The Libyan people loved Qaddafi.He shared the oil wealth with the people,with citizens receiving checks for the oil taken from under their feet.EVERYONE had housing,food for the hungry ,free medical,and when the Al Qaeda/CIA “rebels” started attacking,Qaddafi passed out 1 million AKs to the people to defend the country.Would a hated dictator have done that? Here in the US our ATFE is busily arming violent Mexican drug cartels in a bloody effort to confiscate U.S. citizen’s weapons.
...on August 27th, 2011 at 11:22 pm
Andy Worthington says...
I’m an independent commentator with Libyan friends, Rob, so let’s not get into mud-slinging, eh? You’re welcome to disagree with me — although you should note that I was careful not to be too hopeful, given all the problems I mentioned in the opening paragraph, including the West’s agenda.
...on August 27th, 2011 at 11:22 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Rob Weaver wrote:
I should post his poignant speech again.It is the pattern of the victorious war criminals to demonize their victims.I don’t believe your bullshit for one minute.
...on August 27th, 2011 at 11:23 pm
Andy Worthington says...
They’re my opinions, Rob. They’re not bullshit. They’re just opinions that you disagree with. What are you otherwise — God? I have Libyan friends, I have heard stories from around the world, from the Libyan diaspora, about why people had to flee from their unelected dictator. It’s the same with all dictatorships. They’re paranoid, they have secret police, they torture, disappear and kill people for their perceived opposition to the regime, even if no such thing exists. Your disregard for all these people is heartless, frankly.
...on August 27th, 2011 at 11:23 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Leigh Meyers wrote:
Andy: “And Leigh, Gaddafi’s regime may have “worked” if you weren’t a political opponent of any kind. Otherwise…”
One of the problems a lot of us have is understanding the brutal nature of controlling a society, and more importantly, enforcing change. Any country. When the type of government radically changes and there’s no previous history of ‘democratic rule’.
Stalin would be a good example. What would you or I do if confronted with a situation where the remaining people in, at least societal power from the Czar’s ruling days, were still entrenched in government? If you don’t do something and fast, those people have the potential to sabotage any changes, for the better or not, you might try to enact.
al-Gadaffi had… apparently still recently had, that problem.
The solution almost always seems to be the ‘line them up against the wall and shoot them’ technique.
Americans are fortunate that we have a history of Democratic institutions that allows us the time to make those changes more gracefully, albeit there are so many aparatchik left over from previous US presidencies entrenched in the bureaucracy of of US government now that many of any given president’s or legislature’s plans can, and has been sabotaged.
...on August 27th, 2011 at 11:36 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Yes, those are good points, Leigh, and I understand them, and people generally don’t discuss them at all. It may well all go horribly wrong in Libya, as I don’t expect that the powers-that-be in the West, who have been playing such a prominent role in “managing” this uprising, are particularly interested in trying to genuinely help build from scratch the institutions required to sustain a civil society after 42 years of one man’s rule, and I worry about that, but I can’t find it in me to mourn the end of a dictator’s paranoid oppression of his own people.
...on August 27th, 2011 at 11:37 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Patrick Anthony wrote:
Rob, do you really believe that devoting oneself to exposing American war crimes at Guantanamo is the activity of the “controlled opposition”? Maybe it’s possible that there are those who suffered under Qaddafi as well as Libyans who prospered under his rule. When I studied in Rotterdam I had a roommate who grew up in the former East Germany. I remember him commenting that as long as you were “apolitical”, (or openly supportive of the regime) life was good. Low rent, hardly any crime – good support for the arts. However, if was extremely dangerous to speak critically of the government. Those who did were often picked up by the police, and returned months (or years) later completely shattered individuals.
...on August 27th, 2011 at 11:48 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Leigh Meyers wrote:
As usual… The Onion gets it right: http://j.mp/qcsDg3
...on August 27th, 2011 at 11:49 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, Patrick. Yes, an excellent analogy, and one that I think of when I see the loss of their father at the hands of Gaddafi’s butchers in the eyes of the Deghayes family.
...on August 27th, 2011 at 11:49 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Carol Anne Grayson wrote:
Great article Andy… very moving… I fear for those in other prisons in Libya now as one report yesterday said prisoners were again being slaughtered as pro Gadaffi troops retreated… I am sharing this with a friend who was tortured as a young man under Gadaffi regime… he will appreciate this…
...on August 28th, 2011 at 12:07 am
Andy Worthington says...
Leigh Meyers wrote:
A friend of mine did a little research into the Libyan rebels. This is what he found:
“Main posts to be covered by pro-West pundits, many of them lecturers in US universities, and even a close friend of the al-Sanusi family (the clan of King Idris toppled in 1969 by Kaddafi)
BTW, the al-Sanusis, originally, were NOT Libyans but a branch of the House of Saud. They came from the Gulf. And they ruled Eastern Libya under the Ottomans, under the Italians, AND UNDER THE BRITISH.”
Meet the new boss… same as the old boss.
...on August 28th, 2011 at 12:16 am
Andy Worthington says...
Johan van der Merwe wrote:
Re the NATO intervention, Uri Avnery writes: “Well, sorry, count me out. I have this irrational abhorrence of bloody dictators, of genocidal mass-murderers, of leaders who wage war on their own people. And at my advanced age, it is difficult for me to change.
I am ready to support even the devil, if that is necessary to put an end to this kind of atrocities. I won’t even ask about his precise motives. Whatever one may think about the USA and/or NATO – if they disarm a Milosevic or a Gaddafi, they have my blessing … ALL THOSE who decry NATO’s intervention must answer a simple question: who else would have done the job?
21st century humanity cannot tolerate acts of genocide and mass-murder, wherever they occur. It cannot look on while dictators butcher their own peoples. The doctrine of “non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states” belongs to the past. We Jews, who have accused mankind of standing idly by while millions of Jews, including German citizens, were exterminated by the legitimate German government, certainly owe the world an answer.
But wars are not won by weapons, they are won by people. “Boots on the ground”, as the Americans call it. Even with all the help they got, the Libyan rebels, disorganized and poorly armed as they were, have won a remarkable victory. This would not have happened without real revolutionary fervor, without bravery and determination. It is a Libyan victory, not a British or a French one. Etc.
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1314366465
...on August 28th, 2011 at 12:17 am
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, Carol and Johan, and Leigh — yes, that’s a great fear. Last night I was watching the BBC as they did a little history piece on Libya, and there it was laid out clearly — three tribal areas artificially united into a country during that great colonial carve-up that still causes such problems cf. Iraq, of course.
...on August 28th, 2011 at 12:18 am
Andy Worthington says...
Anita Gwynn wrote:
Jesus…talk to my Libyan exile friends about Gaddafi…..saw ttheir friends hanged etc etc. I am not an academic by any stretch, but I have heard the stories….can’t believe some of the above.
...on August 28th, 2011 at 12:19 am
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks also, Anita. Yes, last night I was listening to one of Gaddafi’s opponents, explaining how a friend of his, an exiled opponent who had become an academic in the US, visited another country in the Middle East and then disappeared. It took some time before his dismembered body, dismembered by Gaddafi’s killers, was found in a suitcase.
...on August 28th, 2011 at 12:20 am
Andy Worthington says...
Anita Gwynn wrote:
well the difference between living though it, being hassled everyday of your life, even when exiled to England-flats overturned etc etc, and just reading about it, maybe…………but what do I know!!!
...on August 28th, 2011 at 12:28 am
Andy Worthington says...
Well, we all know what we find repugnant, Anita, and I have felt for those who have suffered, and have hated my own government for their part in it. Most people, for example, don’t know how political opponents of the Gaddafi regime were welcomed here in the UK and then used as playthings and branded terror suspects and imprisoned or put on control orders after Gaddafi temporarily became our “friend” in the “war on terror.” That was pretty disgusting.
The government, under Blair, wanted to send these men back to Libya, but a court refused to allow ministers to break their anti-torture obligations so shamefully, and eventually they dropped the control orders against all the Libyans. At that point, the understanding appears to have been that Gaddafi was reconciling with former political opponents, and so then it was useful to him to NOT have them persecuted. But for five years these Libyan exiles were treated despicably by the British government, and all because Gaddafi was sharing his oil …
...on August 28th, 2011 at 12:29 am
Andy Worthington says...
Omar Yunus wrote:
Being a twin myself, the story of the twins who were re-united really touched me.
...on August 28th, 2011 at 12:34 am
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, Omar.
...on August 28th, 2011 at 12:35 am
Andy Worthington says...
Sylvia Martin wrote:
Thank you for the reminder, Andy. I had forgotten about that massacre. Libyans have suffered more than enough.
...on August 28th, 2011 at 12:40 am
Andy Worthington says...
Yes, indeed, Sylvia. Thanks for the comment.
...on August 28th, 2011 at 12:40 am
Andy Worthington says...
Leigh Meyers wrote:
So without a strongarm(sic) government that commits exactly the same atrocities we end up with another Yugoslavia breakup. Who said the West isn’t big on nation-building? I alway figured we were the CHILDREN who take the alarm clock apart and can’t get it back together.
But, as a nation, we’ve learned to make BIG dollars on the ensuing chaos.
Sorry Uri… Andy. I’M NOT BUYING IT.
Quite simply, a stable military regime dictatorship charismatic rule whatever is SO MUCH SAFER for the civilians the UN tasked NATO to protect (and a resolution calling for the DISARMING OF BOTH SIDES for that matter) than an unstable, now underground one.
...on August 28th, 2011 at 11:04 am
Andy Worthington says...
Leigh Meyers wrote:
This: “Andy Worthington: Thanks also, Anita. Yes, last night I was listening to on” etc
Is so much hearsay.
Show me the “rape rooms” Andy. EVERY NATION, and the US IS CERTAINLY NO EXCEPTION commits atrocities as horrible as any done by any ‘insane dictator’ daily… perhaps more often and in MASSIVE numbers than the demonized-by-us combined.
I’d point to the continuing annihilation of the US indigenous population… Along the US/Mexico border, right now, the government is systematically removing one or more of the edible plants the Lipan Apache depend on for susyenance… Because they interfere with the line-of-sight for the wall we’re building around the country..
That’s genocide.
Guess why they’re building walls and we need a fucking passport to go to Canada? Because we’re making enemies by the score, because we, as a nation, and as combined industrial societies, are arrogant enough to think we know what’s best for the people of Libya or anywhere else.
It’s a rationalization… That allows for the murder more people yearly than any ‘tinhorn’ dictator.
50:1 Civilian:Alleged combatant ‘Kill Ratio’ in our Pakistan Tribal Autonomous Area drone war for a start.
Not much better than “Carpet Bombing”.
Yemen will catch up… with a bullet… but we’ll never know because the CIA, whose running that war, doesn’t have to tell us jack.
Let’s say we let the Libyans work all this out for themselves and we concentrate on OUR OWN genocidal rulers?
...on August 28th, 2011 at 11:06 am
Andy Worthington says...
John Davis Butz wrote:
Andy, I wonder why you didn’t explain about the Libyan hospital and ambulances destroyed by NATO bombs, since you see NATO as the policeman of the world.
...on August 28th, 2011 at 11:06 am
Andy Worthington says...
Leigh Meyers wrote:
STRATFOR thinks the West mad some GRAVE strategic mistakes
http://www.stratfor.com/memberships/200949/geopolitical_diary/20110823-intelligence-war-libya
You’ll most likely get a page @ Stratfor that requests your email and sends you a complimentary copy. Mine arrived within moments.
...on August 28th, 2011 at 11:07 am
Andy Worthington says...
Shakil Azam Ismail wrote:
Euro and the West are the Real Terrorist.
...on August 28th, 2011 at 11:07 am
Andy Worthington says...
David J. Clarke wrote:
Thanks for providing a little context. Now is not the time to be cynical and doctrinaire – an oppressor and tyrant has been deposed. May all other such persons take note and reflect that as long as the human spirit endures dictators of all stripes and political persuasions will one day fall.
...on August 28th, 2011 at 11:12 am
Andy Worthington says...
Rob Weaver wrote:
Much like Poland in 1945,Libya has been “liberated”.The Libyan people have dark days ahead indeeed. Andy is a stooge.
...on August 28th, 2011 at 11:12 am
Andy Worthington says...
Alex Grace wrote:
Thanks Andy Worthington
...on August 28th, 2011 at 11:12 am
Andy Worthington says...
Patrick Soddof Willis wrote:
Goodbye andy worthington.
...on August 28th, 2011 at 11:13 am
Andy Worthington says...
Shakil Azam Ismail wrote:
Life in Libya with Leader Gaddafi:
1. Electricity for household use is free
2. interest-free loans
7. for marriage state pays first apartment or house (150m2)
8. buying cars at factory prices
9. LIBYA not owe anyone a cent
10. free higher education abroad
12. 40 loaves of bread costs $ 0.15
13. water in the middle of the desert, drinking water
16. for each infant, the couple received $ 5,000 for their needs
http://libyasos.blogspot.com/p/gaddafi.html
...on August 28th, 2011 at 11:13 am
Andy Worthington says...
Rob Weaver wrote:
Qaddafi was about to introduce a gold dinar,the ultimate sin against the bankers,REAL MONEY!
...on August 28th, 2011 at 11:14 am
Andy Worthington says...
Morning, all. So let’s catch up. Leigh, I appreciate your comments and your point of view, and I wish we had allowed the Libyans to work this out for themselves. I’m not a great supporter of the NATO intervention, despite what some people here think. Anyone who actually reads what I’ve written will see that I don’t forecast any bright shining future, that I’m deeply suspicious of the West’s motives, and that I’m primarily concerned with the liberation of a hated prison that was the symbolic spur for the Libyan people to rise up in Benghazi, and that had been the site of Gaddafi’s greatest crime against his people — the massacre of 1,200 prisoners in 1996.
I have work to do, so I’m not going to spend any more time arguing back against people who don’t actually read what I write, and who delight in throwing insults my way. I’m happy to have discussions about the many complexities of what’s been happening over the last six months in Libya, but the hurling of personal insults is something else entirely.
...on August 28th, 2011 at 11:14 am
Andy Worthington says...
And thanks, David and Alex. And Leigh, your critical comments are by far and away the most interesting, but it’s a bleak world I have to contemplate — one utterly devoid of hope for the Libyan people — if I’m supposed to conclude that the status quo Gaddafi represented was the best possible outcome for everybody. I can’t be that calculating. I’m a human rights campaigner and a journalist specializing in writing about arbitrary detention, torture, disappearances and extrajudicial killings because these are things that concern me. This piece was about the end of Abu Salim prison, and from my point of view that’s something to celebrate.
...on August 28th, 2011 at 11:15 am
Sunday Reading « zunguzungu says...
[…] An End to Gaddafi’s Tyranny: The Liberation of the Hated Abu Salim Prison […]
...on August 28th, 2011 at 11:49 am
martyn says...
Dear andy, i can see where you are coming from, is abu salim any different from guantanamo,actually a lot different probably better ,both still a scar against humanity ,but my friends in misrata who had there brothers and fathers head cut off ,sorry sawn off in front of the children by the rebels will never have peace again , they are living in terror for being neutral .The attrocitties being committed and the reprisals will last for years ,Already israeli businessmen are in libya suprise surprise, it will be carved up at the wests leisure and without doubt be another iraq and afghanistan,you cannot change a country over night and with each year gaddaffi was giving more and more too the people of libya ,now there will be a rendering of a culture and a proud nation ,gaddaffi may have been hard and a little bit crazy but i honestly believe he was better for the majority of libyans than what is too come, but he is a saint next too .obama,cameron,sarkovsky,netanayu ,freedom at what price ? Do you realy believe the future holds blue skies ,i fear not ! syria next then iran ,meanwhile the palestinians are being systematically dehumanised ,as gandhi once said when he was asked what he thought about western civilization , his reply ” i think it would be a good idea ” love you andy big hugs x
...on August 28th, 2011 at 12:01 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thank you, Martyn. That’s the most thought-provoking response I’ve had to my article. As I’ve been saying, I was careful not to suggest that I thought the future would be bright, as there are many severe problems ahead — including reprisals, and the nature of the West’s involvement. From my very specific perspective, however, I was happy to see Gaddafi’s most notorious prison liberated.
...on August 28th, 2011 at 5:11 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Bridget Dunne wrote:
Andy, black workers are being tortured and extra-judicially killed by these NATO rebels. http://saharareporters.com/article/world-and-press-watch-africans-are-lynched-libya
...on August 28th, 2011 at 5:18 pm
Andy Worthington says...
That’s sad news, Bridget. As I said, in my article, however, I have been fearful of reprisals all along. It is a critical time right now, with a power vacuum, and I can only hope that more people are interested in thinking about the future than dwelling on the past.
...on August 28th, 2011 at 5:18 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Neil Goodwin wrote:
Wow Andy! Can of worms, eh? I noticed that people didn’t actually read what you said, but rather projected onto you their agenda. As you know, there is a third way in all of this, you don’t have to accept the lesser of two evils, and your enemy’s enemy is not necessarily your friend. Human rights is a given, and i think you and i who have stood up against tyranny for so many years know what that means. Yes it’s complicated and messy, but that’s not going to stop us from trying to tell it the way we see it. Respect mate. xx
...on August 28th, 2011 at 5:19 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, Neil. Very much appreciated, my friend.
...on August 28th, 2011 at 5:19 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Alex Grace wrote:
Quite. a third way indeed. The world is not cut and dry and it’s permissible to highlight atrocities without being on anyone’s ‘side’.
...on August 28th, 2011 at 5:34 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, Alex!
...on August 28th, 2011 at 5:36 pm
Andy Worthington says...
David Montoute wrote:
I try to cultivate a more objective stance to this and ask: “Is war the best way improve a people’s human rights situation?” The answer is almost always “no”. The existence of terrorists and insurgent groups is by no means incidental to Gaddafi’s repression. “While Bin Laden was drafting his declaration of jihad in early 1996, British intelligence was plotting with al-Qaida-associated terrorists in Libya to assassinate Colonel Qadafi…The plot went ahead in February 1996 in Sirte, Qadafi’s home city, but a bomb was detonated under the wrong car. Six innocent bystanders were killed, and Qadafi escaped unscathed.” http://markcurtis.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/britain-qadafi-and-the-libyan-islamic-fighting-group/
...on August 28th, 2011 at 6:27 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Bridget Dunne wrote:
Not reprisals Andy this has been a fact from the very beginning although by characterising black Libyans and black workers as ‘mercenaries’ the mainstream media ignored the lynchings in Benghazi. It’s also worth remembering that it was Libya who issued the Interpol warrant for the arrest of bin Laden back in 1998, stymied by the CIA/MI6, and now the NATO rebels have Al Qaeda members leading them, Abdel Hakim Belhadj and Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi.
...on August 28th, 2011 at 6:28 pm
Andy Worthington says...
David Montoute wrote:
When tyrannies are unchallenged they often, over time, liberalise, and as the old guard dies off, more humane leadership comes to the fore. This was a real possibility with Saif, for example, who even the rebels saw as a potential interlocutor in the early days. We can also see an example of this now in Morocco, where an absolute monarchy is slowly reforming and allowing some limited political expression. Most of my Moroccan friends see the country as moving in the right direction. That doesn’t negate the very real abuses still carried out by the regime (including torture & disappearances, especially in the Western Sahara) but there’s no way on earth that this situation could possibly be “Improved” by a war and a foreign occupation.
...on August 28th, 2011 at 6:30 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, David. I fully agree that a war and a foreign occupation do not improve the situation faced by anyone subjected to authoritarian rule, and must reiterate that I never expressed backing for the NATO intervention. I had hoped that, when we first heard about the uprising, it was the result of a knock-on effect from the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, and that it would conduct its own business. As for quite where we’re at now, Bridget, with former military opponents of Gaddafi and their supposed al-Qaeda ties, and what atrocities have taken place and on what scale, I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve done more research.
...on August 28th, 2011 at 6:36 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Leigh Meyers wrote:
Andy Worthington: “Morning, all. So let’s catch up. Leigh, I appreciate your comments and your point of view, and I wish we had allowed the Libyans to work this out for themselves. I’m not a great supporter of the NATO intervention,”
My point is UNTIL we get OUR rationalizing killers out of power, and any study of sociopathic behavior indicates that may not be possible because sociopaths self-select, the end result of our involvement in Libya will inevitably bring about the same cultural results fit for it’s current milieu (in this case it’s bound to be just another strong arm dictator) except OUR fingers will be in the pie, and for pittance. Just some dead Libyans after all…
My belief is that there IS NO POSSIBLE WAY Libyans will end up with anything that resembles ‘liberation’ to them from what has just occurred… (If it even lasts a year before devolving into another Yugoslav war remains to be seen) …unless it’s the ‘liberty’ to get a piece of the action as western style consumers, but a generation or two from now, due to the destabilization now, they WILL liberate themselves… And it WILL BE from us, and our cronies, and I CAN’T WAIT.
A final note… A friend of mine much wittier than I suggested “If the Libyans think getting rid of Muammar was hard… Wait until they try to get rid of NATO”
I can’t wait, and I think your, Juan Cole’s and all the other pundits that suggest the cost was worth it, as seriously mis-guided by short term perspectives and fear of the downfall of a lifestyle we’ve become quite comfortable with at the expense of others.
http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/ee241/photobastard/WTFDYTYR.jpg
...on August 28th, 2011 at 7:15 pm
Andy Worthington says...
David Montoute wrote:
Leigh. I wouldn’t place Andy in anywhere near the same category as Juan Cole. He has stated, after all, that he didn’t support NATO intervention. I think what’s happening is a celebration amongst all those who are anti-despotism, together with those Libyans who had genuine & legitimate grievances against Gaddafi. It’s inevitable that they will celebrate. Personally, i don’t -maybe because i’ve never personally been affected by Gaddafi- but also because i think a celebration is pretty meaningless if the previous system is replaced with something much worse (as happened in Iraq for example). A further point to keep in mind when columnist cheer “humanitarian intervention” is that no system is perfect, and even massacres such as the Abu Salim one are not the preserve of dictatorships. The “democratic” government of Alan Garcia also massacred over 120 prisoners back in 1986, and thus fueled the Peruvian terrorist insurgency which would reach its peak in the early 90s. I’d hate to think that under those conditions- some outside power come to “liberate” me and definitively ruin a country that i love so much.
...on August 28th, 2011 at 7:16 pm
Andy Worthington says...
David Montoute wrote:
My final point is that Western economies and political elites are intimately tied to organised crime, and the opening up of Libya will undoubtedly be accompanied by all of the same vices that have degraded life in the NATO-occupied narco-hub called Kosovo, the heroin-flooded streets of Baghdad (a city that never knew the substance under Saddam) and the insurgency-riven Afghanistan under the thumb of opium warlords. All of these things have net deleterious effect upon traditional Islamic cultures, and there’s no reason to expect that Libya will be any different, especially as the country’s vital resources are divvied up and parcelled out to multinational corporations. The basic problem with this “R 2 P” doctrine is that the leaders promoting it are themselves base criminals whose policies can only aggravate the situation of the great majorities. I suspect that Gaddafi’s reign will be remembered with nostalgia in the not to distant future. And that’s why i cannot celebrate the fall of Tripoli.
...on August 28th, 2011 at 7:17 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Wow, so now I apparently suggested that “the cost was worth it,” even though I said no such thing. Leigh, thanks for your thoughts, but please stop suggesting that I wrote things that I didn’t. And thanks also, David, though I hope your desperately bleak scenario doesn’t come to pass.
...on August 28th, 2011 at 7:24 pm
Andy Worthington says...
David Montoute wrote:
Andy, here is a good introduction to the role of Islamist LIFG in fighting Gaddafi, which places it properly within the context of long-standing operational collaboration between the US and the global Jihadi networks (or what my friend Parvati Roma calls “AQ-or-whatever”)
http://japanfocus.org/-Peter_Dale-Scott/3578
...on August 28th, 2011 at 7:29 pm