The Tawergha Massacre

August 19, 2011
last update Sept. 20

To start, simply a news story I saw pop up, brand new to me, as I was looking to see if anyone's written yet about the unsolved slaughter of 30-34 civilians, their bodies found in a tree farm outside Qawalish. That was blamed by rebels, as always, on Gaddafi's forces, like they had with the earlier stash of six Gaddafi soldiers found in a well outside Qawalish, one beheaded. The new atrocity should have trumped the old, but has instead been silent until now trumped, by a wide margin, by this:

Libyan rebels claim to have found mass grave containing bodies of 150 civilians slaughtered by Gadaffi forces

The Daily Mail, 18 August.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2027465/Libyan-rebels-mass-grave-150-civilians-slaughtered-Gadaffi-forces.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

Libyan rebels claim to have found a mass grave containing the bodies of 150 civilians slaughtered by forces loyal to Colonel Gadaffi.
A spokesman said rebel forces had found the buried bodies of civilians about 60 miles to the west of the city of Misrata.
He claimed in addition to the grave, troops had discovered video 'showing kidnappers cutting the throats of people'.

The spokesman said: 'We discovered a mass grave containing 150 bodies in Tawargha. These are the corpses of civilians kidnapped from Misrata by Gaddafi’s loyalists.'

What type of people? Under what circumstances were their remains found? How many were killed by slit throats or beheadings? What exact co-ordinates should NATO bomb in retaliation? How long had they been dead? Etc.? Too many questions for now. Too much context I could add if I had the time for this breaking story. The rebel purge of Tawergha, long-promised, is sure to have produce horrors. The Gaddafi regime might even have started, finally, to behave as barbarically as their enemies at this late and (reportedly) desperate stage.

No promises of anything, myself, until next week. The comments below, who knows?

The story continued immediately with:

Rebel troops are now believed to be working their way up the coastal road outside the town of Hisha about 100 km west of Misrata as they advance towards Tripoli.

It's expected they'll discover more mass graves there, of people killed right about the time they pulled in. Gaddafi will keep leaving scores of vague dead in mass graves until the "bloodbath," to quote Mr. Abdel-Jalil, starts in Tripoli. That'll teach 'em to not get falsely blamed for shooting protesters once.

Updates in the space below.
---
Aug 19, later: Wikipedia has this, no sources given:

Another abuse that was documented was the mass graves in Tawergha, where 150 men, women and children had been buried. This was before the capture of the town by anti-Gaddafi forces. It is said that 40-50 men who were buried were actually Gaddafi soldiers who wanted to have a break from fighting because of ramadan, others say that they didn't want to fight anymore and some say that they wanted to defect. Many of the rest of the bodies were those of egyptian workers and their families and the rest were libyan civilians.

That's sure a lot to know from dead guys. How many wanted to defect?

There's nothing else I've found yet.
---
Aug 24: A tweet from al Jazeera's Mr. Simmons, 20 August: "Visited site of alleged mass grave just outside Tawergha before heading to Zliten. Can confirm one badly decomposed headless body."
http://twitter.com/memorylane_uk/statuses/104995371968761856

London Evening Standard, Aug 18:
Mass grave 'hides Gaddafi massacre'

Libyan rebels say they have found 150 buried bodies they claim are civilians killed by Colonel Gaddafi's forces.

Rebels from Misrata made the find in the town of Tawergha. A spokesman said: "We discovered a mass grave ... civilians kidnapped from Misrata by Gaddafi's loyalists."

That's an article?
---
Sept. 20:
As I noted in another recent post, there are mass graves of Gaddafi loyalists all around Misrata, at least per alleged behind-the-scenes bragging noted in this new post. A Misrata commander complains to the NTC's military spokesman about the lack of appreciation for Misrata's criminal contributions:

"Think about the armies we destroyed, Man, we destroyed 16 battalions in Misurata, there are MASS GRAVES of Gaddafi soldiers, but we are not supposed to talk about it. Who destroyed them?

When did this order come through?Before or after they talked about the one mass grave in Tawergha, transparently blaming it on Gaddafi loyalists?

Other news on the massacre:
I missed an earlier tweet to Simjazeera, August 20:
acarvin: RT @simmjazeera: Alleged mass grave site near Tawergha. Needs independent investigation. No excavations made yet.
http://www.r-shief.org/twitter/acarvin-rt-%40simmjazeera-alleged-mass-grave-site-near-tawergha-needs-independent-176474/
And another tip, August 20:
@Thanku4theAnger "@simmjazeera: Tawergha alleged mass grave: Headless corpse I found covered in blankets in shallow grave."#feb17 #Libya

Otherwise, no actual news. Human Rights Watch and the Red Crescent are working 14 mass graves in Tripoli and Qawalish in the west, but not to my knowledge at Tawergha. The bodies are probably long gone now anyway, never to be examined by anyone. And at least about 150 of the missing will likely stay that way forever.