The "al Baida massacre" III: Three Killings in February

October 16, 2011
last update Nov. 6

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Here I'll consider together three described incidents from late February which share features but also differences.They could represent one, two, or even three seperate incidents of early rebel brutality in Libya's east.

"The al Baida Massacre"
One of these I've already covered in some detail, calling it (perhaps in error) the al Baida massacre. See Behind the Scenes of the al-Baida Massacre and developed further in The "al-Baida Massacre," Further Behind the Scenes.

In short, this was a massacre of 22 largely black men in military and civilian clothes, prisoners with bound hands, blindfolded and executed by gunshots to the head, laid out across some parking lot-type area inside a low-walled area.

It was said they had been killed by their commanding officers, or perhaps by African mercenaries, for refusing to fire on demonstrators. It might be true in a roundabout way - they failed to shoot all the attackers fatally, so the "protesters" got hold of them and they were then executed.

These 22 at least seem almost certainly to have been killed by their rebel captors - militant Islamists, by the look of it. A second video shows a nighttime session in some mosque, perhaps, where nine military/civilian prisoners are condemned to death. The match of one victim between the alive view and the dead view is perfect, and at least one other is a very strong match. As many as five others of the nine prisoners are consistent with one or another of the dead (two, one a teenager, are non-matches-apparently spared).

Airport Defender Executed
In a recent update to "Behind the Scenes," I finally mentioned the link to L'Abraq Air Base; according to a fairly credible video, the soldiers sentenced to die were captured at this airport just east of al Baida. Reportedly unarmed townspeople went there on the 18th to capture or kill the planeload of "African mercenaries" rumored to be arriving. Indeed, black soldiers were inside (all Libyan), and a somehow fierce battle ensued, which the people won in a matter of about two days.

Recall that the original claim was these 22 were part of 130 soldiers executed by the regime for refusing to massacre the people, and the video of captive officer (prisoner #6 here) singled out as their "emir" (commanding officer) and apparently among those killed. Then consider this excerpt from a June 1 UN Human Rights Council report [PDF]:

On 18 February, at the demonstrations [???] near Al-Abraq Airport (east of Al-Bayda town), the Commission received information that 11 persons were killed by security personnel of Khamis Katiba, including the Commander of Husein al-Jiwiki Katiba. According to several sources, the Commander was killed when he refused to shoot at demonstrators, and was shot as a result of his refusal to shot at demonstrators. Witnesses noted that an 11 year old child was shot in the head while sitting inside a house close to the place of incident.

The Khamis brigade came and killed "demonstrators" who soon (about Feb. 20) conquered the airport. They killed a little girl at her home nearby (she's elsewhere given as 8, 10, or 12, and killed in her bedroom at 3am), and killed the on-site commander for refusing to help in all this killing.

The 'killed by his own' story and the airport link hint at a relation.  But the date of the Husein al-Jiwiki commander's demise, the 18th, and the first appearance of the videos of the slain 22, Feb 23, are nearly a week apart. And the number of dead doesn't match. Only one that's given as military, one a girl, and the remaining nine - presumably those demonstrating. So this is apparently some other incident I'm happy to leave as murky for now.

The Makhtub Massacre?
Here's where it gets interesting again. Recall the rebel interrogator's obsession with identifying the commanding officer, or "emir," among the men to be killed. The Libyan government had this idea that Dernah in the east was declared an Islamic emirate, and the massacre video has been given as happening in Dernah (besides al Baida, Benghazi, and even Sirte).

I've never been able to locate a precise spot on Google maps that fits the video, allowing me to say which of these is correct. I mostly looked around al Baida and L'Abraq, but Wikipedia has some clues I should have found earlier, suggesting another town altogether:

A group of 15 to 22 Libyan army soldiers captured in Darnah were reportedly executed in the village of Makhtuba, 20 kilometres (12 miles) east of Darna. According to a widely circulated story, the men were claimed to have been "executed by their own officers for disobeying orders".

The number of dead and claimed story match enough it was well-worth looking into. The source for this claim was an article I somehow missed before: "A rebellion divided: spectre of revenge killings hangs over eastern Libya." Graeme Smith, Globe and Mail, April 1. It's behind a paywall, but there are readable re-posts like this.

Smith wrote, apparently from rebel sources, how "a group of 22 soldiers" broke out from the airport, and drove through "the rebels’ barricades near the airport on Feb. 23." In three pickup trucks, the fighters "raced down the highway that winds down the cliffs toward Darna, blasting their way through a rebel encampment along the way." They killed two rebel fighters, the story goes, and others there called ahead to Dernah. The roads in do really twist, so they'd have a while to prepare. Smith reports on their response:

Locals say that a rebel commander named Abdul Hakim Al-Hasadi organized an ambush near the outskirts; the 45-year-old had quickly become a prominent figure among the rebels because of his expertise in guerrilla warfare, which he received at training camps in Afghanistan from 1999 to 2002. (In an earlier interview with The Globe and Mail, Mr. Al-Hasadi declined to say who operated his training camp; al-Qaeda ran camps in the same part of Afghanistan during that period.)

Mr. Hassadi's involvement is interesting. He's since admitted to being an al Qaeda member, albeit one who disapproved of 9/11 and felt America was getting less evil with its assistance to their cause in Libya. He's gone on to lead the fight in Dernah (along with fellow Afghan AQ member Sufyan bin Qumu). Later, al-Hassadi allegedly sailed to Misrata to lead the besieged city's rebel fighters, who would eventually be known for their bravery and relentless brutality in Tawergha, Tripoli, Sirte, and elsewhere.

Back in late February... Smith continues with a story full, like the roads into Dernah, of twists and turns:

The rebels caught all 22 soldiers and started transporting them in pickup trucks back to Darna; although seven leapt from the back of the trucks they were recaptured the next morning in a neighbouring village. The remaining 15 arrived at the central mosque in Darna, where a large crowed gathered and called for their execution.

What's interesting is the divided response to these captives. While the militants and the "angry mob" wanted to off them, other locals were willing for whatever reason to shelter the attacking soldiers. A veterinarian who joined Darna’s rebel council told Smith “We were screaming, ‘Please don’t do this.’ My own cousin was killed at the airport, but I’m a Muslim and I must respect the prisoners of war.”

Mr. El-Magri said a group of educated men tried to shelter the prisoners inside the mosque and planned to disperse them among safe houses with families in the city. Most of them were bundled into vehicles and kept away from the mob, he said, but men in the crowed snatched one of them from the back of a pickup truck. He saw them hang him with rope from a green pedestrian bridge near the mosque.

Families that sheltered the prisoners that night remain afraid to speak to the media, fearing retribution. Abdel Gadir, 29, said one of his friends took in a group of prisoners and soon found it difficult to keep them. “His door alarm rang in the middle of the night,” Mr. Gadir said. “Men with guns were in the road with covered faces. They told him, ‘Give us those criminals.’”

The masked men took away the prisoners. The next day, Mr. Gadir said he returned home in the evening to his village of Makhtuba, 20 kilometres east of Darna, and found his neighbours upset. They had discovered a pile of bodies, apparently executed with gunshots, at a nearby crossroads known as Hisha.

“My friend said, ‘Our revolution has taken a wrong turn,’” Mr. Gadir said. “Each of the bodies had a bullet in the head.”

Comparing the Makhtub Massacre and the al Baida Massacre
The mosque where the main 15 were taken could be the scene of the famous interrogation video (with six prisoners unseen). That occurred at night, and the videos of all 22 already dead were online and being reported about on the 23rd (See SaveLibya's posting). So if this is the same incident with no timeline fudging, they must have been captured at about midnight or one AM on the 23rd, the escapees found and sentenced before the sun rose, and all 22 killed swiftly thereafter.

The details of this story also fail to account for the two capitives at least that clearly are not among the dead (prisoners 2 and 4). The original pool had to be at least 24, even if none of the others were spared.

Smith's version, gathered as it was from locals of different viewpoints, has strength to it. But the story of the initial capture is especially prone to distortion. The airport had fallen by Feb.20, so what 22 soldiers were still holed up inside to "break out" and go on the attack, semi-justifying their execution, three days later? Making this the story's beginning makes Hassadi out to be a defender, aside from a war criminal, but it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.

That detail and the given date of capture aside, I'd consider it more likely these passive, stunned-seeming young men were just taken captive as the airport was seized on about the 20th, and killed somewhere in the next day or two before the cover story was finalized, and the video released, on the 23rd.

On the visual location search - often when things come together, they all start to. I'll look at satellite imagery and find a match, and things will just crystalize. But even narrowing it down to tiny Makhtub (given as Matruba on Google maps) still gives no obvious match. There's no sign the area of filming was at a crossroads, nor that it wasn't near one. And finally, splayed out in a walled area isn't the same as piled at a crossroads.

So in the end, I can't simply reconcile these as the same incident, nor shake the feeling they might be. What we have in this still-connected disconnect is either:
- two separate rebel atrocities of 22 victims each, in that area, on about February 23.
- the same incident told in multiple conflicting ways, left scrambled and indecipherable.