The Tripoli Massacres: Ghargour Black Trash

October 27, 2011

<< The Tripoli Massacres

A BBC video report of August 26, primarily about (and dancing around) the Abu Salim hospital massacre, also shows some apartments in the "upscale" Ghargour neighborhood, between Abu Salim and Gaddafi's Bab al Aziziya compound. Here, it's said by reporter John Simpson (an old propaganda hack), Gaddafi loyalists had been living and flying their green flags. "The inhabitants are probably gone," he said, but "they'd left their mark. They'd chopped down eight ordinary people, who'd come back to see if their homes were still safe. Death and more death, and new cases are being discovered all the time." Yes indeed. To be precise, late August was when this was happening.

Those dastardly loyalist inhabitants of that neighborhood! Or was it the inhabitants who'd been killed, or done the killing? Or was that the residents of Ghargour? Does "chopped down" mean killed with blades, or beheaded, like the people at the hospital he'd just been proudly shown? I'm confused. What can we see to start judging for ourselves?

The two victims shown close enough to tell anything (screen grabs at left and below) seem to be black males. One is slumped face-down,his body covered by a leopard-spot blanket, and his perhaps present head by a blue one. He's been left in a sort of alley between buildings, with a second body, also covered, visible a ways further down (see last image in this post).

The other of three bodies, of the stated eight, that's shown (and perhaps a peek of a fourth) is laid by a giant orange trash receptacle (dumpster). Again, he's laid face down, and by his bare feet, seems to be another black man. The fire-ravaged dumspter could well contain more (burned) remains.

How it was known regime loyalists was responsible as the rebels swarmed around is, of course, unexplained but clearly true in Simpson's report.

The location was not hard to pin down from the video presented. Below are some frames to set it up. The body at the end of the dumpster is at the base of a bridge over what looks like a canal. A solid green wall of some height (visible at left) runs across from the canal. Two large white buildings are in the near-distance to the right (r-click, new window for larger view).

A canal crosses Ghargour, actually marking its northern edge, it seems. The green wall narrows it down, as does the bridge itself. The location is shown below. The wall top is marked in green, the building ends in white. The orange of course marks our trash bin, and for reference, a red dot to the east marks the location of the dozen or more black "mercenary" victims found at the Bab al-Aziziya roundabout.

This puts the location just barely in Ghagour, just across a canal and a street from the outer walls of Gaddafi's compound. It's nearer to the colonel's home than it is to most of those in Gargarish they might've been "checking on." Again as with the roundabout victims, the message seems to be "return to sender." This time the TNC government shock troops used the nearest place for dumping trash to make a further statement, and perhaps also added some burning - of the living or dead - to the mix.

In the scene images above, Simpson's guide took him up on the bridge, pointing down to an area behind the dumpster we're not shown. I just found a photo that lets us see, in distressing detail, the remaining five victims piled behind. As far as I can tell, again, all five are black men, some unbound. Two have their pants pulled down, to humiliate the dead. They're in a middling state of decomposition by the time of this photo (August26th, as with Simpson's report?), bloating and skin cracking.

The surrounding buildings across the street conform with the satellite imagery and solidify the location. This in turn helps me find the spot for the other two victims in an alley. That's somewhat less clear, but there's a likely match quite close by. The graphic below shows where I think the dumpster and eight bodies were. ("sunlight" means direction of in the BBC video)

My theory of the crime flows from looking at that. Backon about August 22, eight (or more, depending) captive "African mercenaries" were driven by bearded members of the Misrata brigades to their date with execution. They headed north from Abu Salim, cutting through Ghargour, looking for somewhere near a Gaddafi place so Gaddafi could be blamed.

One of the condemned decided to bail from the pickup truck he was in, hooking his unbound feet over the edge of the bed and waiting. A longtime Tripoli native, he recognized a suitable alleyway and just before it, pulled a mighty sit-up, tumbled out at mid-speed, rolled to his feet, and started running. Another captive managed to follow him somehow before the pickup(s) screeched to a halt.

Still bound hands behind, the two escapees ran down the alley, aiming for the narrow passage between between two courtyard walls(roughly center of the image at right). But it was too far. Their captors got to the mouth of the alley and just opened up on them with the Kalashnikovs.

Immobilized, the men were finished off (for certainty more than mercy), but not dragged out. There was still much to do to the remaining "mercenaries," and to a whole lot of other people in this infested city they had to cleanse.

The dumpster was right there, it was perfect, and they could finish this quickly.