Khamis Brigade Shed Massacre: The Death Toll

February 17, 2012
(incomplete)

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Underscoring the need for a real investigation of the Khamis Brigade shed massacre is the fact that there is no solid word on even the number of dead, let alone just who they are and who they were really killed by. Here is an analysis of the ambiguity in search of a best guess of the true alleged death toll.

120-200: First Reports, Aug. 25
An early disconnect on the death toll aired days before most of the world heard a peep about this, and apparently before the cover story was formalized. The main news day was August 28, with the first famous coverage on the 27th. Amnesty International seemed to have a big scoop reporting on it early on the 26th. But earlier yet people were re-posting an ITN news video and a now-elusive Telegraph article, both dated the 25th.

Alleged survivor Munir el Goula (family name phonetic) spoke to ITN News. Reporter Lindsey Hilsum related how “he says somehow he escaped,” but she didn’t explain if he explained how. One of the three brothers he was in with escaped too and was there (but silent) for the interview. Including the other two brothers, Munir “believes 20 soldiers and more than a hundred prisoners were killed.” How many more than a hundred is presumably not much, or he'd probably give a better estimate. This sound like about 120-150 prisoners maybe.

Alleged survivor Abdulatti Musbah Haleem spoke at about the same time to Andrew Gilligan, in a Telegraph piece it seems they never published on-line themselves (and most of the re-postings have been pulled now too). Here it remains at a rebel propaganda site. Original title: Children 'among 180 slaughtered' in Tripoli. Andrew Gilligan, August 25, 2011 (Most re-postings give the 26th, but per this early re-post, 2 am the 26th, it was from apparently late on the 25th.)

There are a lot of numbers, and big ones, in this piece.

A group of about 180 civilian prisoners, seven of them children, were massacred by Gadhafi forces earlier this week, one of the survivors has told The Daily Telegraph.
[...]
Gadhafi troops and Tuareg mercenary fighters attacked a group of 200 prisoners
“There were about 200 of us in a hangar at the base,” he said.
[...]
he and about 30 others ran out through a hole they had made in the hangar wall.
“Some of us did not make it because they started shooting again.”
“There were about 200 people in there and as far as I know only 18 survived,” said Mr Haleem. 

A doctor at the hospital said 163 people had been killed at the site. He said about 20 survivors had been treated.

Dr. See-Through Salem, I presume?

The middle range:
Physicians for Human rights reports 153 prisoners on the 23rd, based on a decent call thatthis is the approximate middle of the given ranges, and the single most specified number.

BBC, Aug. 28:

"Up to 150 civilians from different parts of Libya were being held there, according to Fathallah [Abdullahal-Ashter]."

HRW Aug. 27

"[Abdulrahim Ibrahim Bashir, 25] said that guards at the warehouse, used as a prison, read out 153 names of detainees in the roll call the day of the killings. He estimated that 20 escaped from the attack and said that around 125 of the 153 detainees were civilians.

Susan Ormiston, CBC reported on the 28th there were 153 prisoners.

Le Monde/Le Matin: suddenly the door opened, Friday, August 26, and grenades were thrown at the 150 prisoners

Der Spiegel English:
Ali Boukhatwa says there were initially 150 prisoners here. There are now about 50 corpses, and he does not know where the others are.

Anthony Loyd, The Australian:
"But we know for a fact that there were more than 150 prisoners in the barn when the firing started and that only about ten escaped. What has been done with the other bodies?"

AFP via al Arabiya, January:
"His crime, which he acknowledged in front of an AFP team touring the prison, was that he burned alive around 150 men in a garage in Tripoli."
Implied escapees: Zero.

Away from the Middle
Arwa Damon, CNN, recalled her witness, Mounir Massound Own, "says there were 175 people crammed inside here" when the massacre happened around him. [CNN1] He said about two dozen others managed to escape, but he lost track of his brother in the chaos. He has not heard from his brother since that day, he said, and assumes that he did not survive.[CNN2]

PHR:
At a makeshift prison in the Khalat Al Forjan neighborhood in Salahaddin district, loyalist forces reportedly massacred 53 civilians and combatants. [PHR p. 14]
(should be "at least?"And doesn't include the outside the shed victims? Who does PHR think allegedly killed them?)

ICC Prosecutor See Site of Alleged Libya Killings
Associated Press
By Rami Al-Shaheibi
November 23, 2011

The Libyan Society of the Missing says that 106 prisoners were killed in the building on August 23 when Gadhafi loyalists threw grenades inside.