Shed Massacre Witnesses: "Executioner" Ibrahim Khalifa/Tajouri/Lousha BUSTED!

May 15-18, 2012

<< The Khamis Brigade Shed Massacre

Time for another spike in the coffin of that amazing confrontation staged for Feras Kilani, just yesterday exposed in my new video Amnesty by Way of Fakery. The centerpiece of that was “meet the accusers,” a well-established fake survivor (here Bashir Al-Sadeq) who’s changed names and stories repeatedly, a second unharmed survivor (Hussein Al-Lafi) rendered suspect by agreeing with the fake memories of Al-Sadeq, and their on-site manager, Dr. Salem Al-Farjani, who... you just need to see the video.

 Right after finishing that I realized it’s time to meet the accused, the young kid soldier who allegedly led the slaughter. Possibly drugged, possibly tortured, I said. Time to add possibly an actor. (I think there will be a smaller part two) Below, we will link together three named mass-murderers, all named Ibrahim, starting with this reasonably famous one.

The conclusions aren't 100% certain, but ... fairly close. The similarities are just too thick for coincidence in this shallow pool of captured loyalist soldiers connected - as a lead executioner - to the shed massacre. Unless there was more than one 20-year old Ibrahim from Tajoura, Tripoli, in the accepted number of five executioners, then at least one of these names and/or accounts must be unreal. I'm betting on all three being fake.

Ibrahim Tajouri:
Bashir Al-Sadeq (with agreement from Hussein Al-Lafi) has the cold-hearted kid stepping into the shed between the second and third grenades and opening fire. He emptied nearly four clips on Mohammed Al-Lafi, old Ramadan Jabr, and some foreigners not mentioned elsewhere, a group of Egyptians and an old Palestinian man, 80 years old (The debut of these victims was to Palestinians Kilani, for BBC Arabic. Slick!) He just doesn't remember any of it. He was high on drugs, but he did remember being threatened to do it by Mohammed Mansour, the base commander.

We see Tajouri’s face (as shared adequately in the video), blank, passive, tired or broken perhaps, but comfortably so. He looks perfectly healthy, seems relaxed. His clothing is sporty, casual, something with a hood, sandals. He wears a different outfit for the Kilani interview than for the confrontation. His posture while waiting is passive, hands behind his back. He could be waiting for a job interview, but for a job he doesn't really need.

Kilani’s interview for BBC’s Fifth Floor program (quite a ways in) adds some details:

I thought he was a man, a big one. But when he entered the room, in the prison where he is, I can’t believe this is the person who killed the prisoners. He’s the first one who threw the grenades, and then entered the place and opened fire on them. He’s just 20 years old and he looks like – he doesn’t know wheat he did until now. He looked calm, he can’t even explain his situation. Something … something’s still missing about him. It’s just meaningless.

He threw in the grenades, besides stepping in to kill between them. He’s left little work for the other 2-4 active executioners reported. He's already, apparently, on the record as doing the mop-up afterwards too.

Same Guy Rumored Before Capture?
Abdulrahim Ibrahim Bashir told Human Rights Watch back on August 27 2011:

After I escaped, I saw one of the soldiers finish off anyone who was wounded lightly. He would just finish them off. I saw him from far away. He was wearing trouser fatigues and a civilian top. I recognized him. He was one of the ones guarding us. His name was Brahim and he was from Tajoura …

Ibrahim's name, Tajouri, means from Tajoura. This probably refers to the same person, whatever the cause and effect relationship behind the name alignment. Here, he's not specified in starting the massacre, but could have (allegedly) been. He is sworn to finishing off the dead later that night, as executioner "Laskhar" is said to have done. Laskhar, by the way, is apparently out as a match for our Ibrahim. With at least seven years in the military, he's got to be older than 20.

Ibrahim Sadeq Khalifah:
Back in January, AFP reporter Jay Deshmukh was taken to a prison in Misrata, and shown the healthy and apparently torture-free captive soldier Ibrahim Sadeq Khalifa. He reported back that “he looks like any other young Libyan, but the 20-year-old prisoner has good reason to fear for his future in the new Libya.”

What he looks like is Ibrahim Tajouri. The photos don’t show his face, but for the chin, with the same little cropped beard. (full-body, upper body, possibly the faint cigarette burn visible, that he says was not delivered there) His clothing and posture – sporty and casual, relaxed in sandals and a hoody, well-fitting and baggy, hands patiently behind his back.

(more analysis later... the chin, lower left, is admittedly not an obvious fit, but the hair alone, longer at the corners" could give the added angularity we perceive. The lower lip and angle of dip to the chin seem the same. The skin tone is arguably off, even accounting for the lighting difference. But it's a big difference, and even more arguably, the other clues are strong enough we should just chalk this up to lighting.)

Besides looking and dressing a bit like the same-aged Ibrahim from Tajoura, he "was captured by former rebels from his home in Tajura, a suburb of Tripoli," Deshmukh wrote, "three days later [Aug. 25], when the city was overrun by anti-Kadhafi fighters." But at this rebel posting the AFP piece, an informed-sounding commentator added "You need to get you facts right. This guy is NOT from Tajura he is from Tarhona but lives in Tajura. Tajura has given enough blood to this uprising, we lost five people from one Family." He was later named Tajouri, suggesting he was "from" there. But the name would change again...

Account details: Vague, damning, incorrect.

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
[…]
“I threw grenades on them after my colleagues doused them in petrol. We then locked the garage and left. We burnt them alive,” Khalifa told AFP, of the massacre that he and four other Qaddafi soldiers carried out.

Khalifa admits that those killed by him and his comrades in the Khalit al-Farjan area of Tripoli on the afternoon of Aug. 22 were civilians.

Ibrahim Lousha:
Then comes Robert F. Worth's sprawling and bizarre epic "In Libya, the Captors Have Become the Captive." (analyzed/discussed here) Because of the stuff before this and after the following quote, we can be quite sure the video described in this quote is a fake. It and the other videos in the same trove are the centerpiece of Worth's story.

Jalal clicked on another video. In this one, Jumaa and two other guards were kicking and beating a blindfolded prisoner with extraordinary ferocity. “Kill me, Ibrahim, kill me!” the prisoner screamed repeatedly. “I don’t want to live anymore! Kill me!” The man to whom he was pleading was Ibrahim Lousha, whom I already knew by reputation as the most notorious torturer at Yarmouk. “Do you love the leader?” Lousha said, and the prisoner replied frantically, “Yes, yes!”

Quite young to have achieved such an esteemed status. No previous witnesses had singled him out by name, as the prisoner in the recently-faked video knew to do. I'll go ahead and share what Worth writes about his meeting with this young self-described prodigy of evil.

Ibrahim Lousha, the torturer on the video ... was being held by one of the brigades in Misurata, about two hours from Tripoli, in a battered old government building. I was led to a big empty room and told to wait, and then suddenly there he was, looking like a mere child as he slumped in a chair. He wore gray sweat pants and a blue V-neck sweater and flip-flops. He had big eyes and a buzz cut, a morose expression on his face. He sat with his hands together in his lap, his left leg bouncing restlessly. The Misurata brigade had become infamous for the torture of Qaddafi loyalists in recent months, but Lousha said he was treated well. No one was monitoring us, aside from a bored-looking guard across the room.

He was 20 years old, he said, the son of a Tripoli policeman. When I asked him about the torture at Yarmouk, Lousha answered numbly: beatings, electricity, other methods. “We didn’t give them water every day,” he said. “We brought them piss.” Whose? “Our piss. In bottles. Also we gave them a Muammar poster and made them pray on it.” I asked if he was ordered to do these things. He said no, that he and the fellow guards came up with these ideas while drinking liquor and smoking hashish. Wasn’t that an insult to Islam, to make people pray to Qaddafi, I asked. “We didn’t think about it,” he said. He told me that on the day of the massacre, a commander named Muhammad Mansour arrived late in the afternoon and ordered the guards to kill all the prisoners in the hangar. Then he left without saying anything about why they were to be killed or where the order originated.

“We looked at each other,” Lousha said. “And then I got the grenades.” He spoke in monosyllables, and I had to press him constantly for more details. “The other guards had the grenades. I told them, ‘Give the grenades to me.’ ” He threw two into the hangar, one after the other, and the door blew open. He could hear the screams of the dying prisoners. I asked him what he thought about after he went home to his parents and siblings. He had made no effort to escape. “I was thinking about everything that happened,” he said, his face as expressionless as ever. “The whole disaster, the killing. I was thinking between me and God.”

How can this not be young Ibrahim's third incarnation?

Name Meaning
Why so many last names for Ibrahim? Why so few first ones?

The latter might have something to do with his handler, Ibrahim Beat'emall (transliterations vary). The head of the Misrata Military Council, he used this actor to illustrate that contraryto what all the victims of Misratan torture have said, they do not torture. This kid Ibrahim looks perfectly healthy but in the eyes, well-fed, well-dressed, and hardly a mark. And he deserved torture, for burning alive 150 men. On that grounds, he implicitly barred human rights groups from Misrata ("I don't even want to see their faces.")

So anyway, what does this name mean?It's important when considering a character who's a work of fiction, whether in a novel that matters or a criminal operation like this. Does Mr. Beat'emall's life-long reflection on his own name and special destiny have any bearing on what this character's derivative name is supposed to illustrate?

Ibrahim: Of course, Arabic version of Abraham, father of many nations. Islamic Dictionary explains the context from the Islamic side:

He was the "Close One to Allah" Who preferred him over many others and selected him to be a messenger. Though brought up in a pagan community that worshiped idols, Abraham refused to do so and realized that there must be a greater god of the universe. Allah guided him to the right path and revealed His message to him. He then directed his mission to his people, and called on them to renounce idolatry. He was answered with stubborn refusals. They plotted against him but their schemes were in vain, for Allah, the Almighty, provided support and protection to His servant and prophet, Abraham. Abraham was the forefather of a line of prophets through his two sons Ishmael and Isaac. It was Abraham who began the construction of the Kaabah with the help of Ishmael.

Sadeq: Islamic Dictionary: truthful, real.
Khalifa: Islamic Dictionary: As in Caliph, a leader, a good steward.
Tajouri: From Tajoura
Lousha: No info

So his first given name, Ibrahim Sadeq Klhalifa is the most revealing of any potential poetry. Father of nations / close to God/rejector of an unholy world / Truthful / Islamic Leader. Clearly the meaning would be ironic in the context of a sacrilegious, cruel, murderous, slavish follower of a wicked regime. Only the middle name Sadeq stands out as a direct illustration of a core feature we’re to perceive non-ironically. Whatever lies he lived before, he is now telling the truth - under the proper rebel guidance.

Commentary
I left a comment at the Feb. 17 posting of Deshmukh's article: http://feb17.info/news/pro-gaddafi-mass-murderer-awaits-fate-in-libya-jail/#comment-114143 It apparently wasn't a fit, awaiting moderation now for a few days. So here's the comment:

Ibrahim Khalifa, 20, from Tajoura sounds like “Brahim,” from Tajoura, looks just like Ibrahim Tajouri, 20, interviewed by Feras Kilani, and they both sound just like Ibrahim Lousha, 20, Robert F. Worth, calling him “the most notorious torturer at Yarmouk.” Quite young to have such a reputation!

Why so many last names, but so few first ones?

His leading evil role is described differently each time – first wave gunner, grenadier, mop-up killer, giving the wrong date or incorrectly saying the prisoners were burned alive, by him (above). All under influence of X-regime thugs and drugs.

The reason he looks healthy and well-dressed in his own style – is it because the Misratans do not torture, or because he’s an actor paid to stand-in for the real prisoners behind the scenes?

I’m on subject and detailed, so this comment should be allowed.

Really not a good fit. The previous drivel about how this controlled faker and pawn for scripting rebel myths should be treated careened between two poles of duped stupidity. The first is ostensibly liberal but studiously condescending, and ultimately geared towards a big-picture view of the elimination of the whole Gaddafi system, as opposed to getting hung up on individual vengeance. This is clearly the direction this script is supposed to head, in a redemption of lost souls narrative. The second view is just so fucking ugly, it was probably written by the same person to enforce the above point.

John A. Lincoln:
We have to understand that most of X-Gathafi’s Regime Supporters and Beneficiaries for the Past 45 years are illiterate and Primitive People. The Regime to blame for their plight, because they have been abused directly and indirectly to serve the Regime.

[...]

Most of the blame must be directed towards the X-Regime Officials and Leaders who have been using these poor and illiterate people to protect them, extend their Dictatorship span and murder the oppositions internally and externally.

These illiterate and poor people human rights should be respected, rehabilitated, educated, interrogated and taken care of their families if Libya and the Libyans ever going to reconcile, forgive and forget their past confused and abused history.

The other view, refreshing in comparison:

James Miller:
Ah shut up! It’s your liberal hogwash that is to blame. Your western idiot ideas of appeasement is what kept Gadaffi in power for 42 years and enables all fascists everywhere.

Learn to take a stand. We die or they die, We are free or we are dead and when we are free they are dead. [...]

What makes us different is they force us to kill them. They chose it , we did not. Torture them stomp them and kill them. And take your Western propaganda to hades with you and them.

[To Ibrahim Khalifa, the soldier] You are going to die and deservedly be executed because you chose evil and murder. [...] If you had refused your orders you would have died a martyr and been allowed into heaven, but instead you chose evil and cowardice and thus will become the garbage of history. [...] No one will care about you or remember you when you are gone. You will simply be a problem that has been erased.