The Libyan Civil War: Critical Views

Richard Spencer on Libya and Syria: Rebuttals?

2012-03-02T05:00:00.001-08:00

March 2, 2012

Citing: Syria's rebels are not an al-Qaeda army. Richard Spencer. The Telegraph. February20, 2012.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/richardspencer/100138473/syrias-rebels-are-not-an-al-qaeda-army/

I have just returned from spending some time with the rebel "army" in Syria, and if reports from around the world are to be believed I should be a fully-fledged jihadi warrior by now.

Peter Oborne, in the Sunday Telegraph, is the latest and as you would expect most cogent commentator yet arguing that Western support for the opposition to President Assad is profoundly flawed. It has made us bedfellows with al-Qaeda, he says, and he cites the current violence in Libya as evidence of the disaster that could lie in wait. Not only al-Qaeda but other foreign extremist Islamist elements have probably already infiltrated Syria, he adds.

For evidence of al-Qaeda's involvement, he quotes the US Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, who said recently that two bomb attacks in Damascus, widely claimed by rebels including recent defectors to have been staged by the regime, “had all the earmarks of an al-Qaeda attack”. All doubt has thus ended, Oborne says. "It’s official. Al-Qaeda is acknowledged as an ally of Britain and America in our desire to overturn the Syrian government."

But it's all pretty flimsy, isn't it? Leaving aside the intelligence, National or otherwise, of a Washington insider who doesn't know the difference between an earmark and a hallmark, just because something looks like an al-Qaeda attack doesn't mean it is one, particularly if the accusation is that the Syrian regime has dressed it up to look like one.

More importantly, as Oborne himself says later, these revolutions are complicated, and even if al-Qaeda is bombing Damascus it isn't necessarily the case that it is seeking the overthrow of President Assad. There has been plenty of cross-border flow of militants between Iraq and Syria over the years (as Clapper knows full well), which raises the question as to why al-Qaeda has only started attacking now?

Good question, no?

In Libya too, the evidence for actual, rather than incipient chaos is not as strong as it might appear – "if anything, the fighting appears to be getting worse, as the country breaks into hostile armed fractions – a fertile hunting ground for al-Qaeda," says Oborne. Yet this is demonstrably untrue. ...

It's what?

The absence, not presence, of al-Qaeda is the most startling aspect of the new Libya.

Why would that be the single most "startling" thing, if it were true? Why is Richard Spencer so frightened by an alleged lack of al Qaeda activity?

Amnesty International rightly pointed the other day to the barbarous behaviour of the once heroic Misrata brigade, and the prisoners they have tortured and, in 12 cases, killed.

He goes on to cite this12 as a "figure," a total, when it's clearly an "at least" number.

That is damnable; but it is a figure that would be regarded as "great progress" in the case of our other Middle East ventures, and that is not as sick a thought as it seems to anyone who witnessed the horrors of Gaddafi and his brood. I will not quickly forget the sight of the remains of the scores killed and cremated by Khamis Gaddafi in a single incident in a shed-prison as he fled Tripoli in August.

Yeah, compared to that, what the Misrata Brigades are doing now is... oh, wait...

Khamis Brigade Shed Massacre: Minimum Security?

2012-03-02T04:07:00.001-08:00

March 2, 2012

This post will analyze the security barn doors that kept the Yarmouk prisoners in check until they were also being shot.At that time, they reportedly stampeded and escaped alive to tell the tale in, literally, the scores. Why didn't they break out earlier? How amazingly secure are the doors?

Analyzing the security situation also requires considering the hole in the wall, which we already have at that link. This other cited exit, and a genius one, offered escape not just from the shed but from the whole compound. It was also never used to flee prior to the massacre, either because it didn't exist, or it did (as "Omar" at least said) but the prisoners were idiots. Accounts vary.

Here, we'll look at the doors "Omar" offered 200,000 Dinars to have a guard open (the offer was spoken through the hole in the wall), which kept upto 150 people from escaping for days and months.

It's a three-part door system. The two outer doors are large, rather flimsy metal panels, about six feet wide and twelve tall, with open grating at the top. These we'll call west (left when facing the doors from outside) and east. The east door has a smaller door, apparently of a sturdier metal, inset in its west (inner) half. This is always shown wide open. From the outside only its hinges are visible, and from the inside, it's swung flat against and looking like the inside of the outer door.

The first thing we noticed, and contributor Petri Krohn brought it up, was the door latches often seen in passing suggest the handles to open the thing were on the inside. I had just finished ridiculing claims, from a prison just down the road, that some of the cells had handles on the inside. The question may be the same in both cases: why wouldn't they have opened them prior to the attempted mass killing?

Here are the images and the items of interest. The video and photo labels referred to are linked below for original context.

Items, A-G
A - latch mechanism, accessible from inside. Apparently how the smaller inset door latched to the outer one. If not locked on the outside, the door could probably be opened from within.
B - Another latch mechanism? This seems to be where the large doors connect. Plate 3 (??) left side may show the twin on the other door, and even the engaged latch between them. Disconnected on bottom side. Bend in the door frame starts here.
C - sliding bolt on outside of small door, a swinging handle that winds up on top, and above that a pivot lever and clasp, presumably to hold the handle so the bolt stays extended. By this, the door could surely be secured, from the outside, with a lock holding the clasp to the lever.
D - pin holding east door fast to the ground.
E - bar on the inside of the large doors. I don't know what this was for.
F - rectangular thing hanging on a twisted thing attached to E
G - flat metal bars sticking in near the top and bottom of the inside adge of the opened doorway. These are probably some kind of door guides or whatever, not likely very relevant here

D holds the east door to the ground, B or perhaps E/F holds/held the east and west doors together (?), A and/or C fastened the inset door. It apparently has security potential, but it's still not an obvious choice for a prison, and all the other problems remain...

Note the warped door fame as seen in plates 5 and 6. The west door is either bent out at the top by force, bent just from being unable to close, from the warped roof. The east door's inner beam, in contrast, is bent in, starting at the lock thing B. There's even a crack or chip at about that point. The bottoms of the doors (plate 2) show a similar divergence. It's not clear if the west door is pushed in or the east pulled out.

Crude efforts to break in? Why didn't they just use the hole in the wall?

photo sources:
BL6 Benjamin Lowy.
DB1: Daniel Berehulak.
RH1 Ron Haviv.
YK2 Yuri Kozyrev
Unknown (plate 3), from a Chinese page

video:
VAF AljwahrFreeMedia17 amateur video
BBC
Sky News
RT Arabic / VRT
CNN

Citizen's Investigation Into War Crimes in Libya {Masterlist}

2012-02-28T16:39:00.001-08:00

February 29, 2012
slight edits March 3

Announcing the launch of:

Citizen's Investigation into War Crimes in Libya(CIWCL)
Logo by me - hopefully adequate and not too corny.

Sub-posts:
(the lead up to forming the group)
- shed massacre follow-up work
- the big investigation group thing

(The following content may be re-arranged into new posts in time)

CIWCL signatories as of Feb. 29 (alphabetical):

- Petri Krohn
Helsinki, Finland
Chairman, Finland without Nazism

- Adam J. Larson
blog administrator: libyancivilwar.blogspot.com
Spokane, USA

- Eddie McDaid,
United Kingdom

- Myra St. Clair
Spokane, USA

- Stan Winer
Bloemfontein, South Africa

Active Members: Krohn, Larson, Winer

Others have expressed interest in signing/joining/helping, but haven't yet submitted a formal signature.

The first action was done by me without the group's stamp - the interim report on the shed massacre, sent to Physicians for Human Rights - a second draft will be stamped the first CIWCL document, and sent to others.

Anyone want to help with the contacting, strategizing, or making sure the report is good? We could use someone with formatting expertise and Acrobat or equivalent program to make proper PDF files.

We need a reliable file-hosting platform so we can share this and other reports, and we need e-mail address(es), which all come with a registered domain, which we also need. I've been pressed for time between my full-time job, the KBSM report (mammoth, detailed, formatting questions, etc...), so someone else maybe? I can do much of the set-up and design, pay part of the yearly fee, but not find and secure it myself.

I was considering a Blogspot to start, a place to discuss and work out details, but this site is already doing that okay. The CIWCL site should be our spot to share, mostly one-way, the cleanest presentation of our best findings.

The Strike on Khamis' Convoy: Really?

2012-02-27T15:07:00.004-08:00

February 27, 2012

When it was reported (but then denied) that Muammar Gaddafi's most militant son, Khamis, was captured alive recently, it seemed time to revisit the last time he was declared dead. Six months earlier almost to the day, in late August/early September of last year, he was reported killed in a rebel strike on his retreating convoy just after the fall of Tripoli.

Al-Fargi's Account
Allegedly, this strike came right after his father and Libya's onetime symbolic leader Muammar Gaddafi and parts of his core family met at Khamis' Yarmouk military base and fled from Tripoli. That was August 26, one week into the rebel assault on the capitol, four days after they claimed 90% of the city, three days after the alleged massacre of over 150 prisoners there, and about the same exact time rebels finally acknowledge holding the Yarmouk base itself (or, as the clues suggest, three days after the rebels violently took the base).

This is according to a baby-faced teenage captive who was presented to Richard Pendlebury of the UK Daily Mail, for an article run September2: "The car was armoured like a tank. But that wasn't enough to save Gaddafi's son Khamis when the rebels took their vengeance." Seventeen-year-old Abdul Salam Taher al-Fargi is described as "a child of the southern desert," who "has witnessed history.” So he says, anyway. (Photo of al-Farji speaking with Pendlebury)

In his story, he was the youngest recruit to Khamis Gaddafi’s bodyguard, picked for his youth, innocence, possibly his big hair, and his origin in the Loyalist town of Sabha. His very recruitment handily proved the desperation of the dying regime. Al-Fargi was given three days’ training shooting a gun, then sent to Tripoli with big promises following victory. He survived days of fighting “around Green Square and in the Bosleem [Abu Salim] district.” Pendlebury continues:

Then, on Thursday last week [Aug.25], when it was clear that the regime was finished, he was summoned along with other hand-picked soldiers to Khamis’s compound in the Salahuddin district.

The soldiers stayed there overnight. Then, on Friday, things began to happen. A Hyundai saloon arrived through the front gate and out got the ‘King of Kings himself’ — the nation’s leader — in a flowing robe and desert headdress. With Gaddafi Snr was his daughter Aisha, said Abdul.

The father spoke to Khamis and then left with Aisha in a military vehicle.

Another brother, Saadi, was reported as also having been in their convoy.

Abdul and his comrades were given lunch, then Khamis told them to get ready to go to Bani Walid. They would be meeting another brother, Mutassim, there.

The 60-vehicle convoy left Tripoli at around 4.30pm, Abdul recalls. Khamis was travelling in a heavily-armoured Toyota Land Cruiser.

This base is apparently the Yarmouk one, the only base of the 32nd brigade in the Salaheddin district, and among their two largest in the Tripoli area. Khamis had reportedly been there three days before when he ordered that 150 prisoners in the shed out back should be killed.

4:30 on Friday the 26th is apparently just ahead of, or even just behind, the photographer Daniel Berehulak who followed the rebels into Yarmouk. His set of eight photos of the shed massacre site are dated August 26 and, by the angle of sunlight seen (this image is the best help), it was mid-late afternoon - anywhere from about 4:00 to as late as 6:00PM (time analysis, uncertain, discussed here).

Further, it's about four hours after the rebels finally conquered the base, according to the unnamed fighter who spoke to Human Rights Watch. He said they entered the base around noon on the 26th, and to prove it, said that's when they first smelled and then saw the burning remains in the shed. At the same time, we're to accept, the Gaddafi family themselves were enjoying lunch alongside that smell some feet away, and then casually departed four hours later, before it was too late!

Just past Tahouna, near Bani Walid, an ammunition truck in Khamis' convoy was hit by rebels, Pendlebury was told, leaving a smashed bed that looks to me like a NATO bomb hit it from above. Photo of ammunition truck

Pendlebury described the convoy's last mission so:

What would appear to be happening is a fighting retreat, to buy time for the Gaddafis to escape into the desert wastes. Some regime forces have already left Bani Walid and moved to Sofe Aljane, 50 miles further south. Gaddafi himself is also thought to have gone.

Abdul al-Farji was with them. He said:

‘We were told the road was clear, and my pick-up truck was sent forward to make sure it was,’ said Abdul, who was manning a heavy machine gun mounted on the back.

‘We ran straight into rebel vehicles. I opened fire first and they shot back.’

But as the driver of his own vehicle tried to turn away from the rebel positions, Abdul lost his footing, fell out and was captured.

The last time he saw Khamis’s vehicle it was on fire, but still moving slowly.

The jeep apparently was hit too, but the kid survived, because he fell off of it. He was captured and told his story like so. The witness seems quite confident, open, and eager to explain all he saw and knew. He said he had been misled about the kind rebels, but now wanted to help them, and he was. And they were kind, to him.

It is clear, though, that Abdul has become something of a pet for the rebels. As we talked, another colonel came in, ruffled his hair, pinched his cheek and kissed him.

‘We are all one country,’ he beamed. ‘And this is still a Libyan child.’

It was the convoy battle by Tahouna that proved the kid was right, Khamis was in that convoy, and he didn’t come out alive, so was presumed among the charred dead. Pendlebury added:

The rebel colonel describes the demise of the dictator’s son. ‘His vehicle was well protected, but we hit it with a 23mm gun and it burned,’ he said.

I viewed the charred and melted remains of the Toyota by the side of the empty road. The glass was almost an inch thick and the armour on the doors would not have disgraced a tank. The bodywork did not appear to have been penetrated.

Photo of the armored Land Crusier.

Does it add up well?

Other Evidence for Khamis'Death
forthcoming.

When Was This Photo Taken?

2012-02-26T15:59:00.000-08:00

Feb. 26, 2012

Photographer Daniel Berehulak took a series of photos of the massacre site dated August 26, sometime in the mid-afternoon, from the general direction of sunlight. Image 2 is the only one I found useful for trying to set the exact time. External link, new window: http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/4j2SQVwCzEZ/Burnt+Bodies+Discovered+Tripoli+Mass+Killing/7l_03GCUoMV

An enhanced crop of this is inset at left. The men in the door are bathed in two types of light: ambient (from our left, mostly, and all sides of them but the front) and brighter, direct sunlight (apparently from our right/their left and somewhat above them). The door frame and even shadows inside will also help. But still, I can't decide on even a narrow range. Maybe another reader can help decide.

For now, I'm dealing with solar azimuth only, direction to the sun in its east-west arc across the sky. Solar altitude I can only say is above horizontal, so well before sunset. In the image below, the Google Maps image of the shed oriented to true north. The green line is an approximate line of sight within the shed. The yellow lines are possibly consistent sunlight directions shining towards the camera. The earliest is approximately 222º from north (southwest), with the others at 244º, at 267º, and as an outlier, 280º (just north of due west).

Anyone? Which of these four, or other angles within our outside that range, do you think best explains what the photo shows? I have the correlating times, and a reason for wondering. But just to keep it about the imagery, I'll hold off explaining until I or someone figures out what's the best reading among those.

Once Again, Khamis NOT Dead

2012-02-25T01:12:00.002-08:00

February 25, 2012

Thanks to Felix for this fascinating tip - for at least the third time in a year, Khamis Gaddafi, believed to have been killed, was not. At least according to the following dispatch from the Tripoli Post.

BREAKING NEWS: Khamis Gaddafi Captured by Zintan Forces, Another Blow to Pro-Gaddafi Remnants
24/02/2012 22:45:00
http://tripolipost.com/articledetail.asp?c=1&i=7941#.T0g07JVu-Dc.twitter

The Tripoli Post has learnt from reliable sources, that Khamis Gaddafi, one of the sons son of the dead dictator of Libya, has been captured by Zintan rebels near the towns of Regdalin and Jmail in western Libya near the borders with Tunisia.

Khamis who was also a commander of the Gaddafi forces during the revolution and participated in the killing of the civilian protesters in Zawiyaha, Tripoli, Misurata and other Libyan cities and towns was well known for his brutality and crimes.

His most feared brigade, named the Mechanical 32 Brigade, played a major role in the suppressing of the uprising and also committing many war crimes.

Zintan forces captured Seif Gaddafi three months ago in the Sahara desert and he is now imprisoned there.

Khamis has been reported dead many times during last year's conflict but he always turned out to be alive.

More to come.

Unconfirmed reports say that his doctor has also been captured and that Khamis has an amputated leg.

His convenient death story with no proof in late August was less than convincing, and I suspected he might still be around, although we sure didn't see any proof. Now Zintan's oddly positioned forces, already holding Saif al-Islam incomunicado, say they can confirm that.

Now he can go on trial for the shed massacre he allegedly ordered personally. This makes us and our findings suddenly more significant.

Unless he now dies. But even that only lasts until he emerges alive yet again.

Shed Massacre Witnesses: Abdulatti Musbah Haleem

2012-02-25T00:00:00.001-08:00

February 25, 2012

<< The Khamis Brigade Shed Massacre
<< Shed Massacre Witness List

Alleged escapee Abdulatti Musbah Haleem, aged 43, a cement buyer from Zlitan, was one of the first to speak up about the fabled shed massacre of August 23. After barely survivng it, within 48 hours, he spoke on August 25 to Andrew Gilligan of the UK Telegraph, before the media rush of the 27th-29th. As with all the witnesses to follow, he apparently spoke before the details were all worked out.

The article in question is obscure now. The telegraph never seem to have had it on their site at all. A Canadian re-posting has been pulled down. A few copies remain at message boards and a rebel news aggregator site. Most of these were dated August 26, but one re-posting is from 2:15 am that day, linking to yet another Canadian version no longer available, and headed so:
Andrew Gilligan. “Children 'among 180 slaughtered' in Libya.” The Daily Telegraph. August 25, 2011. Extended citations (actually the whole thing, in chunks) follow.

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.

The slaughter took place on Tuesday at the al-Yarmouk military base in the suburbs of Tripoli, according to the survivor, Abdulatti Musbah Haleem.

Gadhafi troops and Tuareg mercenary fighters attacked a group of 200 prisoners with rifles, machine guns and hand-grenades, he said, leaving the bodies on the ground.
Rebels said Gadhafi troops later tried to burn the bodies to destroy the evidence.

200? That's a large number. Most witnesses that would come forward say there were about or exactly 153 prisoners to begin with. The location is given correctly for, I believe, the first time (see Shed Massacre Chronologies for details on the following). Amnesty International would report it the same way on the morning of the 26th. The mysterious Misrata fighter dispatch of dawn on the 24th (140 bodies found, killed with guns and grenades) gave no locale. Munir el Goula had just spoken to Channel 4 on the 25th, apparently saying the massacre (120 or more, guns and grenades) happened in Mansoura, near Bab al Aziziyah. The next day, the 26th, rebel militia leader Mletga would say it happened inside Gaddafi's compound (150, guns and grenades).

The last part there, about burning the bodies, is interesting. The 24th dispatch about 140 massacred prisoners mentioned no burning, but the follow-up message of the 25th (app. 9:30 am) mentioned that at least some were badly burnt. They acknowledge no awareness of the burnt bodies in the shed until taking the base on the 26th. The burning had to have happened well after the witnesses had gotten away from there, so how else could they know this early unless they were there when the burning happened?

Background:

Mr Haleem, a 43-year-old cement buyer from Zliten, near Misurata, said he was captured by Gadhafi forces near the town last week. He was carrying a gun for protection but was not fighting, he said.

While in captivity in Zliten, he was subjected to days of torture, with burns and the marks of shackles clearly visible as he lay at the Tripoli Medical Centre hospital.

He said he was transferred by the Gadhafi forces to the military base last week.

“There were about 200 of us in a hangar at the base,” he said. “There were seven children and a number of pensioners. We were all men and boys. The youngest was 14 and the oldest was 70. We were kept there for days with virtually no food and water.

Note, as is common, the injuries he can show are from detention elsewhere - mostly Zliten - while the close assault with guns and grenades rarely leaves a mark at all, letalone a single missing arm or disfigured face.

The Attack:

“On Tuesday we were very excited to hear the news of the fall of Bab al-Aziziyah [Gadhafi's compound]. The guards told us that it was all over and we were going to go home that day. One of the guards was from Zliten and I knew him. He said he would unlock the door and all we had to do was undo the latch and then we could escape.

“We undid the door. The first of us went out and were met with a hail of bullets. We ran back inside the hangar but they followed us and threw in six hand grenades. Then they started spraying us randomly with gunfire, which lasted for several minutes.”

Mr Haleem was hit by bullets and shrapnel but managed to run behind a stack of tires which offered some protection.

The bullet and shrapnel injuries were stated. The shackle marks clearly visible. Why the difference?

Further notes forthcoming...

How he, and everyone, escaped

After the firing stopped 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.” He reached a nearby house, where he was given shelter by the residents.

“There were about 200 people in there and as far as I know only 18 survived,” said Mr Haleem.

If I did the math right, that's 30 people all escaping, all via the hole in the wall, which they somehow made all of a sudden and "ran" through, and none went by the door. None did the hole escape the smart way, instead doing like Bashir did (see the link) and choosing to stay in the compound and risk getting shot again. 18 of these survived, 12 died running, and we have at least 12 bodies outside the shed. That's everyone, leaving about 182 dead.

It all adds up. Too bad it's a crock of human excrement that produced it.

More thoughts later...

And the article's last line:

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

See-through Salem?

On the "Gaddafi's Dead!!!" Party

2012-02-23T02:00:00.000-08:00

The Capture, The Killings, and Those Who Don't Know Right From Wrong
October 21, 2011
last edits, Oct. 28

So it's more than 24 hours later and still no retraction, and a pretty convincing video exists. It seems Muammar Gaddafi himself was captured, roughed up and bloodied pretty bad, and then shot dead by a hyped-up teenager. Sounds about right for how the rebels work. Celebrations worldwide have greeted the images. What a splendid little war that finally gave us this rush of fulfilling a long-programmed desire. All it took was a lot of scheming, lying, stealing, manipulating, and the often brutal deaths of several tens of thousands of people, and... I could go on.

I have created this space for comments in case someone else finds anything interesting on the reported murder of Muammar. I have nothing to add, aside from the image at left. Thanks to Petri Krohn for the tip on this from al Jazeera of a black man taken captive, strapped to the barrel of anti-aircraft gun as greatly-amused "government forces" drive through Sirte displaying him to general cheers. One doubts they'll be able to resist the temptation to fire off some celebratory rounds with this baby, perhaps until the prisoner dies of shock as his back is seared through to the spine.

Allahu Akbar!

Update October 25: Pleasesee the comments below for full video cataloguing, additional links and thoughts, and so on. In addition to other revelations and questions I haven't included here yet, yesterday news was broken of a video analysis by Global Post's brilliant Tracey Shelton. I caught it via CBS News, but the original video stills and explanation are here at Global Post. From two different camera views, it looks like the former Libyan leader was casually sodomized with a knife, by a playful captor, before his untimely execution.

More, October 28: Among Muammar Gaddafi's last recorded lines is apparently this "laughable" but truly apt line, which I've adopted partially as the site's new by-line: "Do you know right from wrong? What you are doing is wrong." There is also Mutassim Gaddafi's execution and odd wounds to consider, the story told by a self-described South African security man who tried to help the Gaddafis escape, how the leader came to be inside that storm drain, and so on. Again, see below.

Update Feb. 23, 2012: Long ago, I starter another post to discuss Muammar's torture and murder, which got many comments but few updates from me. Reader Stan Winer has also written a short PDF report on the episode and its implications. This report, Lies Killed the Colonel, is currently available (the link downloads the PDF) at his site Truth-Herz.net.

The Libyan Popular National Movement

2012-02-22T02:59:00.000-08:00

February 22, 2012

Gaddafi supporters outside Libya form new grouping
BBC News via Uruknet
February 17, 2012

Members of Colonel Gaddafi's former government outside Libya say they are starting a political movement aimed at radical change, the BBC has learnt.

In a message which appears to be genuine, one of Gaddafi's senior officials said they wanted to prevent the outbreak of another civil war.

The man asked to remain anonymous to protect relatives still in the country.
[...]

Last week Saadi Gaddafi, another of the former leader's sons, who is in exile in Niger, warned of an imminent uprising inside Libya.

[...]

The former senior official told the BBC that most of the leadership of what he calls "Green Libya" were forming the Libyan Popular National Movement.

In a statement posted on several websites the group said the situation in Libya "is becoming worse every day.

"There's very little interest from the international media in the many horrors that have taken place. We are reorganising ourselves outside Libya in an inclusive political movement that would encompass all Libyans who understand the terrible reality of Libya," it said.

Kufra Battles Kill Over 100

2012-02-22T02:43:00.002-08:00

February 22, 2012
edits 2/23

Thanks to Global Civilians for Peace for keeping up on these and other recent news stories.

Unstable Libya as militias clash in desert town. AFP via Al Akhbar English, Feb. 14

Fresh tribal clashes erupted Tuesday in Libya's remote southeastern desert, with one man saying five members of his clan had been killed, a toll that could not be independently verified.

Clashes between the Zwai and the Toubu tribes in the town of Kufra broke out for a third consecutive day on Tuesday after 17 people were killed in fierce fighting over the first two days.

More than 100 killed in clashes in southern Libya: Tribes
AFP via Times of India, Feb. 22, 2012

Fierce clashes between two tribes in Libya’s remote southeastern desert have killed more than 100 people over the past 10 days, tribal sources said on Tuesday.

At least 113 people from the Toubu tribe and another 23 from the Zwai tribe have been killed in the town of Kufra since fighting erupted on February 12, the sources said.

“We are under siege since a week. Since the start of the clashes, 113 people (from our side) have been killed, including six children,” Toubu chief Issa Abdelmajid told AFP by telephone.

He said another 241 members of his tribe have been wounded.

Abdelmajid, a former opponent of Moamer Kadhafi who fought the slain dictator’s forces in last year’s conflict, was previously tasked by the ruling National Transitional Council with monitoring Libya’s southeastern border.

So he was at one point a trusted revolutionary. But somehow his people (presumably dark-skinned southern Libyans ??) are under attack by the Zwai tribe's army (lighter-skinned ??) and the NTC isn't taking the Toubu's calls.

At first, both groups used light arms, but eventually started firing rocket-propelled grenades and anti-aircraft guns, local sources said.

"I appeal to the international community to intervene and stop these clashes which are aimed at exterminating my tribe," said Abdelmajid.

"We tried calling the NTC but it has not responded," he added.

The NTC probably is on speaking terms with the attackers here, the Zwai people in charge of Kufra. It seems they suspect Mr. Abdelmajid of doing his job backwards, and bringing Africans in instead of keeping them out, and apparently plotting some black-backed Green counter-insurgency.

"People from the Toubu tribe are being helped by foreign elements from Chad and Sudan. We have arrested several Chadian and Sudanese fighters," said Yunus Zwai, spokesman for Kufra local council.

Supporting the impression of a Green resistance in Kufra that's got the Zwai so agitated, reader Sam1 alerts me:
Some members of the green army where in al kufra today as well the green flag was raised and the old athem was also played.
The video (saved): Libya, Al Kufra today - the green lions are back!
From: InomineX
A better posting from "Mutassim Gaddafi's"channel:

Not the best way to avoid being attacked by NTC-affiliated militias.

See comments for more. It's quite possible this is an early event, an angle Petri's looking into. Technical points aside (later...), from the quick view I gave it, it had the feel of people responding in early 2012. But it could be the more fresh defiance of early last year, re-cycled by someone to "explain" the fighting, which could only have so many. Straight-up ethnic cleansing I don't think is it.

"Bombing His Own People." Really?

2012-02-21T02:00:00.000-08:00

Evidence and Over-Acitivist Imaginations
August 1/2, 2011
last edits Nov. 22
bumped Feb. 21, 2012, for app. one-year anniversary

There has been virtually no Libyan Air Force presence over Libya's own territory since the March imposition of a no-fly zone and swift enforcement of it by NATO. Just how much aerial bombardment there was prior to that, and of what kind, is the matter of some deabte.

The pre-no-fly period can be further broken into two main segments. The first is late February, the 16th to about the 25th, when the rebellion is generally understood (incorrectly) to have been strictly protest oriented and peaceful. The other span is after cities had fallen, starting Feb 19 really, but only a solid fact to respond to by the last days. By then, no one could reasonably deny the government's opponents were armed bligerents to be called "rebels" or "freedom fighters," not "protesters."

It's the earlier reports of bombing simple protesters that had the shocking effect on world conscience driving intervention, especially in the skies NATO would seize to bomb Libya. These came in quick, in a rapid burst from Feb. 21-23, and then stopped.

Supporting evidence beyond the flimsy early reports never surfaced. We saw no videos of jets over head, let alone of bombs falling from them. There are no photos of craters in the streets, or of homes or anything flattened by these attacks. Remains of the exploded bombs, or any unexploded ones, never surfaced. No victims among the hundreds claimed have ever been shown or named.

The only evidence is as follows:

Videos from Labraq Airport:
Der Spiegel reported on Feb. 26 about "the first solid proof that the dictator's regime had bombed his own people." This they cited an activist's "shaky" videos of the Feb 18-20 battle for Labraq airport, near al Baida. Among other things, this footage was said to show "a Libyan fighter jet roaring over al-Baida and dropping a bomb not far from the airport," itself not clearly against protesters, but there was also "a helicopter shooting into the mass of people."

The video was said, by Der Spiegel, to have been posted all over the Internet, but as I said there, I cannot find it now, nor any other allusion to it. It seems likely this claim of widespread dissemination - or the content of said videos - was just a miscommunication.

Orders to Bomb Benghazi
The most high-value moment that really made an impression on the world community, and shaped the coming "no-fly zone," was when pilots defected to the rebel side and claimed they were ordered to bomb innocent people. It happened twice in a three day span.

As I've written about elsewhere, two Libyan pilots in their single-seater Mirage jets defected and landed on Malta February 21. They didn't just land quietly either, but swooped around in an air-show manner to draw attention prior to landing, a witness tells me (see the link). They claimed they'd been ordered, at least as Reuters put it, citing Maltese officials, "ordered to bomb anti-government protesters in Libya's second largest city of Benghazi."

Benghazi had just the day before fallen under rebel control, in a military sense. So even if the order was true, it's not obvious why the government would be interested in killing those still only protesting, rather than the heavily armed and ruthless gangs declaring war on the government.

But we don't know for sure the order, or even a more legitimate version of it, was ever truly given. We have only the word of those two pilots. They remain unnamed, but were both reportedly high-ranking colonels, not unlike their fellow Air Force colonel Abdullah Gehani, arrested by the Libyan government a couple of weeks earlier on suspicion of helping set up some kind of overthrow with French involvement (see here).

The defecting colonels also seemed to be - possibly - escorting two helicopters ferrying undocumented, mysterious Frenchmen who arrived on Malta just before them. One set of craft escaping from Benghazi without clearance, the others allegedly sent to Benghazi but veering off without clearance, both meeting up on Malta. Hmmm...

Strange as it this alleged order was, two days later came confirmation of the charge. Two more Libyan air force pilots ejected from and ditched their two-seater SU-22 jet near Ajdabiya. They landed and surrendered to the rebels, claiming they too were ordered to bomb Benghazi but just couldn't follow through. News 24, Libya pilot rejects orders, crashes plane:

Tripoli - A fighter pilot disobeyed orders on Wednesday to bomb the opposition stronghold of Benghazi and ditched his plane after he and his co-pilot ejected, a Libyan newspaper reported on its website.

The Russian-made Sukhoi 22 crashed near Ajdabiya, 160km west of the city which has fallen to anti-regime protesters, a military source said, quoted in Quryna newspaper.

"Pilot Abdessalam Attiyah al-Abdali and co-pilot Ali Omar al-Kadhafi ejected with parachutes after refusing orders to bomb the city of Benghazi."

On the co-pilot, there is a variant story where the pilot refused and al-Kadhafi (Gaddafi - of the ruler's tribe) pulled a gun on him to continue, but he ejected anyway, the rat had to follow suit, and was then arrested and put in prison. See comments below for more details.

So, to summarize: three jets were allegedly sent to the rebel capitol to kill protesters only. Four pilots, two missions, all aborted by the pilots, none carried out. Both the puny alleged attempts and the near-universal rejection of them reflected poorly on the regime, whose orders no one seemed to follow anymore. And their 0% success rate might explain why they stopped allegedly trying to bomb Benghazi just three days after it fell.

Ammunitions Depots, Not Protesters
Successful air-strikes in rebel-held areas were nonetheless implied in a February 22 interview with Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi. The leader's son told Christiane Amanpour that the military had not attacked Libya civilians. "Show me a single attack, show me a single bomb. The Libyan air force destroyed just the ammunition sites. That's it." he said." [source]

Again, no one has shown him or anyone the evidence that any bombs were dropped on protesters as opposed to raid-worthy ammo dumps and possibly other fully military targets the "protesters" had already stolen.

Aerial Bombing of Tripoli Neighborhoods
While the government failed to bomb actual enemy fighters or civilians in the east, there were contemporaneous claims of successful attacks on their own capitol city to snuff out the relatively small violent protests that had started there. At first, I thought it came down to a single bold claim by one Adel Mohamed Saleh, a "political activist", to al Jazeera. It was translated and reported by Reuters, filed 1:43 PM EST (6:43 GMT).

What we are witnessing today is unimaginable. Warplanes and helicopters are indiscriminately bombing one area after another. There are many, many dead. Our people are dying. It is the policy of scorched earth. Every 20 minutes they are bombing. It is continuing, it is continuing. Anyone who moves, even if they are in their car they will hit you.

"There was no independent verification of the report," Reuters noted, and in fact the evidence suggests he didn't witness any of that at all. Another message of the day, via Twitter (See here and/or here), said:

sultanalgassemi: Al Jazeera breaking Multiple reports confirm that military airplanes are bombing protesters in Tripoli.

The rulers in Libya have cut off most international communications, but Al Jazeera is broadcasting ways that their jammed TV feed can be picked up, other agencies are offering land lines so that Tweets can be passed on to the world.

Multiple reports? Indeed. Another Tripoli witness came out in support of the activist Saleh who spoke to al Jazeera. This time it came in via al Jazeera, from "Soula al-Balaazi, who said he was an opposition activist." As Reuters again translated, filed actually before the other report (5:11 PM GMT, one hour, 32 minutes before).

Military aircraft attacked crowds of anti-government protesters in the Libyan capital Tripoli on Monday, Al Jazeera television said.

A Libyan man, Soula al-Balaazi, who said he was an opposition activist, told the network by telephone that Libyan air force warplanes had bombed "some locations in Tripoli". He said he was talking from a suburb of Tripoli.

Again, "no independent verification of the report was immediately available," said Reuters. But a while later there would be, and the second time, that same statement wasn't true. Or were they suggesting these two were not independent reports? One way or another, they probably weren't.

A Version by Sea
Possibly related is a similar accusation of insane naval bombardment of Tripoli on the 21st. This time, it was an activist, named Salem Gnan, "a London-based spokesman for the National Front for the Salvation of Libya," speaking to the UK Guardian (I presume) and reported at 5:07 PM GMT - four minutes before al-Balaazi and 96 minutes before Mr. Saleh.

Gnan said eyewitnesses in Tripoli told him the navy ships were firing into one part of the capital, on the outskirts. "Many people have been killed," he said, and added that "[Gaddafi's] plan is to use absolutely everything he can to stop what is happening." But there's no mention from these witnesses of jets - which Gaddafi had - dropping anything. (See here for more on Mr. Gnan and theNFSL - he would also be the only source to allege bombing - by planes - of nearby az Zawiyah on the 24th.)

Both versions of the attack of Feb 21 share multiple deadly explosions across town, but differ on what was happening in the sky. And they all three came in over a span of about an hour and a half. Quite strange. My guess is this: something blew up loudly at about 5:05 PM, heard by many people who would be left wondering what it was. This triggered the first two dramatic guesses what it was. Then Mr. Saleh thought for a bit before he decided to "corroborate" and expand the airplanes version with his over-activist imagination. Thus "multiple reports" can sometimes be born.

What it Meant
If not the evidence, the implications were certainly clear. As Reuters reported (the second one cited here), citing a total genius:

An analyst for London-based consultancy Control Risks said the use of military aircraft on his own people indicated the end was approaching for Muammar Gaddafi. "These really seem to be last, desperate acts. If you're bombing your own capital, it's really hard to see how you can survive, " said Julien Barnes-Dacey, Control Risks' Middle East analyst.

Just like ordering protesters shot, running to Venezuela, hiring mercenaries, resorting to mass rape, sniping children dead, and so on. All of these and more fantasies yet strongly hint to to us that Gaddafi is over. It's been said worldwide, daily, for over five months now. Each time, the big "if" was the big problem.

It wasn't a problem for whoever made this image, seen at libya-watanona.com.

Never mind the dramatic relevance of this parallel for the grinding down of Sirte, October 2011, it's rather telling that in the absence of a single damn photograph, rebel supporters had to rely on a 74-year-old painting to get their point across.

Video Evidence from Tripoli
There are videos from Tripoli claiming to show the aftermath of these air attacks. By one of these I've seen, but didn't save and cannot re-locate, we might have been seeing the effects, over a whole neighborhood, of some type of bomb that sprays graffiti, burns out a few buildings, and drags junk across the street. Does such a weapon exist, and is Gaddafi known to have acquired them?

Another with very similar effects is still around. This is given as the rebellious Tajoura district: bombing in tajoora tripoli 22.02.2011.mp4. There is smoke rising in the distance, perhaps from an air-strike.
But this bomb does nothing, on closer inspection, than burn a car and perhaps the insides of a building, sending up a plume of smoke. There's also gunfire from men perhaps guarding a hilltop building in the distance. But a horde of civilians is unafraid of the warning shots into the air, charges the security line, and breaks through as the guards retreat. Others clamber over a wall and join their march towards that green-domed building.

Another interesting video on Youtube is a re-broadcast on Jazeera English, it seems, of the original Saleh phone call (dubbed in English). Here it's specified he's calling from and speaking of the Fashlum neighborhood "where the revolution erupted in the city of Tripoli." He claims that anyone who comes out to help the wounded and dead are shot by pervasive snipers, and that bombing runs were ongoing and aiming for people. Yet the B-roll footage under the audio shows many hundreds of people calmly walking away from somewhere, towards somewhere. A few run in and out of that column, for unclear reasons, but no one is falling dead. There's no mass panic as if suddenly attacked, and there are no jets or anything shown.

Mr. Saleh's rant is worth a listen. He's clearly fired up and shrieking over these things he says happened. And he knew just what was needed to stop them: outside intervention. From the video:

The Libyan people need urgent help! People are crying, death is everywhere! Why is the world silent on these atrocities? Why? This is the question. Why are the Arab countries keeping silent? Why? Within the next few hours, the entire Libyan population can be wiped out if this continues ...

On March 4 Sky News had a look at Fashlum and Tajoura and brought back video:

"This is Fashlun, this is the centre of Fashlun," Saif al Islam Gaddafi said.
"Show me a single attack, one drop, one attack on Tajoura."
I was invited to tour around the suburbs of Tripoli with Col Gaddafi's son.
He insisted there have been no bombings in the capital designed to intimidate anti-government protesters - and prevent them from launching an uprising in the capital.
During our drive we saw no evidence of airstrikes, but this was just a short, unscientific exploration of the city.

There was no time for science, just journalism, and they failed. Sky was given a chance to visit any site they wanted. They had the reports of which areas (vaguely) were bombed. If they didn't ask to go there, it was their loss. If they did, they saw nothing. Nothing but people loving Seif, even in the neighborhoods supposedly bombed for their insurrection.

Sukhat Chandan was part of a UK delegation that spent longer and was more thorough. Here in late April he speaks with Russia Today about one of the first fact-finding missions. Mr. Chandan started with what he considered the most important claim, vis-a-vis unleashing the bombing of Libya. This was the alleged bombing of "three particular districts in Tripoli: Souk-al-Jouma, Fashlum, Tajoura," all well-stocked with men like the ones we just heard from. "We visited these areas and there was no indication whatsoever of any aerial bombardment," he said, along with many other fascinating findings.

Looking for these scant videos of or about Tripoli bombings in February, I saw a very large number of non-hits roll by. Bombings of Tripoli, flames, flattened buildings, craters, unexploded ordnance, mangled or charred bodies, including baby-sized ones, damaged civilian infrastructure, etc. But these were all after mid-March, and exclusively carried out by NATO, for months now aggressively bombing civilians to protect them from bombing that was itself only rumored to begin with.

Update Aug 14: The Russian Evidence
Goodness, did I completely neglect for weeks now to even mention the Russian evidence against Gaddafi “bombing his own people?” Most, like this scholarly article by Ronda Hauben, cite an alleged Russian satellite-based information proving there were no airstrikes carried out in Libya in these early days

I don’t really like this evidence, especially in its wide re-use as a lazy crutch. The allegation comes from a Russia Today broadcast, re-posted on Youtube here, for example. There are no supporting explanations or even specifics I’m aware of. It was satellite-based, perhaps photo-based. But if so, to prove a negative like “no airstrikes,” you’d need something like constant security camera footage over numerous Libyan military bases, showing no craft leaving, or over all cities, to prove no bombs dropped. Perhaps it was based only on photos looking for damaged buildings or craters in the streets. Or maybe it was something different, like monitoring military communications that would have heard such an order. Again, no specifics were given.

Besides, Saif al-Islam admitted there were air strikes, just at ammunition depots, not on protesters in the street.

When this notion was put before the skeptics at the JREF forum, it didn’t do so well. A reasonable-sounding consensus emerged among people of middling knowledge that this wasn’t possible. That’s not scientific disproof, and the forum has a mixed record, but I can’t see why I should embrace this as a leading point of evidence. If the claim is ever explained better and shown to be proof, or even as inconclusive supporting evidence, so be it. Until then I’ll call it an alleged support for an idea that’s still apparently true and is better illustrated in other ways.

Oct. 17: Grimaldi's View
From a recent interview with 73-year-old Italian filmmaker Fulvio Grimaldi, "the legendary Italian (and former BBC) journalist and filmmaker who shot and smuggled out video footage of the Bloody Sunday massacre from under the noses of the British army almost forty years ago," who's now working on a film about the Libyan war which I very much hope to see finished:

I began by asking Grimaldi how closely his recent trips to Libya matched the impression given in the mainstream media:
“Not in the least. I personally visited areas around Tripoli where Gheddafi had allegedly “bombed his own people”, but not a bomb had fallen before Nato started its attacks. And this was confirmed by Russian spy satellites. Wherever I went – only in the company of other Fact Finding officials, talking freely to people of my choice, and stopping wherever I wished – I came across multitudes of young and old, men and women, who declared themselves committed to Gheddafi. They are the people who withstood a 7 month war by 27 military powers who had promised a two-week victory, those who defended Tripoli for over a week, those who today hold out in Sirte, Bani Walid, Sabha, Kufra and in 75% of the still free national territory – against genocidal bombings, special Nato troops and mercenaries.”

Oct. 26: Shammam's Explanation
Mahmoud Shammam, currently the NTC lying sack of an information minister, was back in February just a Libyan dissident giving a fair-minded account of what was happening inside Libya. On the 27th, he spoke with Al Jazeera English's Inside Story, along with French defector and schemer Nouri al Mesmari. At 10:10 he's confronted with Seif assertion that there were no airstrikes against the Libyan people. His response:

They were for the last four days working day and night to clean areas to look - Tripoli looks like a normal city. And we warned against it. We warned the media, and we helped them come from the eastern part, from Salum (?) and they come starting from the eastern part.

That was all he could say before veering off. Wherever he's speaking of, one presumes that, unlike in any videos or photos ever presented, one will see ... what? Roads patched over where there was a crater? A house being torn down to sanitize its visible bomb damage? Who did this "cleanup" and why was none of that filmed either? If bombs like those evidenced in videos - ones that trash, burn, and loot - were used, a standard "clean-up" will suffice. But normal bombs like people meant will require heavy work crews to erase the signs of. Shammam blames the cover-up on "public relations firms in Europe, especially in Italy," who were apparently doing this urban reconsructive surgery in complete secrecy within dissident areas of the capitol that we know were flooded with cell phone cameras. Shame on those PR firms who hadn't yet nullified their contracts and defected to the rebel side!

Alex Thomson Saves African Migrants?

2012-02-20T06:03:00.000-08:00

February 20, 2012

This post is a spot for a fertile discussion I'm not following that's popped up in different spots. I don't even want to dig up the video links right now, but Channel 4's Alex Thomson famously visited the Khamis Brigade Yarmouk base some days after rebel victory there, August 28. Before seeing the shed massacre victims, burnt and otherwise, he 'happened upon' a scene of detained black men, terrified acting, crying, sweating. Threatened by rebel thugs as "Gaddafi fighters," they say they fear they'll be killed. Thomson intervened by staying until they were safe, apparently proven innocent by virtue of "their women" hiding nearby, etc.

There's a CNN version extended with Diana Eltahamy of Amnesty International.

And there's a Telegraph video showing the same black men, sort of, being first arrested, maybe.

There are also some photos of some of this, and some discrepancies and oddities suggesting maybe the whole scene was staged.

What I'm hoping is some readers more versed and with a few minutes could re-gather the relevant known video / image /article links first, then provide commentary. This I can maybe read closer finally and respond, and either way pull the highlights of into this post, and delete the duplicate comments elsewhere, some other day.

Amnesty Int'l on Out-of-Control Militias

2012-02-19T02:06:00.000-08:00

February 19, 2012

Amnesty International (AI) last week released a report that's sure to have Misrotten militia jailors fuming mad. Rebel fighters are still not being called out for conducting most of the horrific mass-scale "Gaddafi atrocities" of the war. But they are criticized for widespread torture, illegal detentions, war crime mass expulsions (Tawerghans, Mshashiya tribe, Misratans who dared to leave) and more. Refugees are raped, "suspected loyalists" tortured to death, common criminals and foreign black men are "interrogated" and beaten, and the "feds" don't even bother investigating any of it. (see the article Mainstream "Concern" Over Rebel Torture for previous examples and notes on this issue).

Well, AI been collecting lots of consistent testimony, photos and video, plenty of evidence of things that'll make those in the civilized wold who bombed these guys into power want to puke. AI did their part, among so many others, making the moral case against that old regime and for the rebels. For their part, they're doing a decent job on the clean-up half of the job, to the effect they able.

Here's their own article announcing the report:
http://www.amnestyusa.org/news/news-item/amnesty-international-says-out-of-control-libyan-militias-are-commiting-widespread-abuses-against-su
And a direct link to the report (English):
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/MDE19/002/2012/en/608ac5a8-95d0-4a3b-89de-b4a1b585feee/mde190022012en.html

I've just had a look at much of that report, and it's pretty horrifying. And what they saw, bad as it was, can only be a sampling, the stuff so common it can hardly be covered up. What's happening in the more remote chambers can only de guessed. The farthest edges glimpsed by AI from morgue photos include dead people half covered in black bruises, whipped until their flesh came off, toenails are pulled out, extremities sliced and carved up. And I didn't read the whole thing yet. From the report, one heart-wrenching example:

Abdellatif (Lotfi) Iyad Mohammed Zbeida was detained on 11 September 2011 by a militia from Misratah near Tripoli but immediately handed over to a local council. He was subsequently moved to the Sidi Khalifa Military Council, in the former Internal Security building in downtown Tripoli (Jumhuriya Street, now 17 February Street). The family was able to visit him once and on occasions he was able to call them on the phone of a sympathetic guard. The last call came on 22 October, asking for food for Lotfi, which the family took to the detention centre and it was accepted.

On the night of 25/26 October, Abdellatif Zbeida was badly beaten and at 7am he was taken to the nearby central hospital. He died almost immediately. Video footage filmed at the morgue shows Abdellatif Zbeida’s back completely black with deep bruising from the shoulders to the knees, open wounds and missing flesh in his lower legs and chest, and deep whip marks and cuts on his upper arms. The forensic examination found deep bruises and abrasions all over the body, as well as marks on his head, ears and nipples caused by electric shocks. It concluded that death resulted from the severe abuse which also caused these wounds.

On the upside useful insights on the limits of human suffering, and maybe intel useful in hunting down the rest of the known Loyalist thought criminals, is likely flowing like a geyser in Libya. It's a new great manmade river of brutally stolen information, allegations and confessions, true and false, closing old cases and creating new ones, requiring more arrests yet.

It's largely the rawness of the militia abuses, apparently, that's at issue to Amnesty. And the fault, as always, goes right back to the villified Gaddafi system. Donatella Rovera said in their article:

"A year ago Libyans risked their lives to demand justice. Today their hopes are being jeopardized by lawless armed militias who trample human rights with impunity. The only way to break with the entrenched practices of decades of abuse under Colonel al-Gaddafi's authoritarian rule is to ensure that nobody is above the law and that investigations are carried out into such abuses."

It's not really hard to meet these criteria. Just conduct an "investigation," not necessarily a fair one, and make sure the exculpations are legal. The thuggish way they don't even bother is what's really making it hard for the West to just accept, as-is, the fruits of their sponsored revolution.

From the article:

At a detention center in Misratah, an Amnesty International delegate saw armed militia members beating and threatening some detainees whose release had been ordered. An older detainee from Tawargha was cowering, squatting against the wall, and crying as he was being kicked and threatened by a militia member who told Amnesty International that "those from Tawargha will not be released or we'll kill them."

In an interrogation center in Misratah and Tripoli, Amnesty International found detainees who interrogators had tried to conceal and who had been severely tortured -- one so badly that he could hardly move or speak.

Not a single effective investigation is known to have been carried out into cases of torture, even when detainees died after torture at militia headquarters or in interrogation centers.

The NTC remains unwilling or unable to offer the people of Libya protection from these abuses unlocked by anarchy.

There once was a government in place both willing and able to put these thugs in theirs. But someone killed that government in a long process that provided plenty of time to re-think things. That persistence has now given us a chance for a longer-yet process where, if possible, every heart who supported that system is tortured to some kind of death or other.

See-Through Salem: An Innocent Explanation?

2012-02-18T02:00:00.000-08:00

February 16, 2012
(incomplete)

<< See-Through Salem: Dr. Salem al-Farjani Or, What Ever Became of Dr. Rajub?

I just drafted a short interim report on the Khamis Brigade Shed Massacre, drafted first for the consideration of Physicians for Human Rights (PHR). In it, I described the apparent deceit of Dr. al Farjani calling himself Dr. Rajub and claiming to be a massacre witness. Speaking to that group, who consulted Dr. al Farjani for their report on the massacre, made me feel compelled to include the following:

There are relatively innocent possible explanations for the apparent deceit of his testifying under a pseudonym (or even two of them), and PHR would be better situated than I to know. Did he mention to PHR that he was also a direct witness to the massacre, who tried to help, but was driven back by snipers? Or is Dr. Rajub supposed to be a different person from him? (that is, did he fail to ever mention that?)

That in turn makes me want to bring it up here for more group thoughts to consider before I finish up the final report. Is it possible, or very likely, that "Dr. Salim Rajub" had a relatively innocent reason for coming into existence? What if he makes some argument to that effect, true or not? If he's always been up-front about his witness activity, that would be a sign of no deception intended. I've never heard him mention it as Dr. Farjani, but I haven't heard a whole lot from him at all.

Is Rajub a False Name Even?
First, is this even a false name? Some Arabs, especially ones connected to this massacre, have rather plastic names that change from one report to the next. Perhaps his name is Dr. Salem Rajub al Farjani?

It's not terribly likely. I found few Internet hits for Libyans of his name in English beyond his recent "professional" work. Some of those refer to a soccer player of the same name. Only one seems to help here: The Arab Society for Plant Protection had its 9th congress organized in al Baida, Libya, 2003. The year before, the 8th Congress had a "Dr. Salem O. El-Ferjani" on the organizing committee, and a "Dr. Salem Omar El-Ferjani" on the fundraising one. He doesn't seem to pop up in later conferences.

He's not a plant science guy, we hear, but a cardiac surgeon perhaps (that remains vague). But the skills he's shown - knowing people, saying things, networking - work great for the committees he's listed on. It could well be him.

So unless his name is Salim Omar Rajub al Farjani, this is not likely a version of his real name at all.

False But Innocent?
But even using a pseudonym can have a non-nefarious explanation. Petri Krohn brought this up in a very open-minded comment a while back.

I do not think you can discount or discredit al-Farjani for not revealing his true name. This happened on August 27th when the Battle of Tripoli was far from over – or if it was, you cannot expect locals to know about it. Dr. al-Farjani had every reason to be worried about his own security, even more so if he truly believed the shed victims were murdered by "Gaddafi" soldiers.

We also have to excuse Dr. al-Farjani for not disclosing his true mission to the base: documenting massacre sites. Living near by is a perfect cover story. In understanding the events we must keep in mind that people meeting the press are often dragged into far more publicity than they vouched for. Also, Sky News might have pressed him into giving a 1st person account of the events of August 23th – he must have seen something, didn't he just say he lives next door.

I gave these thoughts some consideration, but not in enough detail at the time. I've been making a big deal of the shady appearance of the whole thing, and need to re-think it.

Let's imagine the most honest version: he did witness the attack, and returned to the Yarmouk shed to learn and share. Although it rings false, maybe he really is a local and his witness account is true. Certainly the coincidence that this expert on loyalist massacres would happen to live right by and directly witness the worst among them is eyebrow-raising, but it's possible.

So, he returned and happened upon the media feeding frenzy, and perhaps out of fear, gave a false name, and explain how he was a close neighbor who witnessed it.

But here's a problem - if he really is a local who saw it, by saying so he gave his approximate address ("200 meters" from the base). He called himself "Dr. Salem" and mentioned Tripoli Medical Center. Not good ways for a Dr. Salem from TMC to obscure his identity. Adding his distinctive face to this mysterious Dr. Rajub on the news camera certainly sounds unsafe as well, but he did that.

But maybe being a local was part of his cover story along with the name. It's not a very good one, if so, but it would mean he's probably lying about witnessing the massacre, since he explained that with the fact that he's a local. If it's a false story, we can't be sure if he dreamed it up for his own reasons prior to arriving, or improvised on the spot to impress the news crews, as Petri postulated.

As for fear and the war, I think the battle of Tripoli was considered pretty much over by the relevant date. 90% of the capitol was claimed as under rebel control by the 22nd, and Bab al Azizyah was loudly overwhelmed on the 23rd. Both of these were simplifications of the issue, but four days later even Abu Salim was contained, all bases under control and, in my opinion, there should have been little to fear from the coming days from any effective loyalist reprisals.

Further, the vast majority of the witnesses gave full names that, as far as we know, aren't false ones. So, again, fear of Greens as a reasonable motive for dishonesty is possible but not well-illustrated.

As noted above, he showed his face, used half his name and his title, mentioned his workplace, and gave what he said was his rough address. Anyone trying to hide could leave out or changed any of that. He could drop "doctor," or "Salem," or "al Farjani," or all three. He dropped only one of those. (And he might have picked it right back up with Ahmed al Farjani, the unseen 42-year-old local construction worker who took in the same survivor - Mustafa el Hitri/Atiri - that Dr. Salim escorted to the world stage a couple of days later.)

Barely anything of his identity was, in fact, hidden here. So as effective camouflage for any deceit, it also fails, and that itself is a thing I've wondered about. Why be so transparent about it?

There's another possibility that answers a lot of these questions... eh, I'll explain that later.

Early Special Forces Operations in Libya

2012-02-18T01:10:00.000-08:00

February 18, 2012

As Petri alerts me in a comment that would have gone here if there was a here when he posted it yesterday:
---
The BBC has finally "revealed" the extent of the Western conspiracy to intervene in Libya and take out Gaddafi. "Revealed" in quotes as this is only news to readers of the mainstream media. Everyone has known all about this from the very beginning. Inside story of the #UK's secret mission to beat Gaddafi The BBC story is also discussed in this Global Research post: BBC "Reveals" After the Facts how British Special Forces Supervised and Spearheaded Libya Rebels to Victory
---

The "Spontaneous Uprising" of February 2011

2012-02-18T01:06:00.000-08:00

February 18, 2012

There's plenty of evidence of some kind of pre-planning for the protest/insurgency that started just over one year ago. The question is, how far back and among whom does the evidence suggest these plans originate?

I'll start it with a recent comment from Petri:
---
Two interesting discussion on Twitter between Green Resistance @GreLYeN and papiliono24 @papiliono24: Green Resistance @GreLYeN: @papiliono24 Stupidly fabricated story! how about armed gangs since FEB 14, & Suicide Mombers ? papiliono24

@papiliono24: @GreLYeN what happened on Feb 14? I'm only aware of Feb 15 onwards...
Green Resistance @GreLYeN: @papiliono24 ok the US embassy in Libya called US citizens in Libya on the 9th, for a meeting to be held on the 15th of FEB @papiliono24 here is part of it: This Warden Message is to announce a town hall meeting for American citizens. 1/2 @papiliono24 US Embassy invites American citizens living in Libya to a town hall meeting @ the US School of Tripoli on Tue, Feb15 at 5:30 pm @papiliono24 and on the 13th an email was broadcasted from Libya17feb@yahoo.com with instructions on what to do in each city, @papiliono24 That email contained the gathering places, where to put road blocks, and even instructions to control the border with Egypt @papiliono24 There was a PDF attachment with all these details, I have a copy @papiliono24 on 15th : "U.S. Embassy Tripoli Warden Message - Possible Demonstrations on Feb 17 & 18" warning Americans on Feb 15, 2011 All the US Embassy messages are available here: MESSAGES FOR U.S. CITIZENS – Recent Messages The February 9, 2011 message is here: U.S. Embassy Tripoli Warden Message - American Citizen Town Hall Meeting
---
I didn't notice the Feb. 14 part being explained, other than suggesting an e-mail of the 13th should lead to action by the next day. But it was violent by the following evening, that much at least is clear.

Khamis Brigade Shed Massacre: The Death Toll

2012-02-17T03:51:00.000-08:00

February 17, 2012
(incomplete)

<< The Tripoli Massacres
<< Khamis Brigade Shed Massacre

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.

The Tripoli Massacres: 25 Activists / 17 Corpses: Hospital Images

2012-02-17T03:00:00.000-08:00

December 22, 2011
last updates Feb. 17

<< The Tripoli Massacres
<< 25 Activists / 17 Corpses

This is regarding a "Tripoli massacre" I've neglected until now - 25 or so people allegedly executed near Gaddafi's Bab al-Aziziyah compound, found and turned to 17 corpses and a survivor seen by many at Mitiga Hospital in the east of Tripoli. I'm getting a grip on the sources and the case, but before I assemble a detailed post, I wanted more visuals, or to at least get that started.

I'd like to number the fifteen seen in news videos and ascertain whatever clues are present, especially (as usual) their skin color. Among these fifteen of 25 executed anti-Gaddafi "political activists," al Jazeera reported "some men had been identified. One man, Abdelsalem, came from the town of Taghma. Others were simply marked “non-Muslim” for burial purposes. " Usually that means "African mercenary,"
unapologetically killed by rebel fighters, shamelessly called an ordinary Libyan killed by the baddies when speaking to the Western media. It seems a good number of the dead - possibly a majority, but not all - are black-skinned. Never a good sign for an alleged Gaddafi atrocity. (The "survivors," however, are never black - no exception here)

And then also I'll be looking for this, from BBC: "about half the bodies had bullet wounds to the back of the head while others had disfiguring injuries to their limbs and hands."

The only place I know we've been allowed to see these is not being killed, and not in situ at the execution site.It's only after they've been dumped at the hospital and had an acceptable story attached that we see fifteen corpses under blues plastic shroud shrouds in "the outroom of a Tripoli Hospital" out at Mitiga Air Base.

There are very few photographs I can findof the scene. The first was this image from Al Jazeera, from an article of August 25. The area of interest is enhanced in this optional image.

Gulf News also ran a piece, mostly about the scene at Abu Salim trauma hospital. with one photo of the Mitiga 15 included, usefully showing all of them laid out. With a bit more looking, I found a slightly better version I'll use to number the victims below. Credited to Youssef Boudlal, Reuters.

With one exception, the rest of the imagery I have found is all from the online videos I know of, and not great clarity. I may have something better to replace these later. The videos:

Al Jazeera English: James Bays

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tASoAr7bJsY

BBC, John Simpson:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBsLyVAcWQo

In numbering I used #16 and 17 as tagged at the scene (see below), counting backwards and then forward down the left side, with some guessing in the middle. My #1 is the body laying uncovered at lower left, whether it's how they did it or not (let's say #2 and 3 were the ones "claimed by family" so far, bloody bodies dragged out, leaving a smear). This victim #1 is clearly not a black man, perhaps a clue why he's exposed. I'll return to him in some detail at the end.

Just looking at visible color, I'd say six victims (4, 5, 6, 13, 15, and 16) seem black-skinned. four (1, 8, 12, and 17) seem light-skinned, with five (7, 9-11, and 14) too covered to say. I'll qualify that guess with the fact that I had included Victim #8 as appearing black as heck from a distance, but less so close-up and enhanced at right). He has wrist injuries, perhaps from shackles, worsened by moderate decay. Like #1 he look discolored, a bit green. Bearded, perhaps, and with some gray hair.

#16 and #17 are visible on the tags seen at left. 16 seems to be a black man, if naked. I can't read the writing.

We have too many views of these two bodies, and hardly of anyone else. Lower right corner of the panoramic view, and at the center of the al Jazeera photo enhancement, all show mostly #16.

Below are the feet and lower left leg of #17 from the BBC's footage, badly sliced up and bloodied. Again aswith #1, a light-skinned male, selected for the most visible outward position. Perhaps by chance. He remains covered except for the feet. I believe that's 16's feet behind them, chocolate brown.

Serious injuries under #17's shroud. #8 in the back is a little more visible here than in the panoramic view. #12's pale bloated belly and ... [#11's elbow?] and the other invisible victims of someone's cruelty lurk mysteriously in between.

Here I'd like to return to victim #1. He suffered uncertain but widespread cruelty, and might be bound behind the back, except... his right forearm isn't right (the Boudlal photo above agrees). It's burnt, and seems to get too long and thin, as if pulled like taffy, and it's not clear his hand remains. This is at least some, and hopefully all of of the "disfiguring injuries to their limbs and hands." The photo alsoshows general trauma to his side, with multiple puncture wounds.

A photograph from an unusual above angle helps clarify his injuries in a broader context. Uncredited at All Voices, it's captioned "A dead body lies on the floor at a hospital in Tripoli." Below is a lightened version with an enhancement over his head.

His head always seemed like anindistinct black mass, and even from the angle that should change that, itlooks the same, with the addition of whitish patches. Is that even his whole head? Was it burnt, or what? His right arm looks more normally proportioned here, so the above thoughts might be irrelevant. The left arm however seems to possibly stop short or have an extra angle added halfway to the elbow, right where it gets bloody.

And one can hardly miss the big round hole in his upper abdomen, where he was punctured by some device of cruelty. We can see blood down his side from that, or perhaps infected/discolored veins, and then blood on, or something else wrong with, his back. Both known views show blood from a possible groin injury on his jeans, and here we see that he seems to be the source of the blood smear as his intensely brutalized remains were swiveled into place.

So...

Update, Feb. 17:

Speaking of swiveling into place, I just stumbled across a Youtube video, dated Aug. 25, of what seems to be these bodies being taken off the truck and placed here. I haven't analyzed it closely yet, but made sure to save a copy. Our final mangled victim #1 is apparently placed at 2:22 to extra thick cries of Allahu Akbar." His face appears somewhat burnt but intact, and they poke at a slashin his belly I didn't notice before (dark/burnt, off-center). Also, his shoulders look badly tweaked-look at that stratched skin. 3:05 body #8 on the platform? Appears to be a black man here, bloody and brutalized, right arms half gone, maybe eyes messed up.

Here it is embedded:

Green Armies Hack Flag Counter?

2012-02-15T15:56:00.000-08:00

Feb. 15, 2012

I haven't been keeping up much with things like, for example, Green Army raises Jamahiriyah flag in Bani Walid, video posted today on Lizzie Phelan's new site. There are few questions about what this shows, but just when and where it was filmed isn't entirely clear. Petri has some good thoughts on that here.

But just on the off-chance, some things I noticed checking my Flag Counter. Early this morning, I was surprised to see Libya finally pass Sweden on viewers (572 now!). Maybe it was that alone that was new, as there was no green flag replaced, but I could swear the country name too had been changed from Libyan Arab Jamahiriya to just Libya. It said the former this morning and still now. Has it always and I just didn't notice? I let that slide.

But then today looking at my totals, an odd thing again. The Jamahiriya is now listed in the top viewing nations, with Libya's flag next to it. Cool! Been a while since I've seen that.

Lessons for "the Syria Situation"

2012-02-13T03:00:00.000-08:00

December 28, 2011
last update Feb. 13, 2012

The parallels between what was done, is still being done, to Libya and what's been slowly brewing for Syria just keep coming up in my research. The Syrian situation is probably just about as fascinating, but as an obsessive specializer, I haven't looked into it in the slightest detail.

But things like this, from Thierry Meyssan, suggest I should: “Free Syrian Army” commanded by Military Governor of Tripoli, Dec. 19. It's got a lot of things I can't vouch for, including the following, which sounds well-illustrated and hinting that what we saw these schemers and terrorists do in Libya will be emerging in Syria.

However, in the Saturday edition dated 17 December 2011, Daniel Iriarte describes an encounter that shocked him. While his FSA friends were taking him to a new hideout, he came across some foreign insurgents: three Libyans [6].

The first one among them was al-Mahdi Hatari, a Libyan who lived in Ireland before joining Al Qaeda. At the end of the Libyan war, he was named commander of the Tripoli Brigade, then number 2 of the Tripoli Military Council headed by Abdel Hakim Belhaj. He resigned from this function, according to some because of a dispute with the Transitional National Council, according to others because he wanted to go back to Ireland to join his Irish wife [7] The truth is that he headed for Syria.
[...]
The second Libyan that the Spanish photographer in the Syrian army is none other than Kikli Adem, a lieutenant of Abdel Hakim Belhaj. As for the third Libyan, nicknamed Fouad, Daniel Iriarte was not in a position to identify him.

One of the few articles I have even looked at was this excellent, extremely-informed-sounding piecee from Palestine chronicle.

'Human Rights' and the Road to Hell: Libya and Now Syria?
By Jeremy Salt – Ankara. December 3, 2011
http://www.palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=17293

We have just seen what has been done to Libya in the name of human rights and the 'responsibility to protect'. Uncounted thousands of Libyans were killed in eight months of bombing and missile attacks by French, British and American warplanes. There is prima facie evidence that war crimes were committed but there is not even the suggestion that someone will be held accountable.

Salt lists and analyzes many of the more incendiary claims made against the Assad regime, sounding depressingly just like what was spouted in the rapid build-up to destruction of another non-cooperative government. If his characterizations of the claims are correct, not even the evidence he gives for or against them, I'd recommend people be troubled. The same sorts of illogical evil has been alleged against the governments of Yugoslavia, Iraq, and now Libya. Generally they prove at least as untrue as the skeptics suspected. But they're allowed to linger in a twilight zone of truth just long enough to "justify" intervention.

Some samples, drawing from the UN Human Rights Commission's deficient-sounding report on the Syrian situation:

The commission presents one side of the story throughout. For virtually every claim it makes there is a counter narrative which it ignores. One such claim involves the use of snipers. The commission says or implies that they were state security forces. There is countervailing evidence of armed civilians shooting at demonstrators to throw the blame on to the state. Perhaps there is truth in both versions, but both versions needed to be considered. The fact remains that the identity of these snipers is not known.

The direct evidence in Libya is there in at least one city, al Baida. The two shootings shown there on Feb. 17, both presumably fatal, are the only time I've seen unarmed people actually being shot on camera anywhere in the uprising, the only visual proof that the people killed were not armed militants engaging in an attack, at least in this one case. However, the visual cues converge to suggest quite strongly the gunmen responsible were rooftop snipers working right next to, and implicitly with, the rebel cameramen who then released this proof of Gaddafi repression to the world on Youtube.

It's just sick that people can take invisible snipers as evidence of a state crime with so little logic to it.

Select other points:
The report alleges that roadblocks and security checks were set up to prevent people from joining demonstrations but makes no mention of allegations of roadblocks being set up by armed gangs and the consequent kidnapping and killing of civilians.
Not much work done on it, but there's a post here for The Tripoli Massacres: Roadblock Victims

The report mentions the raid on a mosque in Dar'a early in the protest movement but not the stockpile of weapons found there.
See Az Zawiyah for just one example of a militarized mosque

It refers to the torture and murder in custody of two teenage boys and claims that up to November 9, 'reliable sources' indicated that 256 children had been killed by state forces. This is such a serious accusation that some corroborative evidence was needed but there is nothing, not the name even of one of these children and not the circumstances in which they were allegedly killed.

Similar baseless claims in Libya, supported by proven fake x-ray proof.

The state security forces are accused of rape but there is no mention of the cases of rape reported by the Syrian authorities to have been committed by armed gangs as part of their project to terrorize and intimidate the civilian population.
But who could believe such claims from a 'regime of rape,' like Gaddafi's once was?
Etc...

The New Website, Jan. 6
http://mar15.info/ Looks quite familiar, after having looked at Feb17 this and 17Feb thatwith Libya's "new flag" all over them, all in English. A website aggregator of anti-Assad opinions and accusations, to let the protesters and their starry-eyed, armed-gang-ignoring global supporters know they're faaaaar from alone. The corporate media, Human Rights" groups, world governments, all kinds of people agree that Assad has got to go for daring to resist this violent and deceitful takeover effort masquerading as simple protest. The following bits are all from there.

A suicide bombing just killed 25 people in an area of Damascus now, Midan, where protesters are centered. The government says some of those protesters did it in their own hood to blame Assad and provoke people, while protesters just blame Assad, and keep doing it loudly.

Time outlines the old bargain in Syria, "relative peace and limited prosperity in exchange for iron-fisted, one-party rule," now to be replaced with absolute peace, and boundless prosperity, trust us, under a NATO-enforced free-market system. Five parties maybe, none representing the old values of national independence, all working for deepened slavery to the new new world order. And you get to friggin' vote on which one!

One-Sided Cease-Fire Demands
The conflict in Libya had reached war proportions, and that was a problem because the Western-backed insurgents were losing against the government of the sovereign and solid nation of Libya. Demand for the violence to stop, a demand leveled only at Tripoli. NATO stopped any attack on Benghazi, then proceded to "protect civilians"even as they surged forward with military weapons and conquered city after city - humanitarian protection seamlessly became tactical air support. It was even highly predictable.

In late March, the Telegraph's Richard Spencer passed on the concern from the Libyan government's spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, that "The government ... says it cannot be just a one-sided ceasefire..." But it could be and was. No terms were worked out, the West and the UN were through talking to the Libyans before they ever started. Cease-fire clearly meant one thing: die, undesirable government. If it started out too subtle to discern (it din't), the message sure became clear enough by the end of the summer.

Now, demands for the violence in Syria to end, leveled only at Damascus, not that I've ever read at the insurgent militants. Sometimes I'll see a headline, demands for a complete halt to the fighting. I get a flutter of hope, then read, Assad must accede to the other side's demands and step aside, and/or the government needs to stop fighting those trying to destroy the government.

Victoria Nuland, State Dept. spokesperson, was asked about the future of the Syrian government.

QUESTION: You think there is still a path out?
MS. NULAND: Well –

QUESTION: For the regime.
MS. NULAND: — that’s obviously still on the table. It requires Assad to step aside.
[...]
MS. NULAND: Again, what we think needs to happen first and foremost is that the violence needs to end and a process of dialogue needs to begin inside Syria. There needs to be peace and security there so that the country can move forward.

The State Department is deciding where this "forward" arrow points. They did that with Libya.

Nuland, continued:

We’re also hearing reports, interestingly, of large-scale defections of Syrian military officers over the weekend, and it is these Syrian – including taking some of their equipment and their heavy equipment – and it’s these defections that are most rattling the government.

Increasing violence, increasing deaths, and increased military defections were all reported the same time in Libya too. The truth seems to have been increased militant activity, causing the increased death of soldiers, who were then advertsied by the militants as having "defected." 22 of them shown dead in a video tried to defect but were killed by their own officers and Africans. But another of the rebels' videos shows some of these same LOYALIST people held by rebel fighters, and being sentenced to death for daring to oppose them. Oops.

Persecution of Christians in Syria, illogically blamed on Assad. In Libya, case after case of victims of Gaddafi who look like "Gaddafi's African mercenaries," Animist/Christian/Other-Africam like some of the 17 "anti-Gaddafi activists" whose tortured bodies at Tripoli's Mitiga hospital in August were marked "non-Muslim for burial purposes." Hey, wasn't it exactly 17 prisoners of the Assad regime, for a fact, that were just found executed and dumped in Hama? One of these: a police "deserter." One of the Tripoli victims was also, I believe, a local cop, who had rebel sympathies of course (link, later). All coincidence, probably, but...

But it was illegal to do anything to stop these monsters. They were taking over, going where they wanted, killing who they wanted to kill, how they wanted to doit, blaming who they pleased, and NATO had their backs, tactically and (by roundabout channels) informationally.

What they are insisting in Syria is, again, a surrender to whatever rabble has taken up arms against them. Essentially, it's national suicide, demanding they cut off their own faces. Of course they won't agree, and another round of "peacekeeping" might be required to force them to stop fighting by being dead.

Is air support even possible this time? Not with UNSC approval, anyway. Maybe al Qaeda will finally get to use a suitcase nuke someone slips them,and blame Assad. That might finally do it.

Feb. 13: SYRIA: NATO’s Next “Humanitarian” War? by Michel Chossudovsky

“In order to facilitate the action of liberative (sic) forces, …a special effort should be made to eliminate certain key individuals. …[to] be accomplished early in the course of the uprising and intervention, …

Once a political decision has been reached to proceed with internal disturbances in Syria, CIA is prepared, and SIS (MI6) will attempt to mount minor sabotage and coup de main (sic) incidents within Syria, working through contacts with individuals. …Incidents should not be concentrated in Damascus …

Further : a “necessary degree of fear .. frontier incidents and (staged) border clashes”, would “provide a pretext for intervention… the CIA and SIS [MI6] should use … capabilities in both psychological and action fields to augment tension.” (Joint US-UK leaked Intelligence Document, London and Washington, 1957)

In this online interactive I-book, we bring to the attention of our readers a selection of feature articles on the Syrian crisis.

Our objective is to dispel the tide of media lies and government propaganda, which presents the events in Syria as a “peaceful protest movement”.

The “protests” did not emanate from internal political cleavages as described by the mainstream media. From the very outset, they were the result of a covert US-NATO intelligence operation geared towards triggering social chaos, with a view to eventually discrediting the Syrian government of Bashar Al Assad and destabilizing Syria as a Nation State.

Since the middle of March 2011, Islamist armed groups –covertly supported by Western and Israeli intelligence– have conducted terrorist attacks ...

See comments below for other thoughts and new developments...

Khamis Brigade Shed Massacre: Follow-Up Work

2012-02-12T02:00:00.000-08:00

January 10, 2012
last update Feb. 12

<< The Tripoli Massacres
<< The Khamis Brigade Shed Massacre

I've never been much of an activist, and here especially I've focused on research, finding the best truth on which acvitism could best be grounded, if someone else were to go and do it. But the unfolding case of this alleged massacre is just so large and so poorly constructed, I feel it's worth pushing the issue and seeing if things can be turned around so that truth again can at least seem to matter to the world community.

I'll be continuing to let other things slide around here, as I use my available time to focus on developing the shed massacre evidence, and taking it past research into info-activism; networking, letting people who matter know about it. I wouldn't mind some help spreading the information, especially once I get a nice report put together to rival that of Physicians for 9/11 Truth. Sorry, for Human Rights.

Such things will be collected and explained here. Before I'm quite ready for that level, I'm ironing out my approach at my favorite "skeptics" forum. Feel free to follow along, if anyone bothers to respond.

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?p=7919292

Feb. 9: That discussion went strangely. No one bothers to argue I was wrong at all. It was all quite unsurprising to them what the rebels would do andcompell so many witnesses to do, they were yawning. But that was to convince me it was boring and worthless and no one cared. I called bullshit on that, people care left and right, so long as the story's right. But when the complicating facts of the 3-D world intrude, it gets all tedious and "oh, both sides are guilty of yadda yadda, who cares? It's all ancient history." Stupid stuff.

So I finally contacte Physicians for Human Rights, tentatively, and started with this, on their message form e-mail page.

I have important information regarding the recent PHR report on the Libyan "32nd Brigade Massacre." Please see that this message gets to whoever is responsible for new research and double-checking old research.

Based on immense research by myself and severl colleagues, I fear that innocent lives are at risk now due to false information passed on widely, by PHR included. Soldier "Laskhar," now soldier Ibrahim Sadeq Khalifa (speaking to AFP recently), Lt. Col. Mansour if captured, and others - all may be innocent. Their accounts and those of the dozens of escapees and other witnesses now on record vary immensely on date, time of day, order of massacre, when the people were burned (alive, or days later), etc.

One witness among these is apparently the NTC's co-chair for missing persons, PHR source Dr. Salem al-Fergani, under a pseudonym ("Dr. Salim Rajub").

There are almost "smoking gun" clues that the rebels conquered the base no later than late on August 23, three days before they admit it, and the same time they say the massacre happened.

And there is much more, consistently pointing the same direction of something wrong with this story. The NTC authorities here may be hunting down those who escaped, forcing them to confess to their cover story, and then planning to quietly kill them too, all within legal guidelines (except for the extra-legal parts, which will just slip by as things are, despite being visible and egregious).

However unlikely that might seem at first blush, the possibility really is great enough to warrant a patient review of the information, and to at least try to put the brakes on this questionable process before more innocent lives are lost to that August massacre. History will treat you kindly for it, even if it creates complications in the short-run.

If PHR is willing to have a look, I plan to submit this info,in condensed and partial form (a full report is still many days off at best), one way or another. By an e-mail address if provided (.doc attachments okay?), and also a print copy mailed in. Phone is an option too, I see, if I don't hear a reasonable response requesting more information or explaining why no review is warranted.

As entered above, again, a response can be sent to: caustic_logic@yahoo.com

Sincerely yours,
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
Spokane, Washington

The nature of their response or lack of it I will report back on after some time.

Feb. 12: No response yet. I've been neglecting the site and comments, using the free time I have toiron out the CIWCL report on the shed massacre. I almost wanted to call it "Holocaust" Denied, but that's best for a press release or something, maybe. I'm leaning towards "Unlocking the Secrets of Yarmouk: A Second Look at the Khamis Brigade Shed Massacre." Any other suggestions?

Organization (unless revised):
Introduction
Section 1 – Problematic Witnesses
1A – The Captive Soldiers “Confess”
“Laskhar” and Ibrahim Sadeq Khalifa
1B – Believe Who?
General study of witness discrepancies - you can't believe them all, and maybenone.
1C - See-Through Salem
best for last

Section 2 – An Alternative, Evidence-Based Explanation
2A - Rebel Racism and Brutality
(rebels kill and brutalize black men and blame Gaddafi)
2B - Shed massacre victim clues
(victims: black men. Blamed: Gaddafi)
2C - Timeline clues
Why were the rebels aware of the massacre victims within hours of the alleged massacre, when they don't admit to seizing and knowing the area for another three days? Rebels were in charge at the time of the alleged massacre.

Concrete suggestions for considerations there? Petri has some concerns over my timeline clues I'm still not sure I understand. Perhaps beneath is a good spot to has this out beforeI draft that part?

Appendices:
- full witness list
any other suggestions?

Mainstream "Concern" Over Rebel Torture

2012-02-12T01:00:00.000-08:00

January 28, 2012
last update, Feb. 19, 2012

Note Feb. 19: Amnesty International has taken its concerns in a stronger and more formal direction with a report issued in mid-February. My fairly cynical post on that is here. Below is the post outlining the concerns over endemic government militia torture across "Liberated" Libya leading up to the Amnesty report.
---
As Felix alerts me, and to be lazy, the BBC reported, Jan. 26, Held Libyans 'died after torture' says Amnesty International

Several people have died after being tortured by militias in Libyan detention centres, human rights group Amnesty International has said.

It claimed to have seen patients in Tripoli, Misrata and Gheryan with open wounds to their head, limbs and back.

Meanwhile, charity Medecins Sans Frontieres has suspended operations in Misrata after treating 115 patients with torture-related wounds.

The UN says it is concerned about the conditions in which patients are held.

Conditions. Concern. Humanitarian intervention? Perhaps not, this time.

Terrible things happen in Libya, in a Beeb report. Just where the loyalist sleeper cells responsible are coming from isn't explained. Confusingly, the video report, hosted by Gabriel Gatehouse, in fact suggests the NATO/rebels government militias now in control are doing these things. How strange! Surely a last dying echo of Gaddafi's own evil, sadly imprinted on them and to be worked out with time to heal...

The guy from MSF says they quit Misrata, where the Gaddafi regime always said rebels were torturing captured loyalists. They quit, he says, because the wounds they were being asked to treat were in between torture sessions, to keep the victims from dying as the abuse continued.

The report explains the problem is not just in Misrata, but nationwide. It's a wide nation that NATO just bombed these torturers into control of, by the way, with enthusiastic support from the BBC. As always for them, the problem is "militias," which need to brought under control of the more "responsible" central government whom they formally supported. But these conniving scum bags in Tripoli take every change to reiterate that they intend as full a lockout and purge as possible of however many loyalists or former loyalists remain. This reign of terror might well be their way, not an aberration to be fixed. It might be part-and-parcel with, inspeparable from, the Western-sponsored free-market revolution in Libya's leadership. Something's got to keep the green masses down for that to work.

In fact, whose decision was it to show these victims to human rights groups, or to involve MSF, when rebel doctors or no doctors could help so much more quietly? Did they intend to make sure these examples were published, for Libyans to read about, as clearly as heads on spikes? The message: "You wanna be caught being a resistance supporter, do you? Think again..."

See Also:
Torture and lawlessness as Libya "victory high" ends

In Assabia, a different story was being told, in which residents not involved in the fighting were kidnapped and tortured, one to death, by Gharyan fighters.

"We are not Gaddafi supporters. Gharyan just want to legitimize their fight against us," said Ibrahim Mohammed, 23, who was covered head to toe in black and blue bruises which he says he got from beatings with metal chains in Gharyan. [...] his ankles were crushed in metal workshop clamps and that his finger and toe were smacked with metal bars. Blood seeped from under his fingernails during the interview.

"During my interrogations, I saw our main military commander in Gharyan lying on the floor in a pool of blood ... he was barely breathing and they had tied a metal pole to his arms and legs and were giving him electric shocks," Ibrahim said.

The body of this Assabia military commander, Ezzedine al-Ghool, was anonymously dropped at the Tripoli hospital where it was later collected by members of Assabia's city council, including Bashir al-Nwer, who says Gharyan fighters took the body to Tripoli to avoid escalating the conflict by returning the tortured body directly to Assabia.

Update Feb. 1
Thanks to Tawergha and Hurriya for this new development:
"Libya Rejects MSF torture allegations"
http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE80U02A20120131

The aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said last Thursday it had stopped its work in detention centres in the city of Misrata because its medical staff were being asked to patch up detainees mid-way through torture sessions so they could go back for more abuse.

Libyan Foreign Minister Ashour bin Khayyal said it was not the policy of the ruling National Transitional Council, which has promised to make a break with Gaddafi-era practices and respect human rights, to use torture.

"Gaddafi's remnants committed actions that were an aggression to the revolution and to Libya and they will now receive the treatment they deserve," Khayyal told Reuters on the sidelines of an African Union summit in Addis Ababa.

Meaning, they won't be tortured, right? He continued:

"As a government, it is not our policy at all to commit torture because we, the Libyan people, suffered under these policies and we strongly reject it," Khayyal said.

"If there was torture, then it was not with the knowledge of the government or by the agreement of the government either. It may be actions by individuals, but we have not heard about the report you mention."

They can seemingly promise justice by torture to these captives, but not "as a government." Their proxies: "individuals," militias, special units, the cosmos and Allah himself, well that might just be who's making sure, systematically, that it's happening as promised and as the demonized devils deserve. The NTC does oppose torture of these human scum, and if they hear about it, they'll put an end to it. They haven't ever heard about it yet, despite the rest of the world hearing about it. They try their hardest, but find it very hard, perhaps, to hear certain things clearly these days...

Sounds fair enough, right?

Then, a response more from the Misrata militia front line - they deserve worse than they're getting. Men captured in Sirte and elsewhere by Misrata fighters are gathered in a small jail journalists were taken to. Mansour Daw, onetime chief of Internal Security is there, captured with Gaddafi on Oct. 20. He's had no lawyer, no news, no family contact, illegally. But no outward sign or complaint of torture. “The living conditions here are not bad, given the crimes these men have committed," one jailer told the AFP.

One prisoner is a soldier of the Khamis Brigade, Ibrahim Sadeq Khalifa, captured in Tripoli. He has the same problems of isolation (it seems to be standard there), plus beatings he speaks of:

He was transferred on Sept. 5 to the Misrata prison after spending about two weeks with the ex-rebels, who he said beat him repeatedly.

Although there were no glaring signs of torture, a scar was visible near his collar bone.

“It is from a cigarette burn. The thuwar (anti-Qaddafi revolutionaries) did that,” he said when probed by AFP, speaking hesitatingly as jailor Ibrahim Beatelmal approached.

None of that happened in the Misrata prison, he implied, or had anything to do with his candid "confession" there to AFP that he took part in yet another version of the "Khamis Brigade shed massacre," claiming to have burned the captives alive, in contradiction to nearly all other accounts and common sense - how does a fire started Aug. 23 - or even Aug. 22 as Khalifa wrongly states - continue smoldering right through the 28th?

Poor Khalifa's account and its problems are covered here, alongside another "confessed" killer in the same crime. Like the rest,these witnesses conflict with each other and with the rest, and with some more wholesome clues of the physical and temporal sorts, suggesting the rebels piled their own victims here and charred them blank before dozens of different stories somehow latched onto them.

But the "mass murder's" bizarre, apparently coerced story, plus lack of visible torture clues (aside from a cigarette burn), was presented by as the strongest case that there was no torture in Misrata at all. To illustrate this, in fact, seems to have been the main purpose of the exercise.

“If we wanted to torture these prisoners, Khalifa is the best candidate for that. He has burnt alive 150 men,” [guard Ibrahim] Beatelmal said, as he smoked a cigarette.

“When he came to our prison he weighed 65 kilos. Now he is more than 80 kilos. That would not happen if you are tortured. I am angry at these human rights people. I don’t even want to see their faces.”

And if he does, he might have to start cutting those faces. His name almost says in English "Beat 'em all." How appropriate.

This devil confessed to something that was supremely evil, but that quite possibly never happened. Confessions are of things that are true, so we should refrain from calling this one. It's only a claim, another in a long line. People credit stories like this because they think "why confess to/claim something with the death penalty unless it's the truth? What lie is worth dying for?" Two options could explain it:
1) A deferred-sentence plea deal, life sentence or even early release instead of death in trade ... for what? The simple truth?
2) Death is the nice option, and it was made clear by his torturers that the choice was his to make.

Feb. 3: Thanks to Petri for the tip - Human Rights Watch has it documented and is calling for action: Libya: Diplomat Dies in Militia Custody
He used to be a diplomat in France. In late January he was summoned by the local authorities (Zintan brigades?), questioned about his loyalty, arrested, then dropped off dead in a Zintan hospital next morning. His body showed signs of pretty egregious torture - toenails were pulled off, for one.

Now what amazing stories did he come up with before his demise? Something that might blow the socks off Khalifa's story?

Also, an older report from September I just noticed:
Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 13

"Whatever is happening between the [former] government forces and the rebels, there are lots of people who are sabotaging and misusing the situation, and are taking advantage for revenge on each other," says a family member of non-Libyan man whose injuries at the hands of anti-Qaddafi forces have shocked the family and friends.

The man, who had worked for a former regime member who has since fled Libya, was handed over to pro-NTC fighters at a checkpoint. Relatives told the Monitor that he was subjected, for several hours, to electric shocks, severe beating, and threats that he would be killed if he did not confess to having weapons and his body would be thrown into the Mediterranean Sea where it would "never be found."

The man was eventually saved when a rebel intervened and vouched for him. The suspected Qaddafi supporter received apologies from the local officer. "They think that just because they have a gun, or they have contacts, they can have anyone picked up and torture them," says this family member.

And as long as they can torture the person into "admitting" he has a weapon, then all the torture is justified by his armed action against the new government. He can be punished for all the loyalist crimes that happened or that rebels say happened.

All isolated incidents! Bad apples, here and there, a lot of them. But there are some good apples too! They just don't get invited to the torture sessions...

Update Feb. 12:
An unusually critical piece from the UK Daily Mail reads almost like something targeted against the old government, except much better supported with facts. It covers MSF's allegations in a bit more details, and adds more on Amnesty's efforts, which seem sincere enough.

Amnesty International has documented thousands of cases of abuse and torture, and handed photographs to The Mail on Sunday. Senior crisis response adviser Donatella Rovera has protested to the National Transitional Council (NTC) without success.
‘I have seen people who have been beaten with iron bars and rubber pipes, some hardly able to walk,’ she said.

‘Men are hung by handcuffs from a door frame and attacked with electric wires. Tasers are applied to their ears and genitals, and finger and toenails are torn out.’
She has evidence of 12 deaths. No investigations have been carried out by the authorities. ‘There is not a single case where anyone has been brought to justice,’ she said. ‘There is a total lack of accountability.’

Of course there have been no investigations. They have to hear about something first, then be able to do anything about it next. If they can't do one, why bother with the other? Besides, the Misrotten rebels say it's they who are worried about a lack of accountability for crimes they suffered.

Commander Mohamed al-Deaka is a former construction engineer. He was defensive about abuse by his men. ‘Yes it happens here, but it’s everywhere in Libya,’ he said.
‘We have to use force to make prisoners give answers. Our city [Misrata] was destroyed in the fighting. Now we want to know who carried out the destruction, who raped our women and stole our property."

The rape part in particular - they find no admissions odd, since they know it happened. This in turn is due in large part to the famous "confession" of two Tawerghan teenagers, later found to be unreliable enough Amnesty called them out on it. That the rest aren't in agreement with that inconsistent batch of coerced nonsense is clearly frustrating, and the resort to torture to force confirmation totally understandable. (??!!)

Mainly the Mail article speaks of a video, posted three months ago by site contributor Tawergha. It shows a man from Tawergha (the town closed down by Misrata rebels) being tortured. It has information to go with it here, and screen grabs, courtesy of the directior of the "al-Fellah ‘internally displaced persons’ (IDP) camp in a suburb of Tripoli." Here, Misrata brigades arrested a former shopkeeper named Saleh Barhoun Gersh, who had dressed in women's clothes as a disguise, it's said. He's injured and bleeding, shown being whipped and electrocuted with wires. His tormentors say, as translated:

‘You are from Towerga, you dog. You say you did nothing in Misrata, so why are you in disguise? We found weapons in every house in Towerga. Your hand is bleeding and we hope it is paralysed.’

The men chant as they reach for live electric wires: ‘Everyone we catch is innocent, they say. ‘Well, blood will come from your eyes and nose until you admit what you have done. We’ve caught 60 of you so far and none of you did anything.’

And they know that can't be true. How about all the weapons? It's not like they were threatened with an attack or anything to defend themselves against. These could only be for killing and raping in Misrata. Sadly, the article adds "It is not clear when the footage was taken or what happened to Mr Gersh." This suggests he never returned. He's either dead or in captivity with no acknowledgment, which is never good. Perhaps they got confirmation, finally, that those kids were right, and finally have a better reason yet to be sure all the other Tawerghans they harass, rape, arrest, torture, and kill will have deserved it.

Khamis Brigade Shed Massacre: The Witness Recall the Guards

2012-02-08T03:15:00.000-08:00

February 7, 2012
last edits Feb. 10

>> The Khamis Brigade Shed Massacre
>> Shed Massacre Witness List

Soldiers Who Refused
To credit rebel and mainstream reports, bad ends tended to befall Libyan soldier who tried to defect and join "the people" during their 2011 uprising, or who refused alleged orders to slaughter innocents. It goes back to the dawn of the Civil War in late February and 22 soldiers, of a total of 130 we heard from a "Human Rights Group", shot dead in east Libya, for refusing some evil orders.

The rebels weren't there, so how they knew that's what happened was unclear until clarified by the fact the executed men were last seen in a rebel video (quickly pulled and shown by no rebel supporters now). They were shown around February 22 held by rebel militants, being sentenced to death by them for daring to oppose them. They were blaming the regime to cover for their own atrocity. That explains the strange omniscience.

The Khamis Brigade shed massacre is another bestial crime of the regime rebels know every last thing about. And again, when the order came down to kill the roughly 120-150 prisoners, some soldiers, the alleged survivors say, wouldn't do it and were added to the kill pile.

The knowledge seems far less magical in this case - the defection of soldiers was allegedly witnessed by many people slated for death alongside them. These, unlike the doomed objectors, managed to escape and tell the tale. There seem to at the very least about 30 of these people known currently, and perhaps 60 or more. BBC's Orla Guerin spoke to one of them, elderly alleged survivor Fathallah Abdullah al-Ashter, who managed to run out the doors unharmed and hide under a truck. He spoke of losing two of his sons, and likely a third, although he remained hopeful Ali had lived.

Outside the warehouse he greeted another survivor, Ali Hamouda, with a sombre handshake. Ali was uninjured but told us his cousin was among the dead.
Both men said some of Col Gaddafi's own troops were not spared. They too were imprisoned in the warehouse, presumably for not following orders.
"The soldiers were in the middle," Ali said. "They were sitting on blankets. They took them outside first. After that we heard gunshots. Maybe they executed them. Then they start to shoot us."

No other witness recalls that precursor to the massacre, by the way. Munir El-Goula spoke to ITN News back on August 25 (need to update elsewhere), at least a day before any other media reports on this incident. Though his recall of the space and the number of people is different, he survived what must be the same (alleged) massacre. Soldiers were among the dead, he agreed, but they weren't seated in the middle and pulled out early. Rather, they were standing outside as guards, and then only pushed in at the last minute and killed with the rest. He said, as translated:

When they opened the gate, mercenaries came and pushed the soldiers back into the jail. They shot an old man in the leg. I didn’t think they would kill us, but the mercenaries entered the jail and shot the prisoners in the legs. One took a grenade and threw it in....

Reporter Lindsey Hilsum added "[Munir] says, somehow, he escaped, but believes 20 soldiers and more than 100 prisoners were killed." This forces the point that among those who dozens who claimed to have leapt over walls and the like, and survived to speak to the media, all are simple civilians. None of these trained soldiers I'm aware of managed to escaped alive. Hamouda's story explains that better, by having the professionals taken out one at a time, presumably gaurded by several men, and killed first. but I still don't buy his story either.

French paper Libération spoke with witness Dr. Salem Rajab (aka See-Through Salem)

And these three bodies outside, one of which has its feet in a noose? The doctor, while Moustapha said nothing: "These are three soldiers who refused to participate in the implementation and the mercenary," he said, mimicking the scene, "killed them on the spot."

The Dead Outside the Shed

The presence of soldiers among the condemned is thought to explain the three martyrs Dr. Salem mentioned - what seem to many like dead Gaddafi soldiers/"mercenaries" rotting un-burnt around the execution site. A total of at least 11 bodies have been seen in and around the compound, eight of them black men, like Rebel/NTC militias often execute on the spot. The three most widely seen, the ones Salem was asked about, were right next to the shed, bound, executed, and laying under blankets. Two of these are seen at left, from RT Arabic video, with the third just a few feet away to the right.

These three are all between blankets and three mattresses someone was apparently sleeping on. A bag of toiletries hangs next to one of them (the bottom of it visible in the image here). It's outside the jail area, so not likely where a prisoner was sleeping. The victims wear what might be long underwear, but with camouflage uniforms laid over them. An officer's cap, green flags, and army trousers are all strewn nearby (some of that visible here). The one in the foreground was bound by the feet, at any rate, and not shot running. The other, closer views show, has extra wrist damage and decay suggesting his wrists were bound at death and until shortly before the photos were taken (see the link above for such details).

These mattress victims were noted by Clemens Höges, writing for Der Spiegel English, among a total of four exterior corpses he saw.

The four dead men outside the warehouse whose corpses were not burned appear to have been powerfully built, dark-skinned men, as far as can be judged after days in the Libyan heat. It is possible that they were soldiers who wanted to desert or did not want to be involved in the massacre. [Local witness] Ali Boukhatwa confirmed this version of events and also said that the soldiers had been tortured.

They probably had been, in fact. Two other onetime guards now under Rebel captivity, and perhaps subjected to torture or various threats, have claimed roles in this mass killing that completely contradict each other. One, held in az Zawiyah (near Tripoli) spoke in September to Physicians for Human Rights, who gave him the pseudonym "Laskhar." The other, held in Misrata, was paraded before AFP with his confession in late January. His name was given as Ibrahim Sadeq Khalifa (see link for details).

Both soldiers do agree on the number of guards (five) that actually carried out the killing. Khalifa says he was one of the five, while Laskhar says he wasn't even at the base when it happened, but helped with the mop-up after. He adds that three of the five executioners were Libyans, and two were Tuaregs (black foreign mercenaries).

But they disagree on the date, a rather important feature. Laskhar, like most sources, says it happened August 23, while Khalifa, like a few others, say it was the 22nd. And they disagree on when the fire was set. Laskhar says it was only days later when the bodies were burnt, following failed attempts to dig a mass grave (one was seen, fully dug, however,and the rebels say it wasn't them who did it). Khalifa, in contrast, says the other guards poured gasoline/petrol over the living prisoners, apparently after shooting them, and he himself tossed in a few grenades, apparently incendiary ones, which ignited them. "We then locked the garage and left," he told AFP. "We burnt them alive.”

Neither one mentions anything about locking up or killing other guards, and explain the bodies outside only as presumptive prisoners, Rebular Libyan civilian, who escaped but were gunned down anyway. One source was told that a captured soldier (perhaps one of these two or another one, and again possibly tortured or coerced), had been asked and said the corpses were captives, and not even captive Gaddafi soldiers. The caption beneath this Louafi Larbi photo of the mattress victims says:

A rebel fighter walks near the bodies of fellow rebels at the Khamis 32 military encampment in southern Tripoli August 28, 2011. The bodies were recognised as that belonging to rebel fighters by a man who was a former soldier at the camp.

So maybe it was "freedom fighters," as usual the black ones primarily, that the evil loyalists tortured and killed after all. Whatever the case, some of the dead somewhere around there must have been soldiers, according to the rebel witnesses.

Promises of Escape/An Order From the Top
Kim Sengupta for the Independent, Sept. 10, reported the account of police officer-turned rebel militant Amr Dau Algala (apparently the brother of Munir el-Goula/Algala). He's one of the few escapees to mention fire, indirectly. "I started running," he said. "I looked back, but there was too much smoke, I could not see my brother [Abdullah]."

Mr. Algala is also one of those who reported a connection between the coming massacre and the Brigade's namesake and grand overseer, Khamis Gaddafi.

Mr Algala recalled that one day the guards announced that Khamis al-Gaddafi was arriving himself and the prisoners would be free. "People got very excited and the guards started laughing. They said that being 'free' of this place meant that we will all be killed. We did not know whether to believe them or not."

The threat proved to be real the following morning when the murders began.

The plan was being spoken of on August 22, then, if the shooting happened on the 23rd, in ... the morning? Both Laskhar and Khalifa, like most other witnesses, have the incident occurring at evening, at sunset (7:44), after the call to evening prayer, at about 7:30 or 8:00, and so on. It's one of the few generally consistent points, in fact, more agreed than the actual day (which makes sense, really).

But he also has Khamis mentioned, as the origin of this order, first issued on the 23rd, according to guard "Laskhar". He says his superior Hamza got a call from his own boss, Mansour, who in turn reported directly to Khamis Gaddafi. (Several survivors also can cite col. Mansour as the chief there). After the call, which Laskhar sat in for, he was told, as the report says, "Mansour had ordered all detainees at the compound be killed and that the operation begin that night. Laskhar further explained that these orders had come directly from Khamis Gaddafi." Didn't see that coming, did you?

In that version it came by phone, although the witness says Khamis was there personally as well that day. Alleged escapee Mustafa Abdullah el-Hitri/Atiri, also happened to see Khamis visit the walled prison yard personally and, it seems, issue the order right there. In his account to Anthony Loyd, published in the Australian, he said:

"Khamis Gaddafi was here just before the killings [...] I saw him standing in the middle of the yard with his security detail and two commanders as I was taken from a prison van and marched into the barn. He was giving orders to his men."

A Khamis call or not, supposed survivor Abdullatti Musbah Haleem told the Daily Telegraph about the elborate ruse their promised freedom became:

"On Tuesday we were very excited to hear the news of the fall of Bab al-Aziziyah [Gadhafi's compound]. The guards told us that it was all over and we were going to go home that day. One of the guards was from Zliten and I knew him. He said he would unlock the door and all we had to do was undo the latch and then we could escape.

"We undid the door. The first of us went out and were met with a hail of bullets. We ran back inside the hangar but they followed us and threw in six hand grenades. Then they started spraying us randomly with gunfire...

A couple of other witnesses hint at this same kind of guard trickery, but most others are split between saying the doors were just left open as the guards went to re-load, they all rushed the doors at the same time while opened but guarded, a prisoner kicked the doors open, or they bypassed the locked doors and ran out the hole in the wall.

And there are other versions yet (three), where guards opened the doors for them, but in an earnest effort to help.

Mutually Exclusive Hero Guards: Abdul Razak and Mustafa
Mustafa Abdullah el-Hitri, mentioned above, cites one heroic guard he calls Abdul Razak, to whom owed his life, allegedly. As reported in the Australian:

"Abdul Razak was one of them but he seemed sickened by the killing and told us to flee," Mustafa recounted at the scene, where he had gone to look for other survivors. "He opened the barn doors and told anyone still alive to run for it."

Until recently, el-Hitri was the only witness I knew of who recalled Razak's brave gesture and his name. Then I found young Tahir el-BahBah, who escaped with two of his three cousins, the only other witness to cite this same guard, who shared the name with one of his cousins (Abdul Razak el-BahBah). A goofy auto-translation from Arabic of his account to a survivor's group:

On Tuesday, 2011.8.23 at half past five pm came to us one of the volunteers and his name is Abdul Razak Baroni said we should flee from here half an hour after it was released to you [unlocked], but are only five minutes came up came up volunteers and they fired on us

A third massacre time is now on the record. Morning, about 5:35 pm, and the conventional time of sunset. Strangely, he has el-Hitri's hero guard trying to help in a different manner entirely from what el-Hitri describes. The original version has Razak successfully letting the few survivors flee after the shooting. El-BahBah's has him trying to free them prior to the planned massacre, but the shooting started anyway five minutes after, which they then had to flee from on their own.

This is the exact type of help offered by another alleged guard, named "Mustafa" (no last name given). It might be relevant that this character has the same first name as Abdul Razak's originator - Mustafa el-Hitri. This story was straight away confirmed by two people, both speaking to the same researchers with Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) for their December report on the massacre.

PHR witness "Mohammed" mentions Mustafa, who tried to help, but the captives goofed it up and triggered their own killing.

Just before the evening call to prayer, the guard named Mustafa whispered through an opening of the warehouse to the group that in 30 minutes he would be back to unlock the main door so they could escape. He also told the group to wait 30 minutes after he had unlocked it before they fled. The detainees started to celebrate, chanting “God is great.” [Allahu Akbar] Mohammad believed the noise may have alerted the other soldiers. One of them (name withheld) found the door unlocked and yelled, “Who opened the coffin?"

And then the killing began. Beofre this, if Mustafa kept his word (follow the bolded parts), they must have been chanting for thirty minutes straight before the door was finally unlocked and then swiftly found that way. He should have unlocked it and told them to be quiet at the same time. This is a strange account.

Omar confirms this basic idea of Mustafa's failed attempt to help, and also relates a longer historywith the man. The outsider guard brought extra food and water and bits of info to Omar during his three-month captivity. But then, Omar says, Mustafa fellunder suspicion of insufficient evil and was ordered switched out. Omar, a businessman, “offered Mustafa a bribe of LYD 200,000 to free him,” PHR report. Nobly, he turned down the money, but promised to alert and release them if he heard anyone hatching plans to kill them all. But so long as it was just daily torture, no dice.

That's a strange deal, but he delivered, in Omar's story. He gives the wrong day, corroborating "confessed mass-murderer" Khalifa, while contradicting Mohammed's account of a noisy response:

On the night of 22 August, Mustafa came to the window before evening prayer with some food and water and said to Omar, “You will either escape or die.” As he had earlier promised, Mustafa left the door of the warehouse unlocked for them, so they could escape later that night. The detainees began organizing into groups of about ten to escape quietly in groups, but somehow the guards discovered that the door was unlocked and began to attack the group with grenades and automatic weapons.

Is this all the same guard, perhaps named Mustafa Abdul Razak Baroni? Or two hero guards, one remembered by some, the other by others? If two, which of the two tried to open the doors early, and which one only after the shooting? Is either one of these just some sort of bizarre memory error, from shock or whatever?

For Those Inclined to Believe the Witnesses...
...which ones then?

Were the killed soldiers dragged out first as Hamouda says, or pushed-in last per el-Goula? Were the dead bodies outside soldiers as they seemed and as Boukhatwa believed, or rebels, as a captive soldier wound up saying? Was the flesh-consuming fire started the same time as the killing, like Mohammed Bashir and soldier Khlaifa said, burning people alive, or was it only to hide the facts days later as A.I. Bashir, Laskhar, and logic suggest? Did the guards find the door shut but unlocked and commence the killing inside the shed, as the PHR witnesses said? Or did they shoot the first ones to step out through the lock they opened themselves? Or did they skip all that, simply open up and start killing people as several other witnesses said?

Or, perhaps... none of the above?

How many false memories on key features of a life-changing event can we responsibly accept? If eyewitness accounts are really this random, why are they ever called on as evidence at all? If they aren't usually this random, what's different here?

Shed Massacre Witnesses: The Captive Soldiers "Confess"

2012-02-05T04:00:00.000-08:00

February 4, 2012
last edits Feb. 6

<< Khamis Brigade Shed Massacre
<< Shed Massacre Witness List

Among the witnesses to the epic, alleged, shed massacre of August 23, two special ones claim to have seen it from the villain's side of things, taking part in the brutal killing of some 150 prisoners. These two men are prisoners themselves now, held by rebel militias in Az Zawiyah and Misrata. The former Gaddafi soldiers have both "confessed" or "admitted" [that is, claimed] roles in this large-scale death penalty crime, which might make the claims seem credible. Why lie when the end result is your own death, especially when, as in these cases, there's no proof other than your confession?

A conviction and death sentence often suffice to leave a guilty man free to confess, but these guys haven't even had a trial yet. Neither has one of them, at least, spoken to a lawyer, or anyone outside the jai, since he was arrested. Their physical lives and futures remain controlled by rebel fighters known to carry out their own atrocities, known to fob off the blame, and known to torture Gaddafi loyalists.

It shouldn't take much imagination to see how these could come together. Did their captors promise secret deals in exchange for useful testimony? Or is it that they somehow made the road towards death the nice way out for these two young men whose lives have been effectively ended already?

"Laskhar"
Among the four witnesses interviewed by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) for their December report on "the 32nd Brigade Massacre" was a guard of the brigade, given the pseudonym "Laskhar." The others, all victims, are called Mohammed, Ali, and Omar. It's not likely chance that they gave the character who "tortured and executed detainees" (for a fact, and even "admitted" it) a rarer name that sounds kind of sinister to English ears, like Lash Scar, a perfect name for a villain in a Disney cartoon.

(PHR report, original PDF link - our blog post on it)

Their introduction of the witness:

Profile 4: Laskhar148 Tortured and Executed Detainees
PHR interviewed “Laskhar” (pseudonym) on 10 September 2011. A mid-level officer in the Libyan armed forces, Laskhar reported that he had joined the army in 2007 and served the past four years with the Khamis 32nd Brigade. At the time of the interview, Laskhar was being held in custody at a temporary detention facility by the NTC-affiliated military council in Zawiya.

During the interview, which was conducted in a private room with Laskhar, an interpreter, and a PHR investigator present, Laskhar admitted to the torture and murder of more than 12 detainees under his custody at the makeshift prison (Agricultural Compound) at Khalat al Forjan, which he said was in close proximity to the 32nd Brigade barracks in the southern outskirts of Tripoli.

His motives for revealing self-incriminating evidence to PHR are unknown; however, Laskhar did report to PHR that he felt remorse in having committed the crimes discussed below.

The bolded is worth thinking about. It could be remorse for a real crime, or any manner of coercion getting him to claim an unreal one. Let'ssee how it stacks up.

They give his background, starting from joining the military in 2007. He says he was transferred to the massacre shed in March specifically to help guard the prisoners. "The officer in charge was Lt. Colonel Mohamad Mansour," PHR found, "who reported directly to Khamis Qaddafi," the leader's son and grand overseer of this 32nd Mechanized (Khamis) Brigade.

They had orders from "Laskhar's" immediate superior (Hamza el-Harizi, just beneath Mansour) to beat all incoming detainees, using metal cables, rifle butts, etc. At least eight of the victims died from this, Laskhar helping in four of those beatings, and all were buried onsite or nearby, he says, except one. That body was taken to another 32nd brigade base for some reason that probably helps explain antoher bizarre rebel story there.

"Laskhar" makes no mention of genital electrocution by bald black women, as alleged by Jamal al-Raggai, but he did claim to see another soldier - a black man from Tawergha, he says - rape young prisoners on two occasions, between two cars by the shed.

The day of the execution is what matters most here. As he told PHR, at 12:30 PM on August 23, he says Khamis Gaddafi was there at the base conducting a meeting, including with Faraj Abu Ghalia (Deputy Chief of Military Intelligence). After that, he also saw his boss Hamza get a call from Mansour.

According to Laskhar, after Hamza finished the call, he told Laskhar that Mansour had ordered all detainees at the compound be killed and that the operation begin that night. Laskhar further explained that these orders had come directly from Khamis Gaddafi.

The bolded claim - not hard to see that coming.

Our minor villain was apparently scheduled to leavefor the night around 8:00, because "according to Laskhar, the operation began at around 8:00 p.m. that night while he was still at the brigade barracks." But he apparently wasn't involved, and then went home at the time. "Later that night, Hamza told Laskhar to ensure there were no survivors among the detainees." Too late. Somewhere between 25 and 60 people had escaped alive and would all go on the record. But he went back and tried to help make sure those too injured to run were finished off.

"Laskhar arrived at the compound at 11:00 p.m. and reported that five other 32nd brigade soldiers (three Libyans and two Tuaregs) had thrown grenades into the warehouse and used "kalashnikov" rifles to attempt to kill the the approximately 150 detainees trapped inside."

Laskhar then proceeded to search for detainees who had survived the initial attacks. With a flashlight he inspected wounded men who lay on the ground inside and others who had apparently escaped but were still within the walled compound. Laskhar admitted to Physicians for Human Rights that he summarily executed 12 detainees with his nine-millimeter pistol that night.

Use of "admitted," again, suggests only that they believe his claims. They found a few 9mm bullets at the scene, and find the connection quite impressive. His story of being gone during the main crime feels quite convenient, surely the one part rebels and their supporters would latch onto as a sign of untruth. He was probably right egging it on, they'll decide with utmost cleverness.

Nowhere in any "Laskhar's" account is fire mentioned yet. Note that for the next account. It was only days later that the notion even entered his picture.

The next morning (Wednesday, 24 August 2011), Hamza brought a Caterpillar excavator to the compound apparently to dig a mass grave for the executed detainees. According to Laskhar, the heavy equipment broke down, hindering their plans to bury the bodies en masse. Hamza apparently searched for another backhoe truck, but failed to find one.

At that point, Laskhar reported that one of the soldiers (name withheld) fled, but Laskhar remained with Hamza, who did not know what to do with the bodies. Sometime later that same week Laskhar reported that Lt. Col. Mansour ordered that they collect all corpses, amass them inside the warehouse, and burn all the bodies. Laskhar said they followed his orders. They then collected automobile tires and put them inside the warehouse with the bodies. The soldiers then poured diesel fuel over the bodies and tires and torched the warehouse and its contents.

And afterwards:

Laskhar reported that after this incident he fled the compound and hid for four days before returning home to Zawiya. Shortly after he arrived home, he reported that his uncle turned him in to the local NTC authorities in Zawiya. The NTC-appointed military council allowed PHR access to the detention facility where Laskhar was being held.

Although a medical evaluation was not conducted, Laskhar did not present with any visible signs of mistreatment. He reported that “they treat me 100% well. I did not treat [the detainees] the way I am treated here.” PHR was not able to confirm, however, the reliability of his statement regarding treatment in detention.

Ibrahim Sadeq Khalifa
AFP, Jan. 31, via al Arabiya (who did accept my comment!): "Pro-Qaddafi ‘mass murderer’ awaits fate in Libyan jail."

AFP was taken to a makeshift prison in Misrata where Gaddafi loyalists, including the onetime head of Internal Security, are held. One prisoner is a soldier of the Khamis Brigade, Ibrahim Sadeq Khalifa, captured in Tripoli. He has the same problems of isolation that seems to be standard there - no outside news, no family contact (either way, probably) and certainly no access to a lawyer or anyone to protect his rights.

He was beaten and burned with cigarettes, he says, but prior to transfer to this prison. Thus he implied torture had nothing to do with his candid "confession" there to AFP that he took part in yet another version of the Khamis Brigade shed massacre.

By his own admission, Khalifa participated in the mass killing of civilians as Tripoli was falling.
[...]
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 as fighting raged between Qaddafi loyalists and former rebels in August last year.

“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.

His account agrees with Laskhar on the small number of soldiers, five, who actually did the massacring. But on just about everything else, the two stories conflict.

He gives the wrong date, for one thing. Most of the witnesses who give a day at all, and nearly all considered reports, agree the date was the 23rd. Only three others I know of, escapees Sedik/Siddeq, Mounir Own, and PHR witness "Omar" specify the 22nd.

There's a problem with the grenades too. The prisoners describe regular grenades with shrapnel, not incendiary ones with fire, used during the gun attack. A few witnesses seem to say there was fire involved during the attack, but most make no mentionof it. Only one witness (M. Bashir) described burning alive quite clearly, but he has gas/petrol poured over the wounded shortly after the shooting and grenades, then fire set in some regular way.

Khalifa, however, doesn't say when or if shooting was involved. He says the fuel was dumped first, then he himself threw in some kind of fire grenades. He had to know just what that would do, and he is perhaps the single most culpable person in this likely fake episode. He will be punished.

But the fire had to be set at least a day or two after the August 23 massacre, or perhaps repeatedly well after rebels took control. Somehow, the one-body-deep pile just kept smoldering through the 26th, the 27th, and 28th. The victims were all dead by then, whoever they really were - no one was likely burned alive. Laskhar's story fits the facts better on this point, but that still doesn't mean it's true.

He says once the fire was going, they locked the doors and no one he mentions escaped. They killed 150. But according to the many who escaped, the guards left the doors unlocked or even open, or someone unlocked or forced them, or they just rushed them, right past the soldiers, or whatever. Some cite miracles, others that the soldiers had gone to re-load. Some say the soldiers never left, and the prisoners fought past them aided by shouting or a fire extinguisher (per PHR witness "Mohammed"), and none (except Bashir, Algala/El Goula, and maybe someone else) has flames lapping behind them on the way out.

"Confessions" Considered Together
So solder Khalifa and the other four burned the people alive -on the 22nd. Did Laskhar just forget to mention the people he finished off -late on the 23rd - had been burned as well as shot and grenaded? Or did Khalifa only think he remembered the complex process of dousing and grenade-burning living captives?

If we want to believe both of these guys ... well, how could one do that? If we want to believe one of these guys, which one? If we start to believe neither, well, then how did they coincidentally come out making up stories to such similar effect, coinciding so nicely with something "only the criminal would know?"

It narrows, of course, if we consider the possibility that the criminals in question, who know just what size the cover needs to be, have both of these guys under their own control.

On the other hand, if the soldiers' new controllers were conspiring to get false stories, why would they contraidct each other so badly? (That's not a strong counter-point, by the way. It's just all I could think of).

Shed Massacre Witnesses: Mohammed Bashir

2012-02-04T02:42:00.000-08:00

February 4, 2012

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Mohammed Bashir, aged 52. For fun, I'll add the notes I just made about him elsewhere. Take note that he is as dark-skinned as the escapees get, among the majority we get to see. He might well have a bit of black African blood in him, but nott he gallons shed by the other escapees who look almost like “Gaddafi’s African mercenaries.” He spoke to the Daily Mirror, with a handy picture (cropped off, to his left, is Ibrahim Zadan).

Bashir's account is strange in a few ways. He describes the shed wrong - a "container," stifling hot, men died from the heat, thin metal walls the soldiers fired through, banging on the walls for water. These walls are lined with cinderblocks, make no banging noise, wouldn't allow bullets, and shielded the inside from the sun's heat. And there's decent ventilation all over the leaky place.

Further, Bashir says he was still hiding in the shed, just minutes after the shooting on the evening of the 23rd, when the fire was started.

…something happened, either his gun was jammed or he ran out of ammunition. He walked away to get another gun and I ran to the other side of the container and hid behind an empty gas canister.

That’s when they poured petrol in and set it alight. They were trying to hide evidence but people were still alive. I could hear them scream."

And smoke was still wafting off the shallow pile of about 50 bodies only, five days after the fire was first set. The Mirror was (almost) all alone reporting as fact that people were burned alive there, by virtue of accepting one "eyewitness" story without checking against any others. Writer Martin Fricker also managed to count one of the nine or so surrounding bodies, a record low.

Those screaming people being burned alive in Bashir's tale apparently weren't able to get out the door. So why didn’t they run through the “hole in the wall?” Mohammed did.

"... I could hear them scream. My friends and I ran through a hole in the wall and tried to escape across the compound.”

Only an idiot character in a not-thought-out work of fiction would run across the compound after "running" out the only hole he could mean. You need to see that explanation if you haven't. Out that hole means out of the compound, more or less.

Mr. Bashir is not a reliable witness - he might not have been there on the 23rd at all. He's friends with fellow escapee, the quiet, bearded young Ibrahim Omar Zadan. They vouch for each others' stories of escape, unharmed, from certain death. Despite giving no details I know of to contradict Bashir with, Mr. Zadan is not reliable now. Zadan in turn has been seen hugging other "fellow survivors" - the possibly related Moktar Mahmoud Zadam/Zedan, Bashir al-Siddeq/Sedik, etc.

Shed Massacre Witnesses: Moktar Mahmoud Zedan

2012-02-03T04:53:00.000-08:00

February 3, 2012

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One of our more recent escapee discoveries is Moktar Mahmoud Zedan, as given in a French news site La-Croix, August 30. Auto-translated and slightly tweaked:

Moktar Mahmoud Zedan owes his survival to the mercy of a guard. "He let me go while the soldiers, short of ammunition, went to reload," he said. The young man ran to a farm several miles away.

Unrelated, I thought, an amateur cell phone video uploaded to Youtube Aug. 28 by 123VivaAlgerieNew had shown us what seems to be more survivors reuniting at the scene. The main one seen (at left) is light-skinned, clean-shaven, and wears a baseball cap. The combination really makes me think Indiana, not Libya. But it really is a place of amazing racial diversity. First seen at 1:32, he speaks at length in Arabic of his ordeal. He seems to have lost several shirt buttons in the slaughter, but shows no sign of injury otherwise. He seems to speak of the many cities the other prisoners had been dragged there from.

He's also seen embracing other escapees who seem to be Ibrahim Omar Zadan (relation?) and Bashir el-Sedik/Siddeq, and another possible survivor, unnamed.

But there was another, apparently original posting of this video we missed 'til later. Posted by ZlitenHorra, the title translates to "Survivors of the massacre of the Yarmouk camp telling details of the massacre." Petri Krohn noticed the main survivor named in the description translates to "Mahmoud Mukhtar Zadam" ("مختار محمود الزدام"). He then found along account More on Facebook: (auto-ranslated from Arabic, goofy parts and all)

Yarmouk Prison massacre

Mahmoud Mukhtar Zadam, born in 1988, a resident of the city of Zliten, was arrested on Friday, 6/17/2011 AD. Mokhtar was arrested by some of the volunteers in the city of Zliten, with some of his cousins for being a family Zadam, which was attended by some of her children in the events of June 9 , and the time of his arrest, such as prayer Alfjrandma was going to a bakery, and was taking him and his next to the restaurant skill near a mosque boys Ahamada, under the pretext that they want to ask him about some things, and there was forced to put precordia was threatened with weapons, and called him a traitor and " rat ", and then transferred to the island rotation center of the city, and there are known Alybed of volunteers and members of the battalion who were of the support which the tyrant, and the number was about 15 people, struck by them, as was insulting and cursing.
Then he made some of the members of the battalion interrogated him and with him about their relationship martyr Tariq Ahamada, he denied he and those with any connection to him a martyr, struck and the transfer of the puppies to the headquarters of the military police Mqidaomasob eyes, and upon arrival found a number of prisoners, who led them bad luck to the prison.
*** ***
At 10:00 AM / Friday.
Transfer selected for interrogation, blindfolded, and the investigator - as mentioned - the city of Zliten, where certain than that of the tone and style of the investigator, as well as by the investigator to identify the very "selected" which was the same name "selected", where he told the mayor: The grandfather is a good man, but you and your father (.....).
Try investigator struggling to lure Muktar to make any confession, and threatened that he will kill him without mercy if it is proved that accused him, but the mayor was adamant about his denial to the charge of participating in the case of "the events of 9 June", said the investigator that he was ready to die if any investigator single piece of evidence on his claim.
Questions and the longer the investigation and there were many ways to the investigator, and was among those asked about his relationship is also Tariq Ahamada, answered them that you mean the life of the martyr Tariq Ahamada? They beat him and said to him: Say: "carrion Tariq" O (....).

*** ***

Eventually selected and transferred to a room with metal Talo car, known in Libya as (Sheila), and when you sit in, they heard some of the guards talking about Tripoli and Maj. Gen. 32, the following They knew that their station is the headquarters of Gen. 32.

Mukhtar and his colleagues felt the unknown fate that awaits them as they j their way to Tripoli, and the increased narrowness which was doing the commander of the car that was deliberately harassed and Aivahman malleable intentional leaving the road and right and left bending strongly, even collide with vehicle barriers detainees detention (Sheila).

Then I guess the massacre and miraculous escape will be covered in part 2?

The same name appears on the Facebook list of 40 names "of some of the survivors of massacre Guantanamo Yarmuk." These are in Arabic only, translated by me using Google and other tools.
#40 مختار محمود الزدام - Mahmoud Mukhtar Zadam

Oddly, this same name order, given in the other (translated) internet sources above, is wrong. Google Translate, anyway, does it. But if the Arabic original is anything to go by, and they do write right-to-left, it's Mukhtar Mahmoud Zadam, as given by La-Croix. So I decide this all the same person.

Thanks to Hurriya, another French language source, Belgian news site Lalibre, August (Google translated).

"The skeletons were removed for burial Sunday," said Mahmoud Mokhtar Zedan, 23 years. The serious face, he inspects the four charred walls of the room where he spent more than two months after his arrest in Zliten, June 17, with three other rebels.

The student, who "took up arms in the early days of the revolution," said to have escaped a massacre in the neighborhood of Salahaddin, south of Tripoli. On the evening of August 23, men "dressed in military," he said belonging to the brigade adjacent, open the door of the shed where he wastes away with about 150 inmates. The prisoners are killed "shot", one by one. The authors of the massacre would then set fire to the building by throwing more grenades.

He then ran away, and hid at the home of local Nouri Massoud.

Shed Massacre Witnesses: el Goula/Algala

2012-02-03T03:54:00.000-08:00

February 3, 2012

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This sub-post is to address three witness names/images in detail to clear up a spot of confusion between them. The family name similarity and brotherly captivity details suggest there are only two escapees described between the three names, But the imagery of them raises enough questions I'll hold off deciding how to mergethese

The El Goula Brothers: an early account
Lindsey Hilsum reported for ITN News, on August 26, from the Mansoura district of northern Tripoli (video). A day before any other video reports on survivors of the Khamis Brigade shed massacre, and not even clearly described yet, she heard from two brothers at the apartment (flat) of the el-Goula family (phoenetic spelling, not typed on-screen).

Only one of these spoke to ITN - a heavily-bearded and traditionally-dressed "Munir" (first name only typed). Hilsum related Munir's story of being “arrested last Saturday night [the 20th] and interrogated for three days, but then released [sic] by Gaddafi’s soldiers. Munir’s story is almost too raw to relate.” He weeps. The locale isn’t specified, but the date is right (Tuesday the 23rd implied). The high number of dead and the use of grenades that he describes suggests it could only mean the shed massacre. “He says somehow he escaped,” but doesn’t explain how, and he “believes 20 soldiers and more than a hundred prisoners were killed.” [ITN] As translated, he said:

“When they opened the gate, mercenaries came and pushed the soldiers back into the jail. They shot an old man in the leg. I didn’t think they would kill us, but the mercenaries entered the jail and shot the prisoners in the legs. One took a grenade and threw it in. Five times they opened the door, shot inside, and threw a grenade. A lot of people died. My brother Abdullah was behind me.”

Abdullah apparently perished, or at least hadn't been heard from by the 26th.

Munir El Goula’s silent, unnamed brother who sat for the interview was apparently not Abdullah,who implicitly died, or was missing, this brother was also shown on ITN. This brother is shown limping stiffly into the room, as if slightly injured. Hilsum said "two sons are still missing. Two have returned from a horrific ordeal.” The singular form of “ordeal” suggests he survived and escaped the same massacre as his brother. He looks nothing like his brother, with the burly build, shaved chin, and muttonchop sideburns.

Amr Dau Algala, 34, Former Police Officer: A Late Account
The name alone wouldn’t be clear, but the details, especially on brothers (see above and below) suggests this newly discovered witness is the same person as one of the above, and the first name doesn't sound like Munir. Amr Dau spoke to Kim Sengupta at the Independent, reported only on September 10, two weeks after Hiulsum's invterview above.

Amr Dau Algala was picking through the ashes with a stick when he came across the charred and broken bones. A little later he found the buckle. "Only my brother was wearing a belt in our group. This looks like my brother's," he whispered, looking down at the twisted piece of metal.

Around 60 men, prisoners of Muammar Gaddafi's regime, died when guards first opened fire and then tossed grenades into the warehouse where they were being held. Among them was Amr and three of his brothers. They ran for their lives amid the flames, noise and confusion and escaped. A fourth, 25-year-old Abdullah, is missing.

"The last time I saw Abdullah was there, sitting in that corner," said Mr Algala, pointing at a blackened corner of the metal box, around 25 feet long and 20 feet wide, into which more than a hundred captives had been crammed. "He is young and looked very scared that morning. When the guards opened fire I started running. I looked back, but there was too much smoke, I could not see my brother. Some people got away after us, we are really hoping Abdullah was one of them, but we don't know."

Hmm... He wasn't one of those neutral "rebular" Libyan guys, but neither exatcly a fighter, he says.

Amr Dau Algala, 34, knew that he would receive particularly harsh treatment from the regime because he had joined the underground opposition in the Libyan capital while still a serving policeman.

He had done his bit to sabotage the machinery of state, he said, by destroying messages from embassies abroad he had been tasked to decode. But with Colonel Gaddafi clinging on to Tripoli, Mr Algala decided to play a more active part and started smuggling guns into the city.

"There were many, many police officers who were working in secret to bring down Gaddafi. But someone must have said something and there was a raid at night. They took me and my brothers away," Mr Algala recalled.

The Algalas were taken to Abu Salim prison, a place of fear where 1,200 inmates were slaughtered following riots in 1996. "We were beaten repeatedly there with sticks and pieces of hosepipe. They didn't even bother to question us much, they just kept hitting us," said Mr Algala. "After two days we were driven out of Abu Salim. I was put in the boot of the car and I wished that I would die there. I did not want to be taken out and tortured again. My hands were tied with wire, I could not move them, they swelled up."

Mr Algala and his brothers, among others, were locked up for two days and nights in a prison van at the "Khamis Brigade" headquarters. "I don't know how we survived that. But we were taken out and the beatings began immediately. Then we were put on chairs and given electric shocks. My whole body shook. I have never felt such pain. After that we were just thrown into the room and left there."

The maltreatment started again soon afterwards. One warehouse, with bloodstains on the walls and ceiling, coils of orange and green rope on the floor, was where prisoners had been strung up by their wrists [or ankles?]. "They were begging to be cut down, but the guards would not listen," said Mr Algala. "They really had no pity. One man had been shot in the leg. He was so thirsty that he drank his own piss. But still they would not give him any water. I believe he died before the guards started shooting."

Mr Algala recalled that one day the guards announced that Khamis al-Gaddafi was arriving himself and the prisoners would be free. "People got very excited and the guards started laughing. They said that being 'free' of this place meant that we will all be killed. We did not know whether to believe them or not."

The threat proved to be real the following morning when the murders began. "Three guards came to the doorway and started firing, they took turns to fire, then there were loud bangs. I realised they were throwing in grenades. We were all shouting and we ran out," said Mr Algala. "We climbed over that wall and we ran through the houses. They came after us, firing, and I saw some people fall. But others got away.

"Maybe my brother was one of them. Maybe he was injured and someone is looking after him. Maybe we shall hear from him soon."

So, anyway, theIndependent also had a photo of Mr. Algala inside the shed, and just outside it showing a scar on his wrist from the wire. The former was captioned "Amr Dau Algala stands in the the warehouse where Gaddafi loyalists slaughtered their rebel victims," and is cropped in the center below, flanked by the Elgoula brothers - Munir and... Amr Dau?

Too much forehead? Wrong hairline? Right weight? The sideburns and clean chin seen three days after the escape do suggest the style of a police officer, on an American TV show if not in Libya. The timeline suggests more than three days, doesn't it? At least an action-packed five days. Coincidental sets of four brothers with so many parallels and arguably consistent photos? A brother with a different story from his other brother's?

And which brother's belt buckle was that? Did it belong to Abdullah, or to the fourth brother no one talks about and we should presume dead?

The Tripoli Massacres: Shed Massacre Witness List

2012-02-02T02:00:00.000-08:00

September 2, 2011
incomplete, last update Feb. 5

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Jan. 23: Quite a few new witnesses/survivors to add now, especially after

Nonetheless, I'll be taking a break from re-building or adding to this list, deciding who goes where, proper translations, etc... It overwhelms me at the moment.

Also, new comments are not taking on this thread. I think ay way over 100 now (holy crap, 207!), some of them long, it has finally gotten "full." I've heard of that happening before at blogs, and it seems to have happened here (even my own test comment doesn't appear). For the moment, I'm starting a separate post for further comments, and I'll also see about cleaning this one up, deleting extraneous comments, etc. Eventually.

Jan. 13:
Shit...
meaning, I looked back at this post and it was blank. I went to bed at that point.

Sometimes when I select a bit of text, it selects everything instead. Never imagined I'd hit delete, not notice it, and then hit publish, but (aside from hackers) that makes most sense.

It was a massive post, hard to re-create, even with the 90% backup I have in Word. Anyone happen to to know where a "cached" version of this post can be found? A google search has the link for it, but it brings up a blank page.

I may re-do it as more flat text with minimal formatting to make it easier. I thought about splitting off different combinations of the other categories (prisoners at other times, second-hand escapees, outside witnesses, and escapee maybes), no decision yet. All the pictures are at my Photobucket account still, one to prove it below. And no huge rush, it's not like the whole world is lining up just for this list.
...
The list if not the details just yet (I have it all, just delayed in getting it back up). Here will be all short accounts, and for longer, important, related, or confused accounts, highlights and links (eventually) to where I've split the rest off for a closer look.

(Alleged) Massacre Escapees Who Spoke to the Media (24)
1 - Mabrouk Abdullah, 45
2 – Abdel Salaam Ashour, 42
3 - Fathallah Abdullah al Ashter, 70
4 - Tahir Ahmed El Bahbah, 16/17
According to the Facebook group مجزرة معتقل اليرموك (Yarmouk Prison Massacre), which provides an account and a photo of this young man (born 1994), he was arrested the night of August 18 with three cousins (Ali Mohamed el Bahbah, Abdulaziz Faraj el-Bahbah, Abdullah Abdul Razak el-Bahbah). All four, aside from Ali Mohammed, are included in the group's list of 40 escapees [FB1]. He says they were transferred to Yarmouk on the 19th, saw an attempted escapee killed on the 20th, and were set free by a guard also named Abdul Razak just before the massacre:

On Tuesday, 2011.8.23 at half past five pm came to us one of the volunteers and his name is Abdul Razak Baroni said we should flee from here half an hour after it was released to you [unlocked], but are only five minutes [5:35 or so] came up came up volunteers and they fired on us and packages of pomegranate explosive [grenades] which led to the martyrdom of many of us and the injury of others, but I lost I was [injured] in my shoulder bullet and shrapnel...
[...translation-jumbled details of his co-escapees, a few named and hometowns given, then soldiers stopped to re-load, and...]
...[We] jumped, I and me on the walls of the houses near the camp and ended up to a farm and we stayed from Tuesday night until Friday without eating, but drops of water picked up from the tube distillation of water at the farm... [FB3]

5 - Abdulrahim Ibrahim Bashir, 25

6 – Mohammed Bashir, 52 (left)
http://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2012/02/shed-massacre-witnesses-mohammed-bashir.html

7 - Aamir Benowen
(an odd and memorable case, via Global Post)

*8 – Ousama el Gardim

9 - Munir El Goula (left)
Shed Massacre Witnesses: el Goula/Algala

10a - Munir El Goula's brother (unnamed)
See again El Goula/Algala

*10b - Amr Dau Algala (11th escapee, or same as the above?)
See again El Goula/Algala

11 - Abdulatti Musbah Haleem, 43

12 - Ali Hamouda
13 - Mustafa Abdullah El Hitri/Atiri, 26/27
14 – Hussein al-Lafi , 40
*15 – Abul [sic] Basit Maoma, Saad Abdul Baset Amauma, 49
16 - Ahmed Mohammed, 25
17 - “Mohammad” (pseudonym)
18 – “Omar” (pseudonym)
19 - Muneer Masoud Own, 33
20 - Akram Mohamed Saleh
*21 - Hisham Al Taher Al-Sari
22 – Bashir Mohammed Sedik/ al-Siddeq/Germani
23 - Abed Rizaq Ghazim Senussi
*24 - Gazi Tarar / Mansur Taha Gazi/“Taha,” 30
25 – Ibrahim Omar Zadan

*26 - Moktar Mahmoud Zedan/Zadam, 23
As usual, from Zliten. Listed on the Facebook list. Spoke on an amateur video and to a French news site. A guard helped him escape.
http://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2012/02/shed-massacre-witnesses-moktar-mahmoud.html

*27 - Unnamed [HGV] [GH]

27 tops Amnesty International's count of 23 known as of August 26. Adding the three 2nd hand witnesses who didn't die around the compound, it's 30. I imagine at least half these names weren't on the AI list, meaning we could get 40 or more survivors if it was all pooled together. That's really proven, right? Come on, Amnesty, they don't need "protection," they need fame as the living martyrs they are. Many have come forawrd to the Yarmouk holocaust Facebook group, producing their own list of 40 names (all just those from Zliten? Zlitni escapees of this same massacre are numbered elsewhere as 41). There are only about eight crossing over with this list, and probably no more with Amnesty. That would leave us, where? 70, 75 alleged escapees?

Other categories:

Maybe Escapees: more jumbled, forthcoming.
One new sample: Unnamed [SM4] [SM5]
The last is called a "survivor" and photographed identifying his brother, somehow, among the skeletons and then crying.

Other Specified Escapees, Second-Hand (6)
1 - The Man on the Stairs
2/3 - Abdulsalam and Hussain, last name unknown
4/5 - Abdulaziz Faraj El Bahbah, Abdul Razak Abdullah El Bahbah, (see Tahir Ahmed El Bahbah)

Shed Prisoners at Other Times (10)
1 - Abdul Hadi Abusheiwa (Justice)
2 - "Ali" (pseudonym)
3 - Moayed Burani / Moiayad Abu Ghraim, 28
4/5/6 - Chris Cobb-Smith, Feras Kilani, Goktay Koraltan
7 - Jamal Rabbani (Lieutenant Colonel)
8 - Jamal al-Ragai
9 – Imam Moussa al-Sadr
* 10 – Sabri Tabbal (unless he claims to have escaped the massacre itself).
one of the survivors of the Yarmouk holocaust camp, making an appeal for families of martyrs...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soVI32OyvbI

Witnesses from Outside the Shed (13)
1 - Salem Abdul
2 - Abdul Basit (family name not given), 42
3 - Ali Boukhatwa
4 - An executioner: Ibrahim Sadeq Khalifah
Shed Massacre Witnesses: The Captive Soldiers "Confess"
5 - Abdelmenem Faraj Labani
6 - An Executioner: "Laskhar" (pseudonym)
Shed Massacre Witnesses: The Captive Soldiers "Confess"
7 - Nouri Massoud
8 - Khaled Oub
9 - Abdulatif Rafaii, 42
10 - A Government Official: "Dr. Salim Rajub/Rajip" aka Ahmed al-Farjani, aka Dr. Salem al Farjani, 42/43
11 - Ahmed Tayel
12 - Ahmed Zaydan, 32
13 - Unnamed

Sources:
[AI] http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/libya-detainees-killed-al-gaddafi-loyalists-2011-08-26
[AP] Retreating Gaddafi forces killed detainees, say survivors. Aug 29, 2011, 12.57AM IST http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/Retreating-Gaddafi-forces-killed-detainees-say-survivors/articleshow/9775095.cms
[C4] Alex Thomson, correspondent, 28 August http://www.channel4.com/news/evidence-of-libya-massacre-as-remains-of-50-people-found
[CBC] CBC News: Libyan massacre site: Charred bodies were discovered in a Tripoli warehouse in an apparent mass execution by pro-Gadhafi forces, Susan Ormiston reports. Date: 28/08/11 http://video.ca.msn.com/watch/video/libyan-massacre-site/16a8w45nr?cpkey=cbcc2011-2608-1158-0043-210705052600%7C%7C%7C%7C
[CNN1] The Warehouse Massacre. Added On September 13, 2011. CNN's Arwa Damon talks about her experience in Libya and the uncovering of a warehouse where captives were executed. http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/international/2011/09/13/ex-damon-warehouse-massacre.cnn
[CNN2] CNN. August 28,2011. http://articles.cnn.com/2011-08-28/world/libya.massacre.report_1_pro-gadhafi-forces-warehouse-libyan-leader-moammar-gadhafi?_s=PM:WORLD
[DS] More than 50 Bodies Found in Tripoli Warehouse
28/08/11 00:03 CET
http://www.euronews.net/2011/08/28/more-than-50-bodies-found-in-tripoli-warehouse/
[DT] Andrew Gilligan. “Children 'among 180 slaughtered' in Libya.” The Daily Telegraph. August 26, 2011 http://www.canada.com/news/Children+among+slaughtered+Libya/5308114/story.html
http://feb17.info/news/children-among-180-slaughtered-in-tripoli
[FP] Fifty charred skeletons found in Tripoli. By Dominique Soguel From: AFP http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/fifty-charred-skeletons-found-in-tripoli/story-e6frfku0-1226123709811
[FB1] ar-ar.facebook.com/rabta2011/posts/217335248332204
[FB3] حادثة اعتقال طاهر أحمد البحباح Posted around Nov. 20, 2011.http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=283020658409471&set=pu.265287746849429&type=1
[G] Gadhafi forces killed detainees, survivors say. Karin Laub. AP foreign, via the Guardian. Sunday August 28 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/9819413
[GH] Youtube video, posted Aug. 29. Al Ghaoui Hesna - Tripoli - 2011.08.28. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsqe1oTA_RA
[GP] "Libya: Where are the 50,000 missing prisoners? The grisly discovery of 50 charred bodies has fueled fears." Tracey Shelton. Global Post. August 29, 2011 09:39 http://mobile.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/110829/libya-gaddafi-prisoners-amnesty-international
[HGV] Líbia: tömegsír lehet a titkos börtönnél. HVG.hu. August 28, 2011 17:10 http://hvg.hu/vilag/20110828_tomegsir_titkos_bortonnel_libia
[HR] "Libya: Evidence Suggests Khamis Brigade Killed 45 Detainees." Human Rights Watch. August 29, 2011. http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/08/29/libya-evidence-suggests-khamis-brigade-killed-45-detainees
[JR] Julian Reichelt. “Hier Liess de Diktator Noch vor Einer Woche Sein Gegner Töten.” Bild. August 28, 2011. 23:54
http://www.bild.de/politik/ausland/muammar-gaddafi/bild-reporter-in-der-hinrichtungsstaette-des-diktators-19638796.bild.html
[LF] Libye: le régime accusé de massacres. AP Publié le 28/08/2011 à 18:46. http://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/2011/08/28/97001-20110828FILWWW00197-libye-le-regime-accuse-de-massacres.php
[M] Libya: rebels imprisoned in baking shed before being gunned down and burned alive
by Martin Fricker, Daily Mirror 29/08/2011 http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2011/08/29/libya-rebels-imprisoned-in-baking-shed-before-being-gunned-down-and-burned-alive-115875-23379749/
[N24] News 24. Pro-Gaddafi 'mass murderer' awaits fate. 2012-01-31.
http://www.news24.com/Africa/News/Pro-Gaddafi-mass-murderer-awaits-fate-20120131
[OG] Orla Guerin. Libya: Inside Tripoli's warehouse of horror
BBC News. 29 August 11 05:34 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/world-africa-14705519
[RS] Richard Spencer, Telegraph, Aug 28
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8728597/Libya-last-act-of-bloody-vengeance-by-Khamis-Brigade.html
[SM1] Seamus Murphy/VII photo, September 2, 2011
http://www.viiarchive.com/webgate/preview.php?TABPREV=PREVIEW&SECTION=SEARCHRESULT&IMGID=00109337
[SM2] Seamus Murphy/VII photo, September 2, 2011
http://www.viiarchive.com/webgate/preview.php?TABPREV=PREVIEW&SECTION=SEARCHRESULT&IMGID=00109339
[SM3] Seamus Murphy/VII photo, August 27, 2011 http://www.viiarchive.com/webgate/preview.php?TABPREV=PREVIEW&SECTION=SEARCHRESULT&IMGID=00109398
[SM4] Seamus Murphy/VII photo, August 27 2011. http://viiphoto.wg.picturemaxx.com/id/00109408
[SM5] Seamus Murphy/VII photo, August 27 2011.http://viiphoto.wg.picturemaxx.com/id/00109407
[SN] http://news.sky.com/home/video/16057981
[SP] Gadhafi forces killed detainees, survivors say. BEN HUBBARD, Associated Press, KARIN LAUB, Associated Press
http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Gadhafi-forces-killed-detainees-survivors-say-2140557.php#ixzz1Wm3Cpgzg
[TA] Anthony Lloyd. The Australian. Aug 29 http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/muammar-gaddafis-son-khamis-reportedly-visited-prisoners-hours-before-they-were-massacred/story-e6frg6so-1226124330907
[TP] Evidence of 'Mass Killing' by the Libyan Dictator's Forces Found In Tripoli. Tripoli Post.
27/08/2011 http://tripolipost.com/articledetail.asp?c=1&i=6777
[TV] Telegraph video, Aug 28 -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5SBvHacJgY
[VA] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBxAIVsmnw0
Libya: Massacre de la base de Yarmouk en Libye
Uploaded by 123VivaAlgerieNew on Aug 28, 2011

Green Resistance Updates Jan. 30

2012-01-30T04:35:00.000-08:00

January 30, 2012

The following a largely re-posted article from Pravda, Jan. 29. I can't vouch for any of it, but find these excerpts highly interesting. (emphasis mine)

Lisa Karpova
Pravda.Ru

The National Transitional Council (NTC), Al Qaeda and other NATO backed terrorists are unable to subdue the country. Not only are they incapable of running a country or government, but they can't even agree among themselves and they are eating each other alive.

...

What the west fails to understand is the unique relationship among Libyans and their army and the fact that the Libyan people themselves were and are the true government of this country. It is called the Jamahiriya, Government by people's councils.

Any advances made by the west and their terrorist stooges are only temporary, the situation is fluid and changes on a daily basis.

The Green Resistance, formerly the Libyan Army, controls most of the country and every day, more and more areas are going Green.
[...]
At every opportunity, the Green Resistance, unlike the NATO installed terrorists, take the time and trouble to look after the needs of the Libyan people. No matter how difficult the fight, this remains true.

That would fit with what it seems like they did at Bani Walid. They helped the locals kickout the brutalizers, and then let the locals force down their proud green flags to prevent further trouble.

One reported example of them helping the world learn about what's happening in Libya was reported by Libya S.O.S., as Petri alerts me:

(3) In major military operations around Misrata at the coast of Libya, Green Army found bodies of 17 Somali immigrants at the coast of Misrata, cause of death remain to be established, an investigation was not immediately carried since it was a heavy fighting zone.

Continuing with Karpova, their spirit is spreading all over.

University students in Tarhunah hoist the green flag and chanted slogans of God, Muammar and Libya.

Clashes between the Libyan resistance and thieves in Gheryan result in the killing of 16 of the bands

The city of Bani Walid, recently liberated by Green Resistance reported NATO jets flying overhead while Al Qaeda is attempting to mount an offensive

... Chaos in Tripoli, says Karpova's sources

Explosion of a grenade on junta-rats military camp in [Abu] Salim, by brave green soldiers of resistence at [Abu] Salim.

SGP introduces a state of emergency in parts of Abu Salim, Ain Zara (auto explosion, three rats were killed), Al-Furdzhan [Khelet al-Furjan]. "The threat of attacks on important targets in these areas - the maximum." Squads of rats contract to these areas.

Touhami Dr. Hamza has occurred January 27, 2012, announcing the popular uprising in Benghazi. He said the real revolution began (not NATO revolution) and that young Libyans will release Libya, young people like Moatassem, Seif, Saidi, Aisha will create the new Libya and liberate the country. He added that the people of Bani Walid told France Presse that the Libyan leader is alive in the hearts of Bani Walid

The Big Investigation Group Thing

2012-01-30T02:00:00.000-08:00

January 23, 2012
last edits Jan. 27

I have an extremely vague idea, spurred to renewed life by a recent comment from contributor Afrikat. I've said in the past this is academic, a history project, and there's no rush to get things done. But really, that's just necessity speaking in a different voice. I just don't have enough time at one time to do even half of what I'm driven inside to do. So one gets zen with delayed grartification of the desire to know.

And then there's the desire to act, which I have a harder time with, and which was the focus of his comment. If I may:

Yes, the Rats and their coalition partners in the axis of evil cannot be allowed to get away with it, and that's why this site and this page in particular (IMHO) are important. You have said somewhere this is a "history project" and so there's no need for any haste. I'd suggest this is also a campaigning site of sorts. In view of all the past and current media and other orchestrated disinformation and bias through ommision, maybe we need not just to debate the issues but also to conduct an incisive analysis of the plentiful data available here, and to disseminate it widely, including to the UN Human Rights Commission and to ICC, and to Aisha and her lawyer, among others.

A laudable line of thinking, if a bit thick on praise for this site in particular. I have been readying to take the case for rebel authorship of the Khamis Brigade shed massacre - a point within the whole I have no shame taking great pride in - to Physicians for Human Rights (more on that line of work here), and to others. I'm becoming aware that I, or we, need to move soon. The deepening mythology of the massacre and its light-skinned 'rebular Libyan guy' Zlitny martyrs only helps cement the idea this lie has gone too far to turn back from, and that it must be pushed through no matter the cost. There's a Muslim proverb about that being ignored in Libya in droves right now.

From there, I don't know. Somehow I think getting members explicitly behind a common idea with a name is a good start. Inspired by the clownish 9/11 "reseachhers" Citizen Investigation Team, I could suggest Global Citizen's Public Inquiry into War Crimes in the Libyan War. Something else better will surely be suggested.

I have been hit with ideas with broader implications I'm definitely not ready to take on - Human Rights Fraud Watch, for example. Or broader yet, the Future or Reality Foundation, promoting science and reality-based, factual reportage to hamper the ability of governments and others to create false realities to justify their agendas. Not getting any NED grants for that one.

But even keeping it narrower, seeing any reality flesh in a body around those bones seems heavy,if do-able. We (whoever signs on) could maybe do, or just stand by, what we have been doing, or at least what I have - put the emphasis on solving a few specific cases, and then raising concerns over others, based on well-established precedent. Then, all still talk but getting clearer and louder, we make a fancy report or three, have a web-site (a pro one I will not be establishing), get it all out there to relevant professionals and to journalists, have a press release, try to make the news, in alternative circuits at least. Careful crafting of the message to make it even remotely palatable to the masses, excellent graphics, etc...

All things I could do, but it's daunting to even consider it all alone in the time I have between working, sleeping, and life (other). And even if I essentially go it alone talking to relevant people and demanding they talk back, it would be nice to have a group I'm compelled by, as opposed to just me and my idiosyncratic insecurity clashing with their position of unavailable authority.

Then, there's not necessarily any need to re-invent the wheel, as exciting as it can be. Perhaps its best to latch onto someone else, like Global Civilians for Peace. Maybe they'd be able to absorb a bunch of data, and help whip it up into something more actionable and even actionated. Specific ideas?

Straight to the ICC, UN bodies etc.? Somehow I have a hard time taking that as seriously. However, I imagine none of these people, aside from certain journalists maybe, wants to hear the troubling message that we all put bad guys in power there. And the ones who matter, as closed as they might make themselves, are who needs to be rung up about it.

Discuss, please. I'll be following this thread closer and contributing - research and writing break for a few days to focus on this bigger picture.

---
Jan. 27:
(continuing disinterest in tedium...)

The only thing that'll change or pierce my mood of "bleh", and force an enthusiastic response, would be some more input on this post and this post. Getting a group going, even just in name, a strategy discussed and agreed, the backlog of locked-up Arabic language evidence started on. THEN, when it's serving some concrete action on the hard parts, that will hopefully motivate me to magically be able to get all these other things done on top of the action stuff.

Maybe just the few most necessary things. Or maybe some volunteers can find a way to help with some of it? The list is right above. Whole re-formatted, updated, original posts can be submitted by e-mail, etc. Not to be presumptuous, and expect anyone to do anything, but...

Well, anyway, all my readers and contributors have been awesome, and the effect of this amazing mental activity all happening around me, coinciding what what "I find fascinating too!" is a bit of a rush. Lets my mind run away with me sometimes.

Anyone else so inclined? Let's run a ways, then.

Cheers!

- Undefined group explicit member #1 (in order of joining, not necc. rank), Adam Larson aka Caustic Logic, Spokane, WA, USA
- Others, may remain anonymous/screen name I think, right? Better than nothing...

The Tripoli Massacres: See-Through Salem {Masterlist}

2012-01-29T03:00:00.000-08:00

Dr. Salem al-Farjani Or, What Ever Became of Dr. Rajub?
December 15, 2011
last edits Jan. 29

<<The Tripoli Massacres

I have an old Lockerbie research friend, Eddie, to thank for this tip and the intital research, to which I (and then contributors, via comments here) added a lot. It was thanks to my work he saw the significance when he stumbled across this character Dr. Salem al-Farjani. In two important ways this man may be relevant to our understanding of the mysterious massacres across the capitol in August and September.

First, an Associated Press Article by Vanessa Gera, December 10, explains al Farjani's relevance in "liberated Libya" as a big wheel in the NTC's search for the war's missing and unidentified. He's to specialize in the names without bodies and bodies without names, anonymous corpses in mass graves, from both sides but especially rebel people, since Gaddafi loyalists were the evil killer side. In part, his job will likely be to help the NTC put acceptable identities on the victims of massacres carried out by their own forces - disappearing loyalists, replacing them with more martyrs, made-up if need be, and more black paint for the past.

The governing National Transitional Council has founded a national commission to deal with the matter [of the thousands reported missing]. It is headed by al-Farjani, a cardiac surgeon, and a DNA specialist, Othman Abdul-Jalil [sic].

The DNA part of this "National Missing Persons Commission" can be quite helpful if done right, and I have no cause to doubt the credibility of his co-chair, actually named Dr. Mohamed Othman. But Dr.al Farjani, as we'll see, has known issues.

Dr. Salem's audition for his part of the job, as Gera describes it, was an insurgency-long, life-and-family-endangering, one-man fact-finding mission. On about February 20, “bodies of protesters that were brought to his sprawling 1,200-bed Tripoli Medical Center were seized by Gadhafi forces before their families could recover them." This fiendish behavior has been widely alleged, but never well illustrated. The doc plans to change that, and has for nearly a year now been taking careful note of the cartoonish villainy, even going outside the hospital on "fact-finding missions to the sites of suspected massacres or mass graves."

Did he take one of these trips, on August 27, to the Yarmouk military base south of town, site of a likely rebel massacre a few days earlier?

Field Work
Now for what the guy looks like, which-aside from the "Dr." part and "Salim" part, and proximity to massacres part, is what caught Eddie's attention: The photograph used in that article was also cited in a news blurb: “In this Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2011 photo, Dr. Salem al-Farjani, 43, speaks to a militia member as they stand in front of photos of men who went missing during Libya's civil war.” The photograph (cropped view below) shows a man who looks rather similar to another Tripoli-based Dr. Salim/Salem, who spoke to several media outlets in late August about a massacre he treaveled to the site of - though not far, he says.

The largest mass-killing allegation of all, over 150 people killed with guns and grenades, the alleged Khamis Brigade shed massacre with too many witnesses including himself, was right by this doctor's house south of Tripoli, he says. He saw it all happen, he told Agence France-Presse (AFP), Sky News, Anthony Loyd, Human Rights Watch, Liberation, perhaps the New York Times and even more, depending.

The facial similarity between the two is not overwhelming at all, but it is there. On closer inspection (keep reading), it gets better. I see the same distinct hairline, same eyebrows and eyelids, muscular, furrowed brows shading his eyes. I see a consistent long nose, cheeks, chin, and ears. He seems to have lost about ten pounds and grown in his beard between the two images. He could have more of a tan now as well, but the washed-out video (lightened more here) is not too clear. The taste in shirt colors is consistent enough too, if not any major clue.

Faces aside, recall that both men shown above are massacre-obsessed or massacre-witnessing, rebel-assisting Tripoli doctors named Salim/Salem (as given, anyway). What stands in the way of linking the two as one is the different last name, and that we have no reason to believe that Dr. Salim al-Farjani, one of the NTC's top massacre-solving and ID-deciding people, is such a total faker. Other than the fact that he may have been caught faking, known reason or not.

But faces not aside, two further images from between his Fat Elvis and Thin Elvis pahses show the transition. Felix found a valuable Youtube video that sinks it.

لقاء مع الدكتور سالم الفرجاني عضو اللجنة الوطنية للتعرف على هويات ضحايا حرب التحرير

[auto-translate: "A meeting with Dr. Salem Ferjany member of the National Committee to get to know the identities of the victims of the war of liberation"]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1aak3Etl-A

It was posted October 1, so presumably from shortly before that date. I had hoped a video would reveal enough of his voice to make a clear match, but in fluent Arabic Dr. Salem sounds little like Dr. Salim in his halting, funny-sounding English. The raw video is a bit too dark to be sure, but with enhancement (adjustment of "levels" in Photoshop - is that "gamma?" -may have over-done it, sorry), the man's face is uncanny in its similarity to Rajip's, as opposed to his own about two months later.

As a nail in the coffin goes, contributor Petri Krohn notes (in the comments here), and the image above confirms, both men have a distinctive gap in their lower teeth, apparently just left of center (our right). I suspect that upon seeing something, perhaps the October video, someone alerted the doctor how much he resembled the guy on the news. It was perhaps this that spurred him to start jogging heavily and to stop shaving, in the hopes no one else would notice.

More images: Dr. Rajub speaking to AFP, late in the afternoon, from a Spanish-dubbed broadcast. Tooth gap visible here too. Note the blue alligator shirt Dr. Rajub wears here, as when speaking to Sky News earlier (above).

Interesting then, as if we needed it at this point, is Dr. al-Farjani wearing the same shirt, when speaking about the "more than 1,700" prison massacre, on September 26. From an Al Arabiya video. He's starting a mustache it seems, suggesting the October 1 video was some days or weeks old as it was posted.

The Doctor's Dad
The Gera article metions how with even his wife out of the loop, the doctor's "only confidant was his father, who would travel with him on fact-finding missions to the sites of suspected massacres or mass graves. He hoped the presence of a 70-year-old man would make him seem less suspicious to Gadhafi’s men."

Survivor Fathallah Abdullah
- the doctor's dad?

It is noteworthy that among the too-many alleged miraculous escapees, there is one rather toothsome 70-year-old man who turned up at the massacre site and spoke with Bild (Germany) and BBC. This was on August 27, as "Dr. Salim Rajub" was there. He was named Fathallah Abdullah al Ashter, as given, and said he escaped but lost his three sons in the onslaught, none of them named Salem or Salim. It could be true, I suppose.

Further Adventures of See-Through Salem

See-Through Salem: "Dr.Salim" Speaks, Coach Salem Manages
The man called Rajub, on Aug. 27: What he said, to whom, and how he interacted with the other "witnesses," as seen on camera. Plenty of speculation, but no shortage of decent evidence to support it. Was he the puppet master here?

A "Dr. Salim," a "Mr. al Farjani, and a Key Escapee.
The link "Dr. Rajub" showed in apparently coaching escapee witness Atiri/el Hitri brings to point the question whether the Dr. is also Mr. Ahmed al Farjani, who says he sheltered the escapee. This, the el Hitri link, and their teamwork on getting this story to the International Criminal Court are explored here.

See-Through Salem: Rise of a Massacre Masseuse
Government service, fact-finding about loyalist crimes tasked to the fact-seeding, fact-finding team of Dr. al Farjani and himself.

Al Farjani Hits the Big Time
Ramsay and Loyd and perhaps Worth were only the start for Dr. al Farjani's clandestine "fact-finding" missions at the Yarmouk shed. Within a month he was in the government's committees to solve massacres, and by November he was returning again and again to the massacre site with more influential people yet. On November 3, it was UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon. On the 23rd, it was ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo. The last has a video finally with the tour guide, wearing a jacket if not a tie, speaking in Dr, Rajub's English.

Standing Questions / Troubling Implications
Dr. al-Farjani might now try to argue he wasn't faking when he spoke to numerous media outlets without using his family name once. Did he fear reprisal? Is Rajub his middle name? Did he have a new or second home behind the Yarmouk base? Or a practice he kept there, as he also said. Did the media press him to claim he saw more than he did? (Some of these are raised in comments below, a ways down.)

Asking if Dr. Farjani has an alibi for 11 AM on August 27 is plain silly; we know right where he was at the time. But what about 7:30 PM on the 23rd? He probably has a reverse alibi, which his family and colleagues might know of, proving he could not have witnessed the killing of those dozens massacred and charred blank in that shed south of Tripoli.

If he's not able to skate through with arguments that he didn't lie, what are the proper charges for the Libyan people to file for this crime against reality? Because behind this apparent deceit is a likely rebel massacre it was designed to conceal, and in front of it is the very real danger that the good doctor was hired to do much more of the same.

So ... Dr. Salem al-Farjani wants to help since “people are suffering. They want to know the fate of their loved ones.” There are families attached to the approximately 150-180 government soldiers and/or civilian others, many alleged "mercenary" types, who were apparently slaughtered at or near the Yarmouk military base. They never turned up acknowledged as captive, dead, or alive, though some said they "fled like rats" to nowhere in particular. From the timeline clues, one could fairly surmise that they were killed at their stations by NATO bombs and/or the Misrata Brigades, before the latter started burning their corpses after capturing the brutalized base late on the 23rd - the specified date of the massacre (see the link, entry "Wednesday, 6:15 am").

Will Dr. Farjani be helping solve that one, after fire has erased the best direct clues who the victims really were? After Dr. Rajub went there and pretended to see the vanishing soldiers themselves kill the same number of perhaps invented 'rebular' Libyan guys? After two dozen uninjured escapees, partly shepherded by the doctor, swore they escaped somehow from as many different versions of the massacre?

Our subject alleged regime use of acid to erase clues - fire was known to be used to erase clues at Yarmouk, and the rebels were apparently in control when the fire was set. Dr. al-Farjani might have been there when the cover-story was inserted in the place of those lost clues. He may have helped seed the lie himself, in a fact-making mission to a massacre site. And he even says Libya "won’t have reconciliation" until his work is enshrined in the nation's new legal history.

I must say this closing line from from the Gera piece is extremely reassuring as to how his commission will perform:

Officials stress that they want to help find the missing on all sides.

“We don’t discriminate,” said Hatem el-Turki, the head of the Libyan Society of the Missing.

See-Through Salem: Rise of a Massacre Masseuse

2012-01-29T01:00:00.000-08:00

January 29, 2012

<< See-Through Salem: Dr. Salem al-Farjani Or, What Ever Became of Dr. Rajub?

Shortly after he visited the Khamis Brigade massacre shed, put on his "Dr. Salim Rajub" performance for the world's media (and helped the survivors put on their own), Dr. Salem al Farjani was hired by the interim NTC government. Perhaps specifically to repeat the feat more officially and nationwide, he was made co-chairman and sometimes acting chairman of the National Missing Persons Commission, dedicated to finding which of the dead and missing were Gaddafi regime victims. Judging by his performances so far, he will probably help find that all of them were.

Just when he took on this role is not entirely clear. But less than a month after his Rajub act, on September 25, he was speaking as a member of the government committee to prove the long-alleged regime atrocity of the "Abu Salim Prison massacre." He expressed certainty that the non-human bones found near the prison in August were of the alleged 1,270 victims (or "more than 1,700," as he rounded the number up).

(to be fixed-up later)

A recent Associated Press Article by Vanessa Gera, December 10, mentions al-Farjani's relevance in "liberated Libya." He's a big wheel in the NTC's search for the war's missing and unidentified, the anonymous corpses in mass graves, from both sides but especially rebel people, since Gaddafi loyalists were the evil killer side. In part, his job will likely be to put acceptable identities on the victims of massacres carried out by their own forces - disappearing loyalists, replacing them with more martyrs, made-up if need be, and more black paint for the past.

The governing National Transitional Council has founded a national commission to deal with the matter [of the thousands reported missing]. It is headed by al-Farjani, a cardiac surgeon, and a DNA specialist, Othman Abdul-Jalil [sic].

The DNA part of this "National Missing Persons Commission" can be quite helpful if done right, and I have no cause to doubt the credibility of his co-chair, actually named Dr. Mohamed Othman. But something tells me this is added just to sound fancy and lend finality to decisions made in other ways, with a careful system of endemic sample mix-ups. True science will likely have little effect on the process, aside from the sheen of hard science.

Dr. Salem's audition for his part of the job, as Gera describes it, was an insurgency-long, life-and-family-endangering, one-man fact-finding mission. On about February 20, “bodies of protesters that were brought to his sprawling 1,200-bed Tripoli Medical Center were seized by Gadhafi forces before their families could recover them." This fiendish behavior has been widely alleged, but never well illustrated. The doc plans to change that, and has for nearly a year now been taking careful note of the cartoonish villainy, even going outside the hospital on "fact-finding missions to the sites of suspected massacres or mass graves." As Eddie noted, the good doctor has to have seen a lot of the same shady things we have - probable rebel crimes pinned transparently on the villified, whipping-boy regime. He doesn't seem to have noticed, if so.

The surgeon took down the names of as many slain fighters as he could before they were hauled off by Moammar Gadhafi’s forces, presumably to be buried in mass graves. He concealed his files at home, hiding his activities even from his wife because of fears of retaliation by the regime.

Now the evidence he gathered is helping Libya’s new leadership as it intensifies a search for fighters who went missing in the war. The uncertainty over their fate is adding to the grievances in a land still traumatized by the dictator’s long rule and lingering tensions between those who supported him and revolutionary forces.

“We won’t have reconciliation in the country if we don’t take care of this,”al-Farjani said. “People are suffering. They want to know the fate of their loved ones.” [VG]

The Gera article notes how there is no firm estimate even of how many went missing, from both/all sides combined, during the course of this war the rebels started and NATO escalated.

Al-Farjani believes there could be 25,000 people still missing -- though part of his mission is to confirm a more precise figure. International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo put the possible total at around 20,000. Many political and army leaders have refused to give estimates, saying it will take time to determine the scope of the problem.

Al Arabiyah has this on the good doctor's reaction to the alleged discovery of the mass grave for the Abu Salim Prison probably fictitious massacre:

Salim al-Farjani, a member of the committee set up to identify the remains, appealed for international help.

“We call on foreign organizations and the international community to help us in this task of identifying the remains of more than 1,700 people,” said Farjani.

“We were invited to visit the place where the corpses of the prisoners at Abu Salim were found, where we saw scattered human bones,” he said.

Farjani also referred to “egregious acts committed against dead bodies, on which acid was poured to eliminate any evidence of this massacre.” [AA]

I had wondered where the 1,270 (a highly suspect number itself) had become, as sometimes reported, 1,700 (or "more than" that). It seems our friend and detective Dr. Salem might be the origin. Last we heard, the bones seen on the surface were not human, per the only people there qualified to even guess, and it has still, to my knowledge, never been exhumed (see here for details).

See-Through Salem: "Dr.Salim" Speaks, Coach Salem Manages

2012-01-28T03:00:00.000-08:00

January 24, 2012
Last edits Jan. 28

<< See-Through Salem: Dr. Salem al-Farjani Or, What Ever Became of Dr. Rajub?

Fact-Seeding, Amidst Fact-Finding?

As we've previously established here (explained in the above link and illustrated at left), one very useful alleged witness to the Khamis Brigade shed massacre, called Dr. Salim Rajub, seems to be physically the same person as one Dr. Salem al Farjani. That matters because the latter works for the NTC government, finding facts about massacres they want to make sure Gaddafi Loyalists are blamed for. Working for Tripoli, he will be gathering "facts" on a massacre he himself seeded facts about, blaming loyalists under a false name.
The ethical implications are simply astounding.

Having established that, we turn to just what the this "Dr. Rajub" did with his 15 minutes of fame under his false identity. The visual cue we started with was his interview, at the massacre site south of Tripoli, with Stuart Ramsay of Sky News. Theirs was apparently the first news team at the site, around 11 am on August 27 by the angle of sunlight. The man who looks and talks just like al Farjani is actually in two different segments, interviewed each time.

AFP spoke with him the same day many hours later, by the late afternoon sunlight in the video (see at right), and apparently somewhere in-between he gave an interview for a fascinating Global Post video, a later discovery recently found and mined by readers here.

On the same day or perhaps over the next few, I'm not sure, he also spoke to French paper Libération, to Anthony Loyd of the Times of London (but run in The Australian instead), apparently to Human Rights Watch, and possibly to Robert Worth of the New York Times (see below, and did I miss any?).

The correlation is only sometimes by name, and this is given differently throughout the time he spoke in this persona. Sky News called their interviewee first "Salim," then in the final, more inclusive report, as "Salim Rajip," no "doctor." In the first one he gives a fairly long version, mostly with standard details as below, not worth re-typing. At 1:55 he says "actually I'm living about 200 meters from here, and I heard some people shouting, from this place..."

At 3:25 he says "so, we guess about seven to ten people were escaped, and the rest of the people were killed here." He mentions three wounded escapees seen nearby shortly after the attack, who are now at the hospital and could be talked to. This local knows who can and can't be talked to and where they can be found. Take note. At 4:07, Ramsay asks al Farjani if any of the victims, any at all, might've been "mercenaries" killed by Rebels. He responds:

They were killed by Gaddafi forces, that's for sure. That's according to the witnesses, [pointing] and you can talk to them, and according to the people who actually escaped from here. That's for sure. They were killed by Gaddafi forces. That's sure. Sure.

Verbatim from the second video:

We were here near this mosque [Hurriya wonders - this one?] and we heard some people shouting. Right? We try - we're but 5, 10 people, we, we want to come here to see what's happening and see whether some people are calling for help. We hear some guns are going on, and their bombs are going on inside. And then when we just come by near, we found some snipers there, above that (pointing) and they're start shooting. So we went back, right? Next day morning, I mean after maybe, I don't know, one hour or so, everything is quiet. And there were about three people. injured, and they're escaped, okay, and they are now in Tripoli Medical Center.

He's the only witness or survivor, I believe, to single out the TMC, Dr.al-Farjani's workplace at the time. His account delivery to Ramsay is less than convincing; feel free to watch the video and see for yourself (linked above). Was he at home, near a mosque,or at home near the mosque? Who are the other 4-9 members of this "we?"

This second report has "Salim" bring forth another witness, Mustafa Abdullah el-Hitri/Atiri. He wasn't named there, but it's him (explained here). For the first report, Atiri wasn't ready, but was surrounded by men talking with him, as he somehow prepared. Once ready, he tells the tale, "Salim" translating his story to English, with his arm around the witness' shoulders. It's an unconvincing delivery for both, but the short edit cuts out the details of Mustafa's detention and escape. This is probably the worst part of all judging by his fuller narratives to other news outlets.

Dr. al Farjani spoke to AFP as "Dr. Salim Rajub," the full name I've adopted here as semi-official.

Dr Salim Rajub, who lives near the base, told AFP: "I am shocked, I never imagined I would see a scene like this in Libya [...] On August 23, we heard gunfire before breaking the (Ramadan) fast and people shouting for help, but there were snipers outside and nobody could get close. These men were killed by Kalashknikovs and hand grenades, and then they were burned."

Confirming that, a "Dr. Salem" spoke to Alex Loyd (who also spoke with el Hitri) with strange factual authority, almost like a man in the midst of a fact-finding mission like Dr. al Farjani is said to have gone on at the time:

"There are about 65 bodies in all either in the barn or yard," said Dr Salem, a local resident. "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 [25-50 now]. What has been done with the other bodies?"

Human Rights Watch did not speak with Atiri, but on the 27th interviewed an unnamed "local resident" with medical training, possibly our subject, who said:

Last Wednesday [sic - Aug 24], sometime after the early evening prayer, I heard the sound of heavy gunfire and grenades, then complete calm. Then in the evening, my neighbors came to me. They asked if I could help people with gunshot wounds…I told them to take them to the hospital. [The neighbors] were scared to take them to the hospital, so they kept them [at home].

Which hospital, one wonders? TMC is not named here, going against the Farjani ID, but I still suspect it's him.

Global Post spoke on the 27th with an unnamed man who is clearly Dr. al Farjani (a still at left), apparently still playing the same role he did for Sky News. Here he said:

0:21 - "On Friday night, this area were liberated by the rebels, and this morning, we just come and see this place [on fire?]."
0:58 - "For the last 40 years, I hear that some people killed, executed, that they were hanged, but this is the first time I see people, they kill them and they [bury?] them."
James Foley: "They burn them."
Dr. al Farjani: "Yeah, they burned them, yeah. Yeah, I mean it's a [?buy?], to kill somebody and burn him again? I mean, for what? I mean, they are trying to hide their crime? [shaking head slowly with an odd smile] No.

Libération also spoke with our subject, as "le docteur Salem Rajab" for a report not run until August 29. Again, they also spoke with his kiddo el Hitri/Atiri (as Moustapha el-Etri) and perhaps with Atiri's escape companion, Gazi Tarrar (see below). Here's what Jean-Louis le Touzet wroteabout "Dr. Rajab" and then I let Google translate mangle:

This is Dr. Salem Rajab, who said to keep a medical office in the district, which carried the death toll Saturday afternoon.
[...]
According to Dr. Salem Rajab, "between 140 and 160 prisoners from the jails of Gaddafi were gathered in the courtyard Tuesday 23 [August, ed]." Then, still on Tuesday, shortly before breaking the fast, he heard gunshots. A lot. He and the neighbors came immediately, "but the soldiers shot Kadhafi the top of the mounds of sand from the cement plant. There were three big explosions and screams, and saw the flames. As there was fighting in the barracks, could not close until this morning [Saturday]. "
[...]
"We are looking for 90 missing bodies," says Dr. Salem Rajab. And these three bodies outside, one of which has its feet in a noose? The doctor, while Moustapha said nothing: "These are three soldiers who refused to participate in the implementation and the mercenary," he said, mimicking the scene, "killed on the spot."

And the good doctor possibly spoke, at a later date, to Robert F. Worth at the New York Times, as covered in the article A "Dr. Salim," a "Mr. al Farjani, and a Key Escapee. No mention is made of a Dr. or a Salem, but Worth did speak with his protege el Hitri (as Mustafa Abdullah Atiri), who told him about his co-escapee "Taha" (Tarrar apprently does translate that way sometimes...). Mustafa also mentioned the local man, Ahmed al-Farjani, who took in on both he and Taha on about August 24. Mr. al-Farjani, who is Dr. al-Farjani's same age (but a construction worker), spoke to Worth as well and agreed he saved Atiri, the same kid the doctor he probably looked just like would take to the media in a few days.

Did the NTC's massacre-solving czar leave us the full name Dr. Salem al-Farjani, spread out over two fake witnesses, both flanking Mustafa el Hitri?

Coach Salem?
Beyond his own voluminous words to the media, perhaps under two or more untrue names (is Rajub/Rajip really a transliteration issue?), Dr. al Farjani seems to have had a hand with some of the other, far-too-numerous alleged witnesses to the massacre. He of course physically held Atiri/el Hitri while translating for him, after pre-announcing him and then walking him up. As contributor Peet 73 said just from that:

The Sky Video show's quite clearly that the doctor is the puppet master behind this presentation. He's not only the most educated and "serious" witness he's also the man who guides the journalists around and leads other dummies to them. It's very revealing how he backs the other, less profesional liar with his arm around his shoulder (after 2:34).

Taking "presentation" narrowly as of young Mustafa, that's fairly apparent. But to take it further and to offer a competing metaphor, he might be the dungeon master of this whole multi-witness massacre role-playing game. I could see it then, but wasn't ready to say it yet.

We had a look in Seamus Murphy's VII photo library for any glimpses of Dr, Farjani, but no identifiable views appeared. However, this image (crop at left) could possibly show his chubby arm raised behind the foreground character (also an alleged witness, unnamed), as he helps prepare Mustafa (orange shirt) for Ramasy's coming visit. This and other photos suggest Murphy was there shooting at around 9:30 to 10:30 am, when Sky Seems to have filmed about 11:00 (all by rough reading of sunlight "azimuth").

That arm's gesture says, perhaps, "this is a huge story, huge. You can't screw this up." Atiri's might say "but I haven't even been inside there yet. How am I gonna know what to say?"

Just from that, the possibility of witness coaching is there, but only with one witness we've already seen him translate for. But contributor Felix noticed the signs of another case of fondling by the coach, in the final clip of the Global Post video report by James Foley. This regards the sobbing man, an unnamed, gaunt man with a lean intensity, a "grief-stricken relative and/or survivor" seen in solitary anguish in a photo here, and then being comforted by many here, here, here, here, and here (17th image in that slide-show).

Then, in a more chipper mood off to the side, apparently after this session, what seems to be the same man can be seen at the end of that GPvideo (1:23). He's first smiling, talking to another, chubbier man who's patting him on the back. That arm, again all we can see of him, looks a hell of a lot like Dr. Farjani's. One can imagine this saying "that was some serious grief you gave them. You earned your pay today, son." The sobbing man seems aware, if "Salim" isn't, that a camera was suddenly filming them, and he quickly moves away from the pat, leaving the doctor's hand lingering and sliding off his back, along the way revealing the short sleeve of that goofy blue "aligator" (Lacoste?) shirt.

That's sloppy, sloppy work. Lucky the world doesn't give a shit.

After
Dr. Rajub was just an ordinary man, an anonymous local whose only claim to fame was witnessing this loyalist massacre with his own eyes and ears, knowing many of its escapees, apparently in a supervisory capacity, and bringing all that together for the world's gathered news media. It's only natural that we should never again hear from Dr. Rajub once his public work was complete. Afterwards, the strangely similar Dr. Salem al Farjani, who's apparently the same guy in fact, took over this massacre, its witnesses and escapees, its presentation to men of power, its mythology and its utility in the continuing persecution of Libyan loyalists.

The Bani Walid Situation

2012-01-26T02:00:00.000-08:00

January 24, 2012
last update Jan. 26

I'm woefully uninformed on the situation in Bani Walid, even before the reported takeover by Green/Jamahiriya/Loyalist forces the other day. It seems the rebels sort of went around it to wallop Sirte, and then implicitly must've taken control sometime after. Now, the Bani Walid local (NTC) council says they were driven out and the green flag was raised, at least temporarily.

Such things have been reported before in Green news sources, almost all unverifiable and not carried by the mainstream media, suggesting a pitched civil war the loyalists were winning. This is the first time I know of where mainstream media-al Arabiya, the Guardian, BBC, CBS, everyone now, reports this as news.

Later, I'll bring more links. For now I'll start with the BBC, who "helpfully" pass on the doubts about the "competing claims" of what's going on there.

Confusion surrounds events in the Libyan town of Bani Walid after fighting broke out between armed groups on Monday, leaving four people dead.

The head of the local council has said a local militia was attacked by remnants of forces supporting late Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi.

But the post-Gaddafi government has denied pro-Gaddafi forces were involved, saying instead the fighting was between rival militias.

The town is now reported to be calm.

I suspect the claim from Tripoli is bullshit. Loyalists are the ones who've been so good at re-taking Bani Walid at will. But then, that was back in the late summer last year. Is the city calm, or just reported so? By which set of competing authorities? Is it calm under green or red-black-and-green (or just black) control?

The state-run Libyan news agency WAL quotes the head of Bani Walid's council, Mubarak al-Fatamni, as saying that forces loyal to the new government were attacked on 23 January in a "barbaric manner" by members of the "remnants of the Gaddafi regime".

Mr Fatamni said pro-Gaddafi forces raised their green flag over the town for a short time on Monday afternoon, the Associated Press news agency reports.

Why briefly? They took their own flags right back down? Someone forced them to? Who? How?

But spokesmen for the prime minister and defence ministry have told the BBC the dispute is a local one.

I'm sure it was local. The Greens live inside Libya and always have, and recently center themselves around a few places like Bani Walid. Is this an acknowledgement from Tripoli it wasn't one of their own brigades made up of mixed Libyans, Qatari, Irish, American, Canadian, and Australian foreign adventurers?

The government's claim, explained:

A source within the Libyan government, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the BBC the fighting broke out after a group of former rebel fighters, the 28 May Brigade, arrested one person.

The fighting was "more a clash between local people regarding a difference of who this [arrested] person was," the source said. "But of course now other people seem to be involved as well. The situation is not very clear who is who. It's still confused."

See, they know just what they're talking about. The Green Flags must have been imagined. All is under control in Libya, the fake-out takeover has still unquestionably won.
---
Update Jan. 25:
Anger, chaos but no revolt after Libya violence
Oliver Holmes, Reuters, Jan. 24

...a day after townsmen put to flight a force loyal to the Western-backed interim administration in Tripoli, elders in the desert city, once a bastion of support for Muammar Gaddafi, dismissed accusations they wanted to restore the late dictator's family to power or had any ambitions beyond their local area.

"Allegations of pro-Gaddafi elements in Bani Walid, this is not true," said Miftah Jubarra, who was among dozens of leading citizens gathered at a local mosque to form a municipal council now that nominal representatives from the capital have fled.

"In the Libyan revolution, we have all become brothers," Jubarra told Reuters. "We will not be an obstacle to progress."
[...]
People in Bani Walid urged the NTC to keep back...

But they kicked out the government. They insist on staying there, outside NTC control, but not as an obstacle. It seems they did take down any green flags that may have been (were) displayed on first conquest. It also seems it did start as a dispute over one arrest among the many they've been dealing with there.

...those willing to talk to reporters insisted the violence was no revanchist putsch but was provoked by local abuses allegedly committed by The May 28th Brigade, a militia loyal to the NTC.

"When men from Tripoli come into your house and harass women, what are we to do?" said Fati Hassan, a 28-year-old Bani Walid resident who described the men of May 28th as a mixture of local men and outsiders, former anti-Gaddafi rebels who had turned into oppressors when given control over the town.

"They were arresting people from the first day after liberation. People are still missing. I am a revolutionary and I have friends in The May 28th Brigade," said Hassan, who said he urged them to ease off. "The war is over now."
[...]
Jubarra, who sat at the meeting of elders, gave details of the incident which, he said, caused patience to snap among the people of the town.

"On Friday, the May 28th Brigade arrested a man from Bani Walid. After Bani Walid residents lodged a protest, he was finally released. But he had been tortured.

"This caused an argument that escalated to arms.

"Bani Walid fighters took over the 28th May camp, confiscated weapons and pushed them out of the city," Jubarra explained to the elders, who sat in silence around him, many of them wrapped in traditional white woollen blankets.

The government response - military - was swift to set itself up and then wait.

Residents heard warplanes overhead late on Monday as NTC forces hastily drove south from Tripoli to take up positions 50 km from Bani Walid. But those troops had, as yet, no orders to move on the town, where Gaddafi loyalists fought rebel forces to a standstill before negotiating a surrender in October.

Interior Minister Fawzi Abd al-All told a news conference in Tripoli would "strike with an iron fist" anyone who posed a threat to Libyan security - but he also said there would be no NTC move against Bani Walid until it was clear what happened.

It's been like one day, and they're proud of the lack of "iron fist" activity that sounds eerily reminiscent of something Gaddafi, or any world leader faced with an insurgecy, would say. Time for humanitarian intervention? Better proof already that Tripoli is bombing people (jets overhead) than we ever had last year when Gaddafi was in charge.

I'm for calling this a local decision, perhaps assisted by a hidden green strike force. That could also be pure propaganda by the driven out May 28 ruffians, to ensure some "iron fist"revenge. But the sudden overwhelming strike by purely local (under occupation) fighting men takes a little explaining.

I imagine the NTC will demand authority back but will have to "acknowledge grievances," maybe charge someone, promise "reforms and oversight," maybe even "hold off until after elections" on implementing any of it (likely bumped back forward in short order). But then they'll get someone else in there who'll quietly show those little punks who's in charge - it ain't the Warfalla.
---
Jan.26:
Reuters, via NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/world/africa/libya-government-yields-to-tribe-in-bani-walid.html

Libya on Wednesday recognized a government dominated by a powerful tribe in Bani Walid, a stronghold of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. The move occurred days after the tribe violently expelled pro-government forces and illustrated the power of tribal leaders over the fragile interim government. Salah al-Maayuf, a member of the Warfalla elders council in Bani Walid, said that on Tuesday, his body appointed a new local council that was recognized by the defense minister on Wednesday. The tribe long benefited from Colonel Qaddafi’s rule.

But the NTCis keeping its options open - militias from the Nafusah mountains are there to surround the town and "keep the peace," not to enter it, just yet.
BBC with video:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16734332

Russia Today Arabic video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hL-2UXG3AA&feature=youtu.be
Description, translated:

Gathered fighters loyal to the Transitional National Assembly in Libya at a checkpoint outside the Bani Walid on Tuesday after the pro-Muammar Gaddafi took control of the city and the green flag of the former regime.
Which is the largest operation since the formation of new government in Libya
Said Abdullah Mohammed, Chairman of the Board of Bani Walid military we are well equipped and highly trained

Khamis Brigade Shed Massacre: Survivor/Family Imagery Index

2012-01-26T01:00:00.000-08:00

January 26, 2012
edits Jan.
30

Those following the Libya S.O.S. link here, please re-direct HERE
---
This is not ready to post - my list is just too sloppy still. But I wanted a place for readers toplace or even re-post links of people to compare to people (seen at or related to the shed massacre) in a set spot. Later, I'll pull these together with what I've already got, but even before that people can know where to look and find it in the comments.

It'll be in about this format, as I've done before:

Ron Haviv / VII
RH1 -
RH2 - Aug. 27. Desc: "Relatives mourn the victims of a massacre allegedly committed by forces ..." Shown, embracing, 'the sobbing man" and the red-robed man. To the side, an elderly black man.
RH3 - Aug. 27. Desc: same as above. Shown, embracing, 'the sobbing man" and possibly Bashir al-Siddeq
RH4 -
...

Benghazi Protests in December and After

2012-01-25T01:00:00.000-08:00

December 28, 2011
last update Jan. 25, 2012

I haven't been trying to follow the news out of Libya closely, but I just saw a dispatch in the Dec. 27 news page at the Libya S.O.S. site about new protests in Benghazi against the NTC government. Doing a news search, I find that there were huge protests reported in Benghazi in mid-December anyway, demanding the resignation of NTC chairman Mustafa Abdel-Jalil. I'm not sure yet whether the Western news is being hugely censored and manipulated here, if the S.O.S. is a little, er... over-informed, or if both types of protests have been happening at different times.

Solidarity with Tripoli
The top, or last, entry on the S.O.S. dispatch, apparently a summary, reads "22h/ BENGHAZI - People of Benghazi in solidarity with the people of Tripoli , raising the pace of protests until the Jalil 's government falls, and him and other puppets go back to the West." From the usual tone of the site, "the people of Tripoli" sounds like Gaddafi loyalists unhappy with their recent "liberation." And it has Benghazi protests, not Tripoli ones showing support for that. No sources are given, but a photo (uncredited) is attached, presumably as evidence. For anyone who can read the sign or place the photo in time or space, here it is:

Same day, earlier development: "11h/ BENGHAZI - Protesters from Benghazi Libya say somebody shot at them with snipers. It seems that NATO has same snipers ready for each and every FalseFlag or ScareFlag - > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhO3Wu10gvk" The source here is a videoof people who do seem agitated over some damage, and are shouting.Are these thesame green solidarity protesters implied in the later entry? For those who can understand what they're saying:

And earlier yet, the protesters were making their own offensives.
"09h/ BENGHAZI - Demonstrators are breaking into the so-called local Council of Benghazi, and surrounding its members, which resulted in Bboshna suspending the membership of each of employees of the local council, so as not to be able to implement any demonstrator's demands through them."
Previous days' dispatches seem to give more on the protesters and how they got started, citing a wave of them in virtually every Libyan city in recent days, all apparently demanding a return to the previous green system.

Anti-Reconciliation Protests
But I had to see what the mainstream sources, who do give more details and sources, are saying. It's roughly the opposite. A Google News search seems to unearth nothing about pro-Gaddafi/Jamahiriya protests anywhere in December until now. But it does have nods to some timid demonstrations in Tripoli against armed militias still freely roaming the city, and quite a fair amount about multiple days of rowdier protest in Benghazi.

For one thing, the demonstrators were reportedly mad at the uncertainty over whether Benghazi would be the "economic capitol" of Libya. They quickly recieved assurances from Tripoli that, whatever makes the most actual sense, they will be that. And they took offense to statements by Abdel-Jalil about pardoning (or perhaps "forgiving") pro-Gaddafi fighters in the name of reconciliation and/or avoiding future violence.

And they were fumed about the retention of one single Gaddafi-era official, the NTC's finance minister Taher Sharkas, appointed "by Gaddafi" (by the government at the time) on August 18, as rebels closed in on the capitol itself. Anyone with any history deeper than that was already well outside the bounds of employment. That this one last-minute appointee was allowed to stay on was a major scandal that had people demanding Abdel-Jalil's ouster. Not encouraging.

Most specifically, as Rami al-Shaheibi reported for AP on Sharkas' Christmas resignation, "the government has said it is open to some reconciliation with former regime officials, but protesters are mostly opposed." As AFP reported, Dec 12 "The people want another revolution!" chanted the crowds as they waved Libya's new flag." It's a powerful drug. I didn't imagine they'd be happy with the one hit they were allowed.

By this, the masses have spoken, and want no reconciliation, so peaceful merging of all remaining Libyans. Grudges and exclusion are to rule the day, the sore winners say, and what else to do with the people not embraced? Lock them all up? make them "go away?" Leave them at liberty to launch an insurgency?

I want to hear more now about these more sane, inspirational, perhaps excessively bold, green Libyan protests. I do hope they're happening, and they force at least some kind of rational compromise. Libya needs one that doesn't insult the intelligence and dignity of those who know how massively their country was just screwed. I fear it's not possible with what both sides have been left with, and Libya faces a prolonged dark age. Whether the darkness is carried only in the hearts of the defeated green masses like it is now, or in the violence they inflict and absorb trying to right things, only time will tell.

Dec. 29: Partly answering the question I started with about the two types of protest, Libya S.O.S. today add this: ’PRO-GADDAFI PROTESTS’ AND ’REBEL ANTI-NTC PROTESTS’ SHAKING LIBYA AT THE SAME TIME

Leader of the military local council of Tripoli resigned due to the mass demonstrations against him on Monday. Meanwhile, rebel protesters want a "course correction" of the Revolution, by pressuring officials of the city in order to meet their demands.

Nothing in the news on military council resignations since al-Madhi Hatari stepped down to return to Ireland or, actually, to Syria. More protests are reported in Tripoli and Tarhunah, and another image, at right. Marches are being led by a man named Arafat, it's said. In Tarhouna, protests are escalating, the S.O.S. reports.

In respect of the events in Tarhunah, a witness from the city, said in a telephone conversation with the "Arabs today," that after a clashes broke out, angry demonstrators burned the building of local radio in the city and blew up a vehicle of the Supreme Security Committee, and siezed a range of weapons and three four-wheel vehicles.
The source, who preferred not to be named, said that head of the security committee was injured as a result of hostilities between the NTC battalion and pro-Gaddafi protesters, result was that a number of fighters from NTC battalion called "loyal Tarhunah" got killed.

Also, an armed group of unsatisfied Pro-Gaddafi citizents attacked the headquarters of the local rebel military council in the Sakra, city of Sabha, with RPGs mortars, at least on person was killed.

Update Jan 25:
Deputy head of Libya's NTC quits after protests
Oliver Holmes, Reuters, Jan. 22, reports on fiercer protests yet in Benghazi.

The deputy head of Libya's ruling National Transitional Council (NTC) said on Sunday he was resigning after a series of protests against the new government which the country's leader warned could drag Libya into a "bottomless pit".
[...]
Late on Saturday, a crowd demanding the government's resignation forced their way into the NTC's local headquarters in Benghazi while the NTC chief was inside, in the most serious show of anger at the authorities since Gaddafi's ouster.
[...]
The location of the protests is particularly galling for the NTC. Benghazi, in eastern Libya, was the birthplace of the revolt against Gaddafi's rule and the site of the NTC's headquarters during the revolt.

The NTC was formed in the early days of the revolt against Gaddafi from a hastily-assembled group of lawyers, government officials who defected, Muslim clerics, tribal leaders and civil society activists.

At the time, Gaddafi's troops were using automatic weapons to fire on protests in Benghazi and elsewhere [wrong], and there was little time to vet the members [if premised on the first, wrong].

But nearly six months on from the moment the rebellion took control of the capital Tripoli, Libyans are started to question the council's legitimacy.

The complaints still include too many people with previous government service back when Gaddafi was the figurehead, but they're showing more savvy as well, it seems.

"We hoped for security, peace and transparency. We have seen the opposite," said Miftah Al-Rabia, 28, who was standing outside the NTC's Benghazi headquarters on Sunday with a group of protesters.
[...]
"We still don't know who exactly is in the NTC. There is no transparency," said Al-Rabia, a protester standing outside the building with a group of about 30 other men.

Another protester, 24-year-old Mohammed Mahmoud, said he fought against Gaddafi during the revolt and wounded his shoulder and hand.

"We fought on the front line and received injuries but we did not see the NTC with us," he said. "I have one single question: Why has the NTC failed at everything except selling oil? We want to correct the path of the revolution."

Selling oil = selling out. We always knew they'd be good at that and little else.

The government response confirms that the protesters are getting it right. Ghoga complained that, as Holmes put it,"the national consensus [wrong] that helped the country rise up and end Gaddafi's 42-year rule had not lasted into peace-time, giving way to what he [Ghoga] called an atmosphere of hatred." He means hatred of the NTC and for himself, having been jostled bodily by a mob shortly before this. Back when the hate was safely directed only at the Gaddafi government and its millions of supporters, it was nothing but useful and encouraged. For his part, Mr. Abdel-Jalil said, as mobs threatened a sitting government of Libya for the second time in a year, suddenly "there is something behind these protests that is not for the good of the country." Chances are then it is for the good of the country and I encourage more of the same.

Criminalizing Gaddafi Support

2012-01-24T14:00:00.000-08:00

January 17, 2012
last edits Jan. 29

For now I'll pass on a few scattered articles and limited commentary. I invite further examples in what I expect to be lively comments beneath. It's a potentially broad subject, how one ruling party and its supporters are made criminal to varying degrees and severed from civil society in favor of some other politico-economic vision.

First, a recent one:
Libya: TNC releases anti-democratic draft electoral laws
By Will Morrow, World Socialist Website.
13 January 2012

This is a critique of the rules just laid down for the upcoming elections. Now that "democracy" has come to Libya, the people finally get to chose their leaders. As usual, the field to choose from will be narrowed by many, often invisible, factors. The largest and most important is set up now - no Gaddafi loyalists or anyone connected with the hyper-demonized old system or representing any of its ideals will be allowed. No matter how many people might want it, and perhaps because many will want it, the new leaders so indebted to the West will not allow it. Freedom isn't free and it's also got limits.

Those not allowed to hold public office, as Morrow writes:

Virtually everyone who worked at any level of Moammar Gaddafi’s former government is barred, unless they can demonstrate “early and clear support for the February 17th revolution.”

This is insane. "Early and clear support for the February 17th revolution" as a requirement for former government people means only those ideologically inclined to side with the conspiratorial likes of Ibrahim Dabbashi and Nouri al Mesmari,in the foreign-sponsored, traitorous, deceptive operation to sell the country out, are fit to run the government now. This is a very, very bad sign. It's not enough to just dominate and manage things, they demand a full purge and cleansin of anything decent (if demonized by relentless propaganda tricks) remaining in Libya's leadership ranks.

Those with an academic degree in Gaddafi’s “Third Universal Theory” or Green Book—previously required by many people to advance their careers—are ineligible.

Other statutes reportedly disqualify people who allegedly benefited monetarily from the regime or received diplomas or university degrees “without merit.” Massaoud El Kanuni, a Libyan lawyer specialising in constitutional law, told the Wall Street Journal: “That criteria could be used against three-quarters of the country. How are we going to follow a path of national reconciliation if so many people are excluded from [the country’s] future?”

Imagine scholars of the U.S. constitution barred from serving in liberated United States. Anyone who ever got government financial aid. Maybe anyone who received food assistance. Where exactly is the cut-off line here?

There should be little surprise; threats of political exclusion and even punishment go back. As Rebels encircled Sirte in September, cutting off fuel, food, water, and medicine while pummeling the city with indiscriminate rocket attacks coupled with extra-wide-ranging NATO air attacks. All inhabitants, many or perhaps most of them dedicated Gaddafi loyalists, were told to leave, and that only after surrendering at trigger-happy (and racist) Rebel checkpoints many never passed in freedom or alive. As the Wall Street Journal noted (second-hand source):

“As refugees gathered, the Misrata fighters checked their names against lists of suspected Gaddafi loyalists. Some men were arrested while others were told to wait on the side of the road with their families.

“‘We’re going to punish even those that supported Moammar with words,’ said a bearded fighter to a man who protested his detention. ‘We are the knights that liberated Libya.’ ”

The same notion seems to have taken over in the takeover of Tripoli and after.
Ex-Libya rebels search homes of Gadhafi loyalists
Karen Laub, AP, Sept. 6 2011

TRIPOLI, Libya — Former rebels, weapons drawn, burst into the houses of suspected supporters of Moammar Gadhafi, searching rooms and hauling away military uniforms, a portable safe and documents that appear to link residents to the deposed regime.

The search party leader, a mosque preacher-turned-military chief, insisted only those who fought for Gadhafi — and not his political backers — will be interrogated and possibly punished.
[...]
Leaders of the rebels have said they seek reconciliation with most Gadhafi supporters, eager to avoid the mistakes made in post-war Iraq, where a purge prompted former regime loyalists to take up arms and helped destabilize the country for years.

The actions documented in the article, of this Imam and his local militia in Khalet al-Ferjan go somewhat against that (the mosque, its fighters, and possible connections to the Khamis Brigade shed massacre will be covered separately). Here, they're followed as they search several homes, angering a tax collector but finding only a green flag (taken, one presumes), carting off a safe, some cars, a bag of dog food. One man who protested was told to appear for questioning.

In the third house, which belonged to a family originally from Sirte, Gadhafi’s hometown, the search team found several piles of military uniforms, a Kalashnikov and a briefcase with documents, including photocopies of ID cards that suggested some in the family had fought for Gadhafi.

Furjani crouched and sorted through the papers, returning personal documents to a member of the family, Abdel Wahab Mohammed, while handing possibly incriminating ones to his aide, Mohammed Shiriana.

Mohammed insisted he was a civilian, but Shiriana, a construction engineer and aide to Furjani, said the documents indicate the man was a member of a Gadhafi brigade. Furjani said the man would also have to report for questioning.

How the searches go when they're not putting on a good show for the media is a troubling unknown. One man of the family was present and swore he was a civilian, but the papers said otherwise. He was in trouble. He'd been incriminated.

What was the alleged crime? A serious one - supoporting, being connected to, working for, fighting for ... the national government of his nation. When did the law making that a crime take effect, who signed it, and on what authority? Having a government job - even in the military - is not a crime, even if that government had been declared illegitimate by protesters, terrorists, rebel fighters, liars and demonizers, human rights groups, the media, the likes of Mesmari and Dabbashi, then France, Qatar, and then much of the world and NATO's collective air muscle.

All they did was support the government, like any patriotic citizen, and had the government lose. Losing the war is not a criminal act. I suppose that's a philosophical argument with no real legal merit - history has the winners writing the history books, just after re-writing the laws like a fortress around their intervention and victory. But still, having green flags in your home or car is not a crime. Not a capitol crime at least, as this video still suggests it was treated as (video filmed Abu Salim, Tripoli, app. Aug. 25). Fighting an invasion of your city by armed gangs supported by outside governments is not a crime, but the mainstream media acts as if it is.

In the mainstream narrative, the problem is only "innocent" people being too easily accused of being loyalists, or even fighters. When the charge is accurate, we seem to have little concern. Consider how Mrs. Afaf Gaddafi's family was killed, including two infants, as they tried to flee the city in September, for fear of being killed over their coincidental name. It was explained they'd been "mistaken for Gaddafi loyalists," possibly in part because of the name. The people with the bad reasoning and perhaps unsettling body language may have been the same ones with the guns responsible at the roadblock responsible.

They were wrong. Had they been right, well, that gets murkier. Revolutions can be messy. Freedom isn't free, and we know who can keep footing the bill for this one.

What's that? Some chemicals found, a theory that Gaddafi was planning to use poison gas? Mostly against children, especially pious ones? Ten, nay twenty more years in the brig for all green-clinging servants of the dark lord... maybe some should start dying mysteriously... maybe some heads on spikes around town would do nicely (claimed as rebular Libyans, blamed on Gaddafi sleeper cells)...
---
Update Jan. 23

Felix alerts me to protests against the NTC and its electoral law system 22 January, as reported on the Free Generation Movement site (they are also campaigning against guns being everywhere). Pictures of the protest on Facebook. The English part on the big sign says the FGM "supports the call for protest against the imbalanced and unjust election charter." Sounds good-for a moment I feared they were like the recent Benghazi protesters, pissed off that the exclusion of loyalists wasn't quite final enough as a solution. But this makes sense - Libyans speaking out against actual injustice. These are the same people who also made the Yarmouk massacre propaganda video, so they are a mixed bag. I suppose that's a good thing.

Khamis Brigade Shed Massacre: Further Discussion on Alleged Witnesses

2012-01-22T21:05:00.000-08:00

January 23, 2011

The comments section at the Shed Massacre witness list page has become full and won't take new messages. Apologies for the inconvenience. It would be a lot of work to clean that up, though I might. But even then, there are many comments left to make on this sprawling and sometimes confusing issue.

So, just for a post to gather more comments beneath, I guess we have about 100-150, depending, before it's full too. So don't hold back, but also lets try not to glut it too much.

Khamis Brigade Shed Massacre: A Legacy of Mythology

2012-01-22T04:10:00.000-08:00

And Discussion of the "Facebook Witnesses"
January 22, 2012
(incomplete, last updates Feb. 6)

The following is a rush posting to prevent a flood of comments at the wrong post(s). Those that belong here, can now go beneah this post, and my own starters can go in it.

A New York "Human Rights" Campaign
Early report to Amnesty, HRW and others later, mass media help saturating the global public with the rebel version of "what happened at Yarmouk."

Then with time to be more scholarly, Physicians for Human Rights failed anyway in late November with their PHR shed massacre report

A Slick Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIOUO5GwknM
Features Mr. Sabri Tabbal, described in another video as a "survivor of holocaust camp of Yarmouk" and, at the end, Said Mahmoud Falba (see below)

A Social Media Campaign
Petri Krohn alerts me:
In fact there is a whole Facebook page dedicated to the Yarmouk prison massacre: مجزرة معتقل اليرموك http://www.facebook.com/alyermok We also have the Association of families of victims of the Holocaust Guantanamo Yarmuk [!!] – رابطة اهالى ضحايا محرقة معتقل اليرموك http://www.facebook.com/rabta2011

I'm having problems with these pages, where I can read for a little while until it tells me I need to log in. I don't really want to, but I will try again later when I'm signed in and see if it lets me look around then.

This gives us a new alleged escapee, "Mahmoud Mukhtar (Or Mukhtar Mahmoud) Zadam" ("مختار محمود الزدام"), who was also named, perhaps as the baseball-cap-wearing central speaker in this August video featuring other known alleged survivors (which I did not know 'til the other day). It's entitled (translated) "Survivors of the massacre of the Yarmouk camp telling details of the massacre." Here on the Facegook group's page, Petri found, he's mentioned, and the first part of his saga related. Translated from Arabic:

Mahmoud Mukhtar Zadam, born in 1988, a resident of the city of Zliten, was arrested on Friday, 6/17/2011 AD. Mokhtar was arrested by some of the volunteers in the city of Zliten, with some of his cousins for being a family Zadam, which was attended by some of her children in the events of June 9

Some others I found searching for "escaped" and "survivor" (in Arabic) on these pages:
http://ar-ar.facebook.com/notes/الشبكة-الليبية-للإعلام-the-libyan-network-of-media/قصة-محرقة-اليرموك-والنجاة-من-جحيم-المعتقل/243672759037799 (Later moved, pulled, or permission to view denied)
"Said Mahmoud Falba a survivor of the Holocaust, which [happened at] Yarmouk camp, 32nd brigade ... the story of the Holocaust from the hell of prison escape..."
By the photo, he's the sad faced man in the Yarmouk video, who walks with a cane, and hobnobs with Sabri Tabbal. He sounds like a (claimed) onetime prisoner, rather than an escapee of the actual massacre, from what I could translate. He worked for Sun Microsystems, and found many co-workers imprisoned too, for suspicion of helping NATO bomb their country. (can anyone re-locate the page? I didn't get the photo)

Linked from there: video, unknown youth, speaking Arabic:
"A young man from Zliten tells the story of suffering and death after surviving an attempt execution of 03 battalions"
posted Dec. 21, 10:00
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDMdijK6028
shorter cut
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zg13-gM2HPk
a third
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeMf2Un73zE&feature=related

http://ar-ar.facebook.com/alyermok/posts/283349771709893

Hisham Al Taher al-Sari [mast], a survivor of the massacre of Yarmouk .... Zliten ... Date of arrest 18 \ 8 \ 2011 has been arrested after storming into the house in a non-moral ... Check-out 23 \ 8 \ 2011 ... Of people who know them in prison Yarmouk gift Ahmidan .. Issam Ahbich ... Hakim large Tripoli ... A.-M. donkeys ...

And finally, translated,"The names of some of the survivors of massacre Guantanamo Yarmuk"
http://ar-ar.facebook.com/rabta2011/posts/217335248332204http://ar-ar.facebook.com/rabta2011/posts/217335248332204
Proceed with a list of 40 Arabic names... Have at it, anyone. Should be fun, so I'll leave it others. How many we already had on the witness list? Not many, I'd guess... (I peeked - there are several, but many, many new names) "This list is not final," it says, in anticipation of more survivors to be found. I don't think all of these even claim to have escaped the actual massacre. The list is reproduced and partly translated/transliterated, in comments below, by contributor Petri. Thanks, Petri, for that.

Update Feb. 6: In the comments below is a great working analysis of the Facebook list of 40, a separate claim that 41 witnesses from Zliten alone (no names given) managed to escape the massacre and live to tell. Another witness account emerges, 16/17-year-old escapee Tahir Ahmed el-Bahbah, who supports el-Hitri on the guard Abdul Razak (though with the maner of a different named guard, analysis forthcoming), and names three cousins (same last name) arrested with him, two of which apparently escaped, both listed along with him on the list of 40 survivors.

The Families' Association
(translated) "Meeting of the families of the victims and survivors "from the Yarmouk holocaust" in the founding of the Association Tajoura 10/11/2011." Via http://ar-ar.facebook.com/rabta2011
a video I can't seem to watch.
http://ar-ar.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=237265516339078

Anti-Black Racism Among Libyan Rebels

2012-01-22T01:53:00.000-08:00

April 4 2011
last update Jan. 23, 2012

"the brigade for purging slaves, black skin"
- slogan seen painted in rebel country

Note, Jan. 23 2012: I didn't bother updating this post after the conquest of Tripoli, despite the abundant examples of still un-checked rebel racism and brutality that emerged. By then it was more commonly known and discussed, if always in curiously limp terms given the usual world response to such things as ethnic cleansing. I've decided now to simply bump the post with a punchy new intro, the same un-finished collection of long quotes that is the main "article,"and add two snapshots of racism since the rebel victory brought freedom (to lynch with impunity) to Libya.

Feb. 19, The Face of the Future

Bad signs emerged from the very beginning. On February 19, two days after the "Day of Rage"
In Az Zintan, apparently, they killed a black-skinned soldier of Internal Security. In his puffy blue camouflage uniform, he was presumably a Libyan citizen. They didn't just kill him but snapped his finger in half, tore open his cheek, and sliced off his nose. By the look on his face he died in exquisite pain and horror. Then they cold dragged his stiff body before their cameras, showed the world what they do to black Libyans, and staright-up called him, with no evidence, a mercenary from neighboring Chad. They implicitly promised, and rthen delivered, more of the same, continuig now for the better part of a year, most of that lynching done with NATO air support helping them overcome the of government's defenses

They showed this man no mercy, for whatever reasons. That was a bad sign. Because he could be thought of as a low-life mercenary, a hired killer and a nigger one at that, the world didn't much care, about this or dozens of similar cases nationwide. They were only mad about the alleged hiring of nigger killers from dark Africa. That was a worse sign yet. The Rebel mob's self-appointed blank checking account to cleanse Libya ethnically had been verified. The first checks were cashed, no questions asked, and that Spring and beyond they went on quite a spending spree.

Original Post as of late August:
Michael McGehee wrote in Victims of a Civil War, Z Magazine, April 5:

Libya, located in northern Africa, has a majority Arab population. It also has a racism problem. In a country of over 6 million people where a third of which are black Africans—the most oppressed group in the country—it would be completely appropriate to ask: Why aren’t they a part of the rebellion? Why is this an "Arab revolt"? It is very astonishing to see the most oppressed group not only uninvolved with a revolution but fleeing it in terror. Another interesting question is: If the rebels need foreign assistance to win, and to protect themselves from a massacre, then why have they not appealed to the black community to join their struggle in solidarity?

No, instead they were sent running "back to Africa." As Mr. McGehee notes, the non-black pride seems to be a central part of their rejection of the Gaddafi system - "there is a video of the protesters floating around the internet showing them chanting, "We are Arabs!" (at around 2:20)

The Afro-centric antithesis of this is explained by a long-time pro-Gaddafi activist Gerald Perreira: Libya, Getting it Right: A Revolutionary Pan-African Perspective. Black Agenda Report. March 2. A fascinating article that explains, in part:

The battle that is being waged in Libya is fundamentally a battle between Pan-African forces on the one hand, who are dedicated to the realization of Qaddafi's vision of a united Africa, and reactionary racist Libyan Arab forces who reject Qaddafi's vision of Libya as part of a united Africa and want to ally themselves instead with the EU and look toward Europe and the Arab World for Libya's future.

One of Muammar Qaddafi's most controversial and difficult moves in the eyes of many Libyans was his championing of Africa and his determined drive to unite Africa with one currency, one army and a shared vision regarding the true independence and liberation of the entire continent. He has contributed large amounts of his time and energy and large sums of money to this project and like Kwame Nkrumah, he has paid a high price.

Many of the Libyan people did not approve of this move. They wanted their leader to look towards Europe. Of course, Libya has extensive investments and commercial ties with Europe but the Libyans know that Qaddafi’s heart is in Africa.

A merging, and perhaps mutual dilution of Africa's native Black peoples and the late-arriving, Muslim Crusader Arabs. It should be noted Gulf states like Saudi Arabia have long frowned on Gaddafi's agendas, and have promoted in Libya certain notions about Gaddafi. One is that he is secretly Jewish, and as Jews often do is such cosmologies, was trying to smoosh the good Arabs together with black people and blur the races.

"Funny cartoons" collected by John Rosenthal at Pajamas Media, reveals much of this line of fear emerging in the graphic work of "pro-democracy protesters." One is a photo of a wall painting of "the leader":

[T]he Arabic writing is “a reference to Qaddafi’s self-declared title ‘The King of Kings of Africa.’” In fact, the title was bestowed upon Gaddafi by a meeting of traditional African rulers, which was hosted by the Libyan government in 2008. The meeting happens to have been held in Benghazi. As the AP caption notes further, the writing on the mural replaces the title “King of Kings of Africa” with that of “Monkey of Monkeys of Africa” — a phrase that manages at once to insult Gaddafi and all the African notables that attended.

(The fame of the mural, incidentally, is partly due to a recent New Yorker report, which claims that the artist was shot dead in late March immediately after completing his work. As the above photo demonstrates, however, the mural in fact already existed much earlier. The photo is dated February 23.)

Others are more explicit in their primate references. This artist might have a future at the Cartoon Network, but not at the museum of tolerance.

Maxmilian Forte: Race, Humanitarianism, and the Media. Monthly Review, April 20.

As billions flowed out in aid [to sub-Saharan Africa], and visa-less migrants flowed in, Libyans feared they were being turned into a minority in their own land. Church attendance soared in this Muslim state. . . . Black-bashing has become a popular afternoon sport for Libya's unemployed youths. The rumour that a Nigerian had raped a Libyan girl in Zawiya was enough to spark a spree of ethnic cleansing. . . . In their rampage on migrant workers, the Libyan mob spared Arabs, including the 750,000 Egyptians. (The Economist, "Pogrom," 14 October 2000)

This time, it was "African mercenaries." The evidence for this seems to be largely Twitter tweets, echoed by al Jazeera and western media. the Monthly Review, April 20

The Independent's Michael Mumisa observed that "foreign media outlets have had to rely mostly on unverified reports posted on social network websites and on phone calls from Libyans terrified of Gaddafi's 'savage African mercenaries who are going door-to-door raping our women and attacking our children'," and he speaks of "a Twitter user based in Saudi Arabia," who "wrote how Gaddafi is 'ordering african mercenaries to break into homes in Benghazi to RAPE Libyan women in order to detract men protesters!'"

It was of course repeatedly widely, varied and elaborated wildly. The effect on human lives was real, and useful, in clearing the cities in rebellion of one known source of pro-regime sentiment (to believe Mr. Pirerra's analysis, anyway). Thus "the people" of these cities, those remaining both there and alive, who dared step outside, had risen up against Gaddafi.

Gaddafi's “African Mercenaries” – Or Are They Libyans From Fezzan ...

“Come see the black working class,” yells Asante Jonny, a Ghanaian migrant worker who has been stuck at the Egypt-Libya border for four days. [...]
“Life in Benghazi now is very dangerous for blacks,” says Jonny, who fled after Qadhafi’s forces were routed by defectors from a local security brigade and pro-democracy protesters, who took full control of the city. “Walking around town can get you killed. I had to run for my life after my friend from Cameroon was killed because his dreadlocks were seen as suspicious.”

Africans hunted down in "liberated" Libya. Afrol News, February 28.

As one city after the other gets "liberated", mostly following the defection of Libyan army and police units, civilians and Libyan troops agree to stop mentioning the recent fights between Libyan nationals. The "mercenaries" were and are the enemy.

Sidsel Wold, an experienced journalist from Norway's 'NRK' broadcaster currently in Al-Bayda, experienced the rhetoric first-handedly. She was told that the large battle about this east Libyan city had been fought around an army barrack, which everybody referred to as being defended by "mercenaries".

[Allowed] to film the captured "mercenaries", most turned out to have an Arab appearance. The few persons of sub-Saharan African appearance were all in civilian clothes. It became clear that several of these African "mercenaries" had been captured after the fighting.

Ms Wold also witnessed and filmed the interrogation of a captured Chadian citizen by a defected army officer. The Chadian, with civilian clothes, insisted he was a normal "civilian; a worker." Asked why he and four other Africans had been observed fleeing, he said he had been "scared by the shooting."

The defected Libyan army officer clearly stated he did "not believe" him. The attempt by a group of five sub-Saharan Africans to escape the city was "suspicious" in itself. The group was kept in detention - however in seemingly humane conditions - suspected of being "mercenaries".
[...]
Reports from other "liberated" Libyan cities are similar. In Benghazi last week, citizens attacked and destroyed a building housing 36 citizens from Chad, Niger and Sudan. The Africans were accused of being "mercenaries" and subsequently arrested, local residents told Western journalists.

Maxmilian Forte: Race, Humanitarianism, and the Media. Monthly Review, April 20.

It is not a simple matter of the Libyan opposition showing signs of xenophobia -- if that were true, it would resent the involvement of North Americans and Europeans. Instead, this is a racially selective xenophobia, with a preferential option for Western (i.e., U.S. and European) intervention, and against the presence of "Africans" (code for Sub-Saharan, black Africans). It reminds me of an old racial saying I learned in the Caribbean, truncated here: "If you're white, you're alright . . . and if you're black, go back."

World And Press Watch As Africans Are Lynched In Libya. Sahara Reporters, March 1.

The whole world is watching, the whole world is watching, the whole world is watching as innocent Africans are being lynched in Libya. The time to act is right now since nobody acted yesterday or day before. It started as a rumor, then it was reported on social network and now we know it is real. The world must act and act quickly.

There are men, women and children dying in the hands of Libyan mobs simply because they look Africans and must therefore be mercenaries because they cannot place their hands on Gadhafi.

"In Libya, African Migrants Say They Face Hostility."National Public Radio, February 25. Quoting a Turkish oil field worker:

"We left behind our friends from Chad. We left behind their bodies. We had 70 or 80 people from Chad working for our company. They cut them dead with pruning shears and axes, attacking them, saying you're providing troops for Gadhafi. The Sudanese, the Chadians were massacred. We saw it ourselves."

Of those captured who were killed and mutilated by "pro-democracy demonstrators," and proudly shown on Youtube and Facebook, a clear majority were "mercenaries," meaning dark Africans.

Luis Sinco: "Journalists Visit Prisoners Held by Rebels in Libya." Los Angeles Times, March 23. 2011)

"I am a worker, not a fighter. They took me from my house and [raped] my wife," he said, gesturing with his hands. Before he could say much more, a pair of guards told him to shut up and hustled him through the steel doors of a cell block, which quickly slammed behind them. Several reporters protested and the man was eventually brought back out. He spoke in broken, heavily accented English and it was hard to hear and understand him amid the scrum of scribes pushing closer. He said his name was Alfusainey Kambi, and again professed innocence before being confronted by an opposition official, who produced two Gambian passports. One was old and tattered and the other new. And for some reason, the official said the documents were proof positive that Kambi was a Kadafi operative.

[...]

All I know is that the Geneva Convention explicitly prohibits prisoners of war from being paraded and questioned before cameras of any kind. But that's exactly what happened today. The whole incident just gave me a really bad vibe, and thank God it finally ended . . . . [O]ur interpreter, a Libyan national, asked [LA Times reported David] Zucchino: "So what do you think? Should we just go ahead and kill them?"

Again, considering the near-total lack of evidence of African mercenaries, aside from a few extracted "confessions," the myth of them took on a life of its own and fueled this ethnic cleansing. Who, besides anonymous Twitter accounts was responsible for spreading these horrible lies? Consider this, shared by Maxmilian Forte:

"They [the mercenaries] are from Africa, and speak French and other languages." He said their presence had prompted some army troops to switch sides to the opposition. "They are Libyans and they cannot see foreigners killing Libyans so they moved beside the people." [...] "People say [the mercenaries] are black Africans and they don't speak Arabic. They are doing terrible things, going to houses and killing women and children."

The answer is:

Ali Abd-al-Aziz al-Isawi who previously served as Secretary of the General People's Committee of Libya (GPCO) for Economy, Trade, and Investment -- now responsible for "foreign affairs" and "international liaison" as the third-ranked member of the TNC [rebel Transitional National Council]. ... At the time of the [2000] race riots, the then Minister ... al-Isawi -- stated about the African presence: "it is a burden"; and then he added this: "They are a burden on health care, they spread disease, crime. They are illegal."

Some other articles worth checking out:

http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/race-and-arab-nationalism-libya
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/ford030311.html
http://crossedcrocodiles.wordpress.com/2011/03/09/migrants-in-libya/
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/lynch-law-and-summary-executions-rebel-held-libya
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/forte200411.html
http://somalilandpress.com/libya-rebels-execute -black-immigrants-while-forces-kidnap-others-20586

Update, June 29
The Wall Street Journal, of all sources, just ran a story dealing with racism among Libyan rebels, especially in the besieged Misrata, against the nearby, mostly-black and government-loyal, town of Tawergha.

Many Misratans are convinced that Tawerghans were responsible for some of the worst atrocities committed during their city's siege, including allegedly raping women in front of their relatives and helping Gadhafi forces identify and kidnap rebel sympathizers and their families.

Yeah, and don't forget the snipers that shot at least two little Misrata children in their little chest, says an X-ray image. Mighta been those same folks. A neighborhood of Misrata once dominated by Tawerghans was flushed out early on, some likely making cameos as "captured African mercenaries."Either way, they aren't taking it anymore.

Ibrahim al-Halbous, a rebel commander leading the fight near Tawergha, says all remaining residents should leave once if his fighters capture the town. "They should pack up," Mr. Halbous said. "Tawergha no longer exists, only Misrata."

Some of the hatred of Tawergha has racist overtones that were mostly latent before the current conflict.

On the road between Misrata and Tawergha, rebel slogans like "the brigade for purging slaves, black skin" have supplanted pro-Gadhafi scrawl.

Original article (preview only without subscription)
Purported full-text re-post, cited here.

And remember, these monsters are the "good guys," the ones the government there is bombed to smithereens for resisting, the ones NATO is trying to hand all of Libya over to. Please, those who are powerless to put a stop to this enormous and amoral machine, just pray for Libya. An atheist like me can't do it.

Update August 5: A noteworthy addition - Fox News of all outfits spoke with a doctor, apparently black, who left Benghazi, his home of 21 years, after having dealt with the rebels.

“They wanted to kill blacks there,” he says. “I’d be killed if I stayed.”
“They catch [detain] me with a gun in front of my wife and kids. They arrested me, tied me up and covered my eyes and took me to their camp for questioning about Muammar Qaddafi.”

It was only after local hospital officials confirmed his identity that he was freed. He left the city, his home for the past 21 years, and headed for the Egyptian border with his wife, two small boys and just two bags. From Egypt, the family was taken to Tunisia and then to Tripoli and finally to this remote refugee center.

Update Aug 27: See also all posts tagged Racism. Of special note:
Video: How the Rebels Gave Africa the Boot
Refugees and Human Trafficking
Misrata Rape Parties: Really?
---
Further good examples:
The Fall and Purge of Tawergha
Video Study: Rat Detectives Sniff Out Crime - if it ain't mercenary, it's infidel
The Tripoli Massacres: Ghargour Black Trash - black Rebel medics killed by Afro-mercs (??)
The Aruba School Captives - Among the first Afro-Mercs: nothing but Libyans who were darker than average

Snapshots, added Jan. 23
Snapshot 1: Late August, Abu Salim, Tripoli
As rebel forces from the racist Misrata brigades or the racist Zintan brigades swept through the holdout parts of town, none was a larger target or more rife with brutality than the largely-Black, mostly loyalist, working-class neighborhood of Abu Salim.

No mercy in Tripoli fighting
By Marc Bastian (AFP) – Aug 26, 2011

On Thursday as the two groups clashed heavily in the capital, rebel fighters showed two corpses lying in a hall of a building. “These residents refused to take weapons given by the men of Gaddafi to fight us. They were executed with a bullet in the head,” said a rebel, whose claim was backed by several locals from Abu Slim. A few hours later, the rebels captured several prisoners, a man was pinned to the ground and a shot rang out. The body did not move.

A separate incident occurred as a group of rebels began lynching another prisoner, he was saved from a worse fate when a rebel noticed a journalist shouting “Stop, Stop! Journalists!”.

A rebel in his fifties who gave his name as Abdelnasser justified the fury of fellow rebels. “Most people here are pro-Gaddafi and shoot at us. We cannot trust them, even young people.” he said.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jSpsLoDHEaqekqcHUHKBzA5YGaZQ
http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/rebel-forces?before=1314787790

Snapshot 2, late January, 2012
Nearly a year on, and the ethic cleansing, or incessant toying at the fringes of it, continues. In Depth Africa reports:

Somali asylum seekers who fled Libya by boat and were brought to Malta last weekend tell Patrick Cooke that Africans still risk beatings and even death in post-Gaddafi Libya.

Zakaria and a fellow Somali were exhausted after carrying out back-breaking manual labour for a Libyan man who had picked them up in ‘Krimea’, an area of Tripoli where the city’s underclass of sub-Saharan Africans congregate in the hope of finding work.

At the moment all Libyans have guns… there is no security and no stability
“When we finished, he told us ‘you are a friend of Gaddafi so I will not pay you, you killed our brothers’. Then he beat us with sticks and threatened us with a gun,” Zakaria tells The Sunday Times.

“Africans are being beaten and killed in Libya and no one there cares,” he adds to nods from his companions inside Lyster Detention Centre, where the 68 Somali asylum seekers rescued at sea last weekend are being housed.

A crowd gathers to share or listen to stories of life in post-revolution Libya for dark-skinned Africans, which are articulated into English by Zakaria and another asylum seeker, Abdul Karim.

‘Murtazaka’ – meaning ‘mercenary’ in Arabic – is a word they all know too well.

“Even now they all call us murtazaka. We cannot say anything because we have nothing and all Libyan men have guns. They say we are the brothers of Gaddafi,” says Abdul Karim.

http://indepthafrica.com/news/east-africa/libyas-like-somalia/#.TxyoEkYyLko

Khamis Brigade Shed Massacre: Charred Victims Imagery

2012-01-22T01:00:00.001-08:00

January 10, 2011
(incomplete, last edits Jan. 22)

<< The Tripoli Massacres

<< The Khamis Brigade Shed Massacre

Photographs
All links are to external files, usually the originals. Resolution is generally okay, not high, but useful enough in combination. Tight (close) views usually show one body, wide (far) usually show several and helps show the general scene. Mid-wide or mid-tight are between, showing a couple of bodies.

AP: Assoc.Press, unattributed
AP1 - middle of room, decent resolution

BD: Bryan Denton, New York Times
BD1 - towards the doors, wide, focuse on east side. Great resolution, not too much contrast, a useful view for the SE corner.

BL: Benjamin Lowy

Personal site

BL1 - southeast corner, shaft of light.

BL2 - washed-out pile, little value

BL3 - robed man in the doorway, harsh light

BL4 - Time, Aug 27 - mid-wide, split chest, smashed head.

BL5 - Foreign Policy, robed men look over smoldering bones. Fascinating texture. Made the cover of PHR's report.

Getty Images, Aug. 27

BL6 - Same men, different view, looking east.

BL7 - Mid-wide, central pile

BL7 - central pile, looking west, great view

BL8 - Man (K.K. Khebir?) amid bodies, looking east.
BL9 - Getty Images, mid-wide, broken legs.
BL10 - southwest corner, wide
BL11 - mid-wide view, along the (back?) wall

DB: Daniel Berehulak/Getty
(DB1-DB6 from Zimbio images, all Aug. 26)
DB1 - Wide, inside towards doors, doors opened a crack
DB2 - Close, fractured skull, splayed rib cage
DB3 - Wide, various bodies.
DB4 - Tight, along back wall.
DB5 - Tight, laying on pipe
DB6 - Wide
Other Sources
DB7 - August 28. Wide, bodies nearest the doors, in good lighting. Deep, dark blue stain on the ground in the distance, between the head of body #8 and where #9's would be, and the canister near the door. This comes through in other images, but clearest here. What is that?

DR: David Bruser, CBC
DR1 -

EP: EPA/BGNES
EP1 - Aug 28, east wall, good light, decent detail

FP: AFP/Getty, unattributed
FP1 - Great view across bodies 16, 12, looking southwest

LL: Louafi Larbi, Getty Images
LL1 - Main room looking north, wide, very high resolution
LL2 - Central pile, high angle, mid-tight

PB: Patrick Baz, AFP/Getty
PB1
PB2
PB3
PB4
PB5

RG: Rowan Griffiths/Daily Mirror
RG1 - west side, looking north

RH: Ron Haviv/VII, picturemaxx
RH1 - robed men by door, facing east
RH2 - wide, looking east
RH3 - wide, looking north
RH4 - wide, northwest corner
RH5 - artful, if not so useful
RH6 - same
RH7 - mid-tight, central pile, looking down.
RH8 - mid-tight, central pile, nearest door, some detail
RH9 - Same, different angle

RW: Human Rights Watch
These have great resolution, but there are only two.
RW1 Tight, low-angle, extremely fractured skull, from top. Body#8.
RW2 Main pile from southwest corner, low angle, looking extremely jumbled.

SB: Saad Basir, Warscapes
One relevant picture with this article
SB1 - pile near the door, mid-tight, odd wide angle view

SM: Seamus Murphy/VII, picturemaxx
SM1 - Wide, men stepping over bodies, looking east
SM2 - Tight, body along east wall
SM3 - Tight, body #7 from above
SM4 - Tight, rigid-head body, along back wall, looking north
SM5 - Tight, body #20, from above
SM6 - Mid-wide, rigid-head body, along back wall, looking west
SM7 - Tight, bodies 20 and 16, from above
SM8 - Tight, body #20
SM9 - Wide, looking towards doors, central pile visible, high glare.
SM10 - Wide, looking east, unobstructed. Very useful view for SE corner.
SM11 - Tight, a body on its side
SM12 - Wide, from door, central pile looking northeast
SM13 - Wide, from door, looking north
Better, non-stamped versions of some:
SM14 main pile, towards doors, bright light, useful angle
SM15 rigid head victim along back wall
SM16 Men stepping over bodies, looking east. "A survivor of the massacre is comforted inside the barn after finding the charred remains of his brother."
More smaller ones:
SM17 - mid-tight along east wall
SM18 - along west wall, good view of bodies 2-5 and the head of #6.
SM19 - Tight, rigid-head body, along back wall, looking west
SM20 - same view as SM12 and SM13, slightly closer

SP: Sergey Ponomarev/Associated Press
SP1 -
SP2 -

YK: Yuri Kozyrev, Noor/Time
YK1 - West side, looking north
YK2 - robed men by doors

Videos
VAB -ABC News Aug. 29
emptied shed, only bits of charred flesh, smaller bones, and ash remain scattered about.

VAF - AljwharFreeMedia17 (amateur video)
Youtube

VBC - BBC, Orla Guerin, Aug 28,
BBC site - Youtube
Glimpses only

VC4 - Channel 4, Alex Thomson, Aug.28
Youtube
segment starts 4:00
good pan across the main room

VCB - CBC, Susan Ormiston, Aug. 28.
MSN video
Good pans all around the shed, decent resolution.

VCN - CNN, DailyMotion
Aug. 28 footage, later afternoon.
0:29 shows southwest corner being cleared.

VEN - EuroNews
victim #1 0:13, others less charred right after - one one right, hands bound behind back?

VGP - Global Post
Video a ways down the page. Some footage borrowed from RT Arabic (below) at first, but some unique views inside the shed (0:30-0:55) plus an awesome "Dr. Salim" interview."

VRT - Russia Today Arabic, Posted by Quatchi Canada, August 28. As Felix notes, it's filmed in the morning.
Interesting "collar" at 0:12

VSN - Sky News, Aug.27
Early broadcast, Dr.Salim and outside only (link for reference, no skeletons or interior shots shown)
Main broadcast: Sky site
pans all around, good resolution.

VTE - TVE1 (Spain)

Los rebeldes aseguran controlar el 95% de Trípoli y la frontera con Túnez
Posted August 27

VTH - Telegraph, Aug. 28
Telegraph site

VTS - TeleSur video

Encuentran 50 cuerpos calcinados en Trípoli
side chamber 0:08

VVA - Viva Algier New (amateur video)
Youtube
Footage inside first minute, low resolution
It was also uploaded, as Felix alerts me, the same day, with a slightly different title, ناجون من مذبحة معسكر اليرموك يروون تفاصيل المجزرة by ZlitenHorra: Survivors of the massacre of the Yarmouk camp telling details of the massacre.

Khamis Brigade Shed Massacre: The Charred Victims

2012-01-21T00:00:00.000-08:00

Amid the Cinders, a Skeleton Crew of Potent Clues
January 11, 2012
(incomplete, last edits Jan. 22)

<< The Tripoli Massacres
<< The Khamis Brigade Shed Massacre

The main attraction of the media-hyped shed massacre behind the Yarmouk military base is the holocaust-evoking image of dozens of charred skeletal bodies sprawled across the floor of the rickety building. I'm late to start careful scrutiny of the scene inside this room. That's how I tend to work-from the outside in. Burnt bodies lack many of the clues (especiallyskin color) that I usuallylook for. But they're not devoid of clues, singly or collectively. Not by a long shot

I decided a separate post was needed to collect a tedious list of all imagery sources. It might be handy to open that in a new tab, as images are cited.

The Space and Stuff in it
I don't have the exact measurements handy, and I haven't tried to measure it. Some tens of feet per side, roughly square, a bit short on the east and west ends. The doors in occupy the middle half of the south wall. The north wall abuts the small compound's outer wall.

The actual orientation has the northwest corner rotated a bit north of northwest, but for simplicity, I'll use the same basic directions laid out here.

There are numerous large metal tanks around the room, said to be gas canisters from when the fuel was dumped, but one witness said he hid behind one during the shooting. It's been said the loyalists placed tires in there to sustain the burn. There are three wheel rims, near the doors only, that seem to have had tires on them recently, leaving wire mesh around them. Rebels are capable of doing that, too.

More later...

Numbering the Dead
This is a thing I like to do, to better prepare for more detailed analysis. It's daunting here, and I've put it off. I'm working on it now, no results should be expected for at least a few days. I'm assigning numbers to bodies, with supporting imagery, below.

In the main chamber we've all seen, a rough scan suggests approximately 50 bodies, give or take maybe five, are present (though a careful and conservative count is suggesting less than this). In the less-seen side chamber, it's only a few charred bodies, no count yet.

First Take: Two Groups
In broad terms, I think I see two main body positions that will shape my analysis. Some victims are pretty neatly along the outer walls. These are the ones that also seem to show the most signs of life, perhaps trying to escape. The other major portion, perhaps as little as half the total, are piled in the middle of the floor, grossly broken, ribs splayed out strangely, skulls massively fractured, laid at odd angles, spines twisting.

Nothing in the rebel narrative has an explanation for this division into two types of death within that shed.

On closer look (see below), this body state distinction isn't as clear as I thought. The groupings along the walls vs the middle still holds, but those are more intact than I though, being mostly full bodies, and those around the periphery are not as intact as I thought, most of them missing various extremities.

Jan. 19, bodies #1-19 and first notes
The following images are taken from various available photos and images compiled here, most of them cropped, lightened, and enhanced to clarify crucial details. The numbering starts from the shed's northwest corner, just beneath the hole in the wall some claimed to escape through.

1 - mostly verifiably intact, less charred than usual, skin or clothes still intact across. Frozen posture: laying on his back, head facing west, left leg pulled up at the knee and left hand frozen out in apparent struggle. Right arm not visible. His head may be missing, from how close his shoulders seem to be to that west wall. Note the screen next to his left side.

2 - curled on his side, head intact, pointing west. Like #2, this body is mostly intact and less burnt than most, showing more surface stuff and less bone. Few good views of either of these, and noclose-up photos I've seen.

a - in an empty space next to #2 (bodies removed?), half a rib cage. Pieces or piles of issue not identifiable as a "body" (50% or more of one) will get letters like this. There are less of these than I first thought.

3 - less clear. Apparently on his side, the Euronews footage (upper right) suggests arms bound behind his back, but the clearer photo from VII (left middle) suggests arms in front. Either way, seems to have his head, again facing west, laying on his right side. Legs seem to stop at mid-thigh.

4 - apparently laid face down, head pointing west, very tall when alive, or perhaps broken and spread out now. Large hole in back of the skull. left leg footless, bare leg bones sticking out for several inches. Right leg and arms are unclear. Right leg might be the curving object between him and #3.

5 - laid over #4, facing west but at a southward angle. left arm apparently missing below the elbow, left leg missing foot, right leg gone below mid-thigh, flesh charred to barnacle-like scales, bone sticking out, stiff and pointing in the air (likely fire-induced muscle tightening).

6 - very unclear, no good photos when I made the above compilation. At right is a better view, from image PB3. Skull visible just inches from #5's, clearly in the middle left view, barely visible in others. Most show just an indistinct pile ther. The pile may be a bit small, which could be a small man/dwarf, or a child, as the CBC's Bruser thought he saw in there. Like the others so far, this is not a skeleton, but much more fleshed-out. The burning was not nearly as complete here as among those more commonly shown in the middle.
7 - A well-charred skeleton finally, arm visible at right. Laid face-up, ribs splayed, little flesh remaining. Right hand at least missing, a small metal plate, un-burnt, is propped up where his hand should be.

8 - southwest corner
b - apile of tissue with hints of bone-perhaps one or two peoples' worth of material, unclear, mixed with debris from what seems to have been the corner where junk was burned here previously.
9 - a half body: legs, pelvis, half a spine, splayed partial ribs. No loose head or arms are visible nearby. That's some grenade.
c - tissue by the western wheel rim - less than a person's worth.
10 - another half-body: legs, pelvis, spine and some ribs, spine snapped. No loose head or arms are visible nearby (unless I'm misunderstading Human Rights Watch photo RW2, not included in this graphic due to the confusion it causes me)
11 - laid face down, head intact, skull fracture, facing south.
12 -laid face-dow, pointing north, apparently dragged into place here by the elbows, arms frozen that way, forearms dragging (lower left, great view). Bullet hole in left side of the head revealed by Sky News, left leg half missing, bent inward almost at the hip, right leg missing its foot, bent upward at the knee, leg bone sticking up like a spike.

13 - near the door, head pointing south, face down, legs missing from the mid-thigh. Global Post video [VGP] suggests the cracks in his skull emanate from a bullet hole in the top.
14 - near the door, head pointing south, face up, spine curving, splayed ribs

*15 - discovered late, fascinating, see below. Missing his legs just below the pelvis, apparently, laid face-up, head pointing south towards doors, laid atop body #16.
16 - apparently beheaded, possible head removal some other way. Arms and upper body seem otherwise intact, and the body was apparently dragged in by the arms, head-end pointing north. The left hand is still clutching some kind of wires, perhaps, that survived the fire. Lower body unclear, covered by body #15, almost as if to make 16's arms seem like 15's legs. But the left fist is a dead giveaway (below, center).

17 - laid face-down, head pointing south. Right arm at least intact, maybe even a hand.
18 - face-up, facing south, splayed ribs
19 - face-up, facing south, splayed ribs
20 - perhaps the most-seen body, laying atop the bar of some kind of axle or drive shaft. Skull extremely fractured, ribs splayed.

Here it breaks down. Most views [YK2 for example] suggest a relatively flat continuation of bodies 21, 22, and so on, all apparently face-up with the same opened rib cages. One image, PB5, enhanced, suggests the same, with at least two more bodies just on the other side, before the ones against the wall. But a recent discovery photo by Bryan Denton [BD1], taken from a low angle, suggests a rather deep pile of mangled partial bodies instead. The same rib cages are visible, but piled upon each other amongst what seems a lot of charred tissue. This I call "d" when it looks like a pile (as in SM14 with its odd skull sticking up). Is it always a pile? Is the difference an illusion, or does the image chronology allow a new heap of human tragedy appearing between shots? Does the difference in what's by the door factor in? The flat-seeming views (see SM10) have something there (which I should label "e") and the Denton photo has it moved.

22 - unclear, ribs visible in image YK2
23 - same
d - large pile of material around bodies 22/23, unclear - likely another body or five
24 - visible monly in image PB5, laid on its right side, head pointing northeast
25 - visible monly in image PB5, app. laid on its face, head pointing southwest-feet intect, app. bound?
26 - along east wall, laid face-up, near southeast corner - is the skull part of it or on the pile?
e - large piece of tissue, possibly a full body, along east wall between #24 and 25
27 - along east wall, face-up, head south, splayed ribs.
28 - along east wall, face-up, head south, splayed ribs, some flesh left on skull. Seen close-up in image SM2
29 -
30 -
31 -
32 -

Mysteries:
What caused all the splayed ribs, looking like the chest-bursters from the Alien movies had their turn with these guys? My guess: the fire did it, mostly. Chest muscle burned away, and bone became brittle, before back muscles started really cooking. These tightened, pulling the rib cage apart like a "venus fly trap." Chest injuries to start with would help this, but crushing by bomb raids, as I at first wondered, doesn't seem to fit. We'd see a lot more ribs crushed clean off the spines than we do.

Why so many missing limbs, especially legs? Executed Rebel captives usually have no shoes, but hardly a one of these bodies had feet at all, and half are missing everything below the knee at best. Some stop at the pelvis, and there many missing hands and forearms.

There at least two bodies missing from the mid-torso up. Why?

At least one (#16) and likely another (#1) were apparently beheaded. Why?

Is there any relevance to the floor damage visible in this view? It's not far from the hole in the wall of the building's northwest corner. A roughly hole-sized screen was seen (knocked-in?) in just that corner, next to victim #1 (see above).

Why does the smoldering from the old loyalist fire get worse as time goes by? Daniel Berehulak's oddball early photos from the 26th show bodies apparently not smoking at all. Footage from all day the 27th shows smoke rising, as does footage from the morning of the 28th. The afternoon sees open flame in the southwest corner, after the bodies were removed. A little clean-up fire set by the rebels? A few before that? How many times were these bodies burnt?

More notes forthcoming.

Khamis Brigade Shed Massacre: The Local Fighters

2012-01-18T15:59:00.000-08:00

January 18, 2012

<< The Tripoli Massacres

<< The Khamis Brigade Shed Massacre

Here we'll explore a rebel military leader and his base of operations, both previously mentioned in connection to criminalizing Gaddafi support in liberated Libya. There may be no significance to the shed massacre, but it's the possibility of one that made me post this. Below, discussion may develop the ideas further and give more clarity. To start with, a widely-re-posted but little-followed-up-on AP article.
Ex-Libya rebels search homes of Gadhafi loyalists
Karen Laub, AP, Sept. 6 2011

TRIPOLI, Libya — Former rebels, weapons drawn, burst into the houses ofsuspected supporters of Moammar Gadhafi, searching rooms and hauling away military uniforms, a portable safe and documents that appear to link residents to the deposed regime.

[...]

In Khalet el-Furjani, a neighborhood of about 4,000 people, the undisputed boss is now Hussein Furjani, who temporarily traded his white preacher’s robe for military fatigues after rebel fighters rolled into Tripoli on Aug. 21.

Furjani heads the local military committee and operates from his mosque. On Tuesday, he gave orders from an office chair in the mosque courtyard, sporting dark shades and a turban, while cradling a Belgian assault rifle and a walkie-talkie.

A photo of the sheikh (AP, Francois Mori) reviewing "possibly incriminating" documents can be seen at this Washington Post page.

Furjani's HQ, then, is this mosque/military base for Tripoli's fifth column, rising with the rebels as they arrived to topple the government. It was shown to journalists in early September, its yard stuffed with police motorcycles and hundreds of household items, ostensibly taken from looters to return to its owners, largely the government and fled/dead loyalists. (some of it seen here)

As the base of local fighters in Khelet al-Furjan during the August fighting, it's a possibly significant locale in our study of war crimes there. Black men were taken prisoner up and down al Hadbah road, a north-south thoroughfare the mosque may sit just off of (see below). Furjani's men didn't likely take on the Yarmouk military base, a half-kilometer away, at least not by themselves. But Misrata brigade fighters rolled through apparently late on August 23, and found about 140 extremely messed up dead people in the NATO-bombed compound.

These guys might have helped, providing a base with the mosque for more deilcate operations. There can't be many miosques in the neighborhood, so this might be the same one behind which 22 bodies, mostly or all black men, were found executed on August 26. For reference, here's the satellite imagery of that area and where 13 of the bodies were situated -near the doorway connecting this old wadi/road with one of the buildings inside the wall.