The Site that Asks: Is the "dictator" justifying intervention by killing innocents? Or is someone else doing it for him? (previously The Libyan Civil War: Critical Views)
Warning
Warning: This site contains images and graphic descriptions of extreme violence and/or its effects. It's not as bad as it could be, but is meant to be shocking. Readers should be 18+ or a mature 17 or so. There is also some foul language occasionally, and potential for general upsetting of comforting conventional wisdom. Please view with discretion.
By afternoon, however, witnesses reported streams of new protesters flowing to Benghazi from other cities around the east to support the revolt. Then another brigade of reinforcements — described by witnesses as special forces — began collaborating with the protesters as well, some even lending their tanks to the cause of assaulting the government security forces.
Soon the protesters had stormed the local headquarters of the state security services. “These young men are taking bullets in their chests to confront the tyrant,” Mr. Hadi said, speaking by phone from the siege of the security building.
Within hours, several protesters said, they had taken control of the army barracks as well. “Despite the pain and victims, we are happy because the blood of our sons was not spilled in vain,” Amal Mohaity, a lawyer and human rights activist, said as the siege unfolded. “Mark my words: Qaddafi is coming down.”
Note Sept. 30: When I first wrote this piece I did not know the formal name of the military barracks in question here. It's often called the Katiba, as used below, but that just means something like "brigade." But it's called the Al-Fadhil bin Omar barracks, at the time housing a brigade of that name.
Three months ago the other day, the Katiba barracks fell to what was becoming the Libyan rebel army. The large, loyal, and well-stocked military base in the middle of Benghazi would arm much of rebel-held Cyrenaica after defection of general Abdel Fatah Younes there on February 21. This came the day after the base's main gate was blown open, triggering a fierce battle within the sprawling complex. The swift culmination of that episode was a major turning point in the fate of the city, Libya's second largest and soon the de facto rebel capitol.
This post focuses on the opening of the gate by an act that, in any other context, would be denounced by the Western media as an act of terrorism. Consider this still from a Russia Today broadcast, showing the effects of a very powerful blast:
Further images of the damaged gate can be seen here, here and here.
Al Jazeera had an excellent photo but nothing much on the cause, mentioning this suicide bomber not at all.
A gaping hole in the northern wall of the compound, all twisted metal bars and jagged concrete blocks, marks the spot where protesters first managed to push through under a hail of gunfire. In white spray-paint, someone has written "Martyrs' Square" in Arabic on an unhinged metal gate that hangs off the breach.
But others give due mention of Mahdi Ziu, the middle-aged executive turned Jihadist. The Guardian, for one, reported two months later:
Ziu was not classic suicide-bomber material. He was a podgy, balding 48-year-old executive with the state oil company, married with daughters at home. There was no martyrdom video of the kind favoured by Hamas. He did not even tell his family his plan, although they had seen a change in him over the three days since the revolution began.
But Mr. Ziu (see tribute poster at left, from here) did drive an explosive car, we're told, from within a funeral procession, right at the Katiba's north gate and blew it open, probably killing some guards and helping make the heavy weapons inside available to all sorts of riff-raff. The Guardian's use of plastic language re-brands what elsewhere wouldbe termed a disaster and a heinous crime:
The Middle East. A man with a car fashioned into a bomb. He disguises his intent by joining a funeral cortege passing the chosen target. At the last minute the man swings the vehicle away, puts his foot down and detonates the propane canisters packed into the car.
It all sounds horrifyingly familiar. Mahdi Ziu was a suicide bomber in a region too often defined by people blowing up themselves and others. But, as with so much in Libya, the manner of Ziu's death defies the assumptions made about the uprisings in the Arab world by twitchy American politicians and generals who see Islamic extremism and al-Qaeda lurking in the shadows. Ziu's attack was an act of pure selflessness, not terror, and it may have saved Libya's revolution.
Admittedly, it was a rather violent selflessness, with further violent effects.
Then Ziu arrived, blew the main gates off the barracks and sent the soldiers scurrying to seek shelter inside. Within hours the Katiba had fallen.
[...]
What followed wasn't pretty. "(The revolutionaries) were beating Gaddafi people they captured, it's true. When they captured a Gaddafi soldier they said: 'What was this man doing? He was shooting us.' Gaddafi's soldiers wanted to kill anyone. They were using anti-aircraft weapons on humans. It cut people in half. People were angry," says Fasi. So angry that some of Gaddafi's soldiers were lynched. At least one was beheaded.
CNN reported the story a month earlier, but got the name a bit different, as Mendhi Ziu.
Confirmed: Hero Story of Benghazi Suicide Bomber
CNN reports that a man named Al Mendhi loaded his car with explosives and drove it into a military compound in Benghazi last week [...] Mr. Mendhi, a 49 year old oil company worker, is being hailed as a hero, because it was his sacrifice that enabled the resistance to overtake the barracks and roust Gadaffi's army, ultimately regaining the city of Benghazi. He had filled cylinders with cooking gas, packed them into his car, where he sat and prayed for half an hour before driving the car at high speed into the compound. His valiant efforts were not in vain.
Re-gaining Benghazi? When was it first lost?
His best friend reports that he carried the brave man's remains out of the car, and said that "If I didn't see it with my own eyes, I would not believe it myself."
There was a car left? There were remains? Is this the car? It looks just about like an other car looted and burned within the compound. It doesn't look blown up by the blast center responsible for ruptiuring the concrete gate building. I'm no explosives expert, but there seems ample room to wonder whether this was the result of exploding gas canisters at high speed, or of something quite a bit more professional-grade.
For what it's worth, I confirmed the location from imagae analysis of the Russia Today footage. By background structures, I decided it's clearly the north gate, the west lane (inbound?) passage. These images show my work.
Update, Sept. 30: This historic bombing of the north gate and guard house - either the actiual blast or the destruction after - is something that, like protesters being shot, is simply absent from " "protester" videos. Russia today showed it, outside media showed it, but somehow the people who did it seem to have kept it mum,as if that would help us fail to notice they were"protesting" places to smithereens.
It also has a way of being glossed over or ignored in mainstream run-downs of the battle for Benghazi. For example, the UN's Human Rights Council issued a report on June 1 (PDFlink) about the early violence. It could and should have addressed this particular act but somehow missed it. They make note of an extracted "admission of involvement by a member of the security forces," in rebel detention, "in the random shooting of protestors in Benghazi on 20 February."
Their statistics show the biggest spike of daily deaths that day - 60 to the previous 20 and 20 (on the 17th and 19th). But they thought this was from an extreme, random-shooting punishment because "government opponents assumed control over the Katiba premises," in some unspecified way with no mention of a terrorist suicide bomber, "on 19 February!" No wonder their conclusions were so warped - these guys were confused on major events like this, which aren't even hard to figure out just with a Google search and no airfare required. The question remains whether this type of goof-up is accidental or part of some design.
Suddenly Relevant
A recent turn of the news has spurred me to finally finish this long-neglected draft post. At least fifty-three more people have been found killed in the expanding Tripoli massacres, burnt to literally skeletal remains. These were found, still smoldering, on August 26 or 27 (accounts vary) in a warehouse next to the base of the demonized Khamis brigade, long reported to engage in serious crimes against humanity. Thus the crime is blamed saqurely, by location and by several self-described escapees of the massacre, as committed by the Gaddafi regime against those in the uprising.
The incident remains, in this researcher's mind, extremely questonable. I will wait until I've reviewed the evidence closer to to see if it still seems that way then. Most who hear these reports will, however, just presume it's all the truth, and not possibly made up by the rebel forces or the suspiciously numerous but relatively consistent eyewitnesses.
The temptation to just believe is understandable. After all, this heinous cinderization of families, freedom-seekers, and a few soldiers who wanted to defect, matches a previously "known" pattern: Gaddafi troops charring people like this, especially the mutinous military folk, in moments of extreme peril. Just before or maybe just after rebel fighters overwhelm some notorious government positions and kill them or send them running, Gaddafi's thugs allegedly often make a decision to burn the hell out of someone noble who's simply standing up for what's right.
Really?
This previous pattern is something I've somehow managed to gloss over almost completely, even at the epic Rebel Atrocity Videos. I've been meaning to fix that and note the alleged burning, alive, of government soldiers, by the government, along with my suspicions that something else was going on there.
As the claims stood back in February, this extreme death was usually ordered for those heroic soldiers who refused to attack protesters as ordered. However, this same motive was claimed for a certain 22 soldiers (among 130 total!), bound and executed by gunshots to the head in or around al Baida. They wouldn't shoot protester, so their officers shot them, before just disappearing themselves.
And in the case of the al-Baida massacre, the rebel claim falls apart on scrutiny. A separate video (posted by rebels, later pulled, and in-between found and shown by Libyan TV) shows at least one of the men killed, among nine men with several possible matches with the heroic dead, still alive and being sentenced to die by their captors - bearded, civilian, "protesters," clearly. Their crime was pronounced as daring to shoot back as the terrorists attacked their position, which they had a right to do, "to defend themselves." (The bodies of these heroic martyrs, by the way, were cursed by rebel viewers the following day as dogs who deserved their fate. Odd considering what they told the outside world.)
So if the victim is charred to a crisp, is the same rebel story of who killed them and why any more credible?
Firestarters
For starters, the rebels/"protesters" were the known fire bugs in these early days, destroying police stations with fire in many cities, as early as February 15. Three internal security stations in Benghazi alone were reportedly burnt on the 16th, in raids that led to some of the first, low-key "protester" deaths there.
Secondly, burning of bodies made mostly of water is not the most efficient way to ensure the death of mutineers. Here is one video of a "protester" attempt, on a man already killed, that failed. It is however a conveniently cruel method, and would help to demonize oneself, if that was one's bag. Perhaps that facts explains why the rebels, so intent on demonizing their enemy, decided to do these barbecue attacks, as well as educating the world on what really happened.
I believe there are multiple videos of different instances of "soldiers burned alive" in the uprising's first couple of days. But for now I'll focus on this widely-seen one, from the Benghazi front, posted February 21 (video is below). A "news" article from the next day referred to this find and gave the following, indirectly useful, information:
Five charred bodies were found Monday in military barracks in Benghazi, the second-largest city in Libya and a stronghold of anti-Gaddafi protesters. According to one of our Observers, the bodies were those of soldiers savagely massacred for refusing orders to fire against Libyan civilians protesting in the African nation.
Government-run Jamahiriya News Agency (JANA) reported last week that the Al-Fudhail bin Omar base, home of the barracks where the bodies were found, was an important target of anti-Gaddafi protests.
Benghazi fell to protesters on February 18. Two days later, demonstrators headed to the military compound to demolish the building they regarded as a symbol of Gaddafi’s authoritarian rule. JANA reported that the building had been pillaged by "rioters" but did not mention that the bodies of five burned soldiers had been found.
Actually, Benghazi didn't fall in a meaningful way until the 20th, when the sprawling, walled-in barracks in the center of the city, sometimes called the Katiba, finally fell after days of "protester" attacks. It was a major symbol indeed, and much-hated, and indeed the same base where these bodies were found. A UN report (advance unedited version, PDF link) mentioned "incidents of protestors being injured by government forces were reported in Benghazi (in front of Al-Fadhil bin Omar Katiba) [...] on February 18." That's exactly where "protesters" were killed that day and others - right next to the military base, if not exclusively than overwhelmingly.
On February 20 the armed attacks on the Katiba's walls, ongoing daily since the 17th, took a drastic turn. They were decisively breached, and an uncounted number, probably scores at least, of government soldiers were killed within the compound, with at least one beheaded by the enraged masses. A "heroic" suicide bomber, Mahdi Ziu, had let them in. The armory was freely looted for tanks and other heavy weapon to carry out better attacks in other cities. The remaining Katiba soldiers, hundreds of them, were forced to take refuge in various buildings. Several buildings were torched by the rebels, and left gutted and smoke-stained, as later video shows. Only Interior Minister Abdel Fateh Younis was able to arrange the safe departure of those remaining, as part of his defection deal the night of the 20th.
More Martyrs on Display
Anyway, here is the video filmed in some Benghazi barracks the following day, of these exactly five carbonized soldiers:
And there's another video around of clearer resolution, posted as "people of libya is burning." This one reveals enough detail to see that one of the victims at least is missing his head (see image below).
User Ibnomar, who posted the first one, explained there:
Footage of burned soldiers Gaddafi had killed because they would not commit the brutality commanded to them
By the heaven, holding the big stars (1) And by the Promised Day (i.e. the Day of Resurrection); [yadda yadda]
In reality, when you see anything like this, consider it more than likely another rebel atrocity. If the above narrative alone doesn't do it for you, here's more food for thought.
The Real Victims - Martyrs for What?
A reader first tipped me off a while back to see the UN Human Rights Council report on abuses, on both sides, in the early civil war period. [PDF link, accompanying press release] Among their findings was endemic abuse of black Africans, men and women, and especially those from Chad. One of the more shocking which they found credible enough to pass on was this:
4. Violations committed by opposition groups. The Commission received several accounts of attacks on migrant workers carried out by armed opposition groups. […] Another case reported to the Commission related to the extra-judicial killing of five Chadian nationals who had been arrested on the basis of their nationality, and taken tothe military barracks in Benghazi. Dozens of armed persons either in military style or civilian clothing were said to have poured kerosene on their bodies and burned them to death on 21 February.
Hey, isn't that the same exact day this video was shown? Is this video of "Gaddafi crimes" in reality corroboration of this horrific rebel war crime? (Or is it a "protest" crime? Is there a tribunal for that?) Often the black-skinned dead are proudly shown on video, signs of horrific torture and all, and called African mercenaries (which they were not). But there's a whole different potency in calling the skeletons, race and clothing indeterminate, brave government soldiers, like those in al Baida, killed for their heroic stand "with the people."
Maybe the rabbles at the Katiba were left, by Younes' bargain, with less real soldiers to slaughter and play PR games with than they had hoped for. So they had to go snag five Chadian workers, arresting them as "mercenaries." But once they'd been burned alive, they were good, presumably Arab, soldiers to look up to, and just found that way in the base that had just been held by the wicked government.
Stopping Bloodbaths?
Thank God the West intervened to stop this kind of regime brutality. And now the "Freedom Fighters" are discovering dozens of even more charred bodies in Tripoli itself, in areas that had just been held by the wicked government. And again, they have the explanation all ready for us. Again, a horrific blood bath was occurring there just before the FFs pulled in. They saved countless other lives, but a little too late to save at least 400 regime victims reported to date across the holdout neighborhoods of Tripoli.
And in this case, they were just barely too late - the video of the remains show them still smoldering.
Be skeptical here folk, hard as I know that's going to get. The moral stakes are very high, and the greatest powers in the world are intent on seeming to have backed the good guys who really are stopping slaughters, not initiating and fobbing them off.
Update Sept. 6: I've got a video for this now.
Update Sept. 7: And a line from Clive Baldwin from Human Rights Watch, via Sky News, about his look at the scene of August's massacre:
[Baldwin] said the scene was similar to other ones he had witnessed. The warehouse was apparently used to execute people who refused to kill civilians. He said it appeared that pro-Gaddafi forces had shot detainees in the last few days before rebel fighters entered Tripoli. "We have also seen people in military uniforms," he said. "This is similar to March when we had evidence of members of the Libyan army refusing orders and being killed.
Yes indeed, it's quite similar, but that shouldn't cloud our vision of the facts on the ground. Just because it was clearly rebels burning innocent black men alive the first time doesn't necessarily mean the same thing happened here. By "March," I presume he's going by memory that he wrote about Gaddafi's crimes against humanity on March 1, holding this news in mind at the time, though it didn't seem he mentioned it there.
Note Sept. 21: It's not worth changing everything in this post over, but it should be noted I apparently got the date wrong. The incident under discussion seems to have happened on February 18 (see below).
The Official Story on the 19th - Scant
Before looking at the evidence and claims of this one day’s violence in Libya’s second largest city, we must remember there are two basic versions of the initial uprising in Libya – that of the government, and that of the rebellion (and for the most part, the outside world). One has outside-supported insurgents getting themselves killed attacking government buildings to steal weapons, blaming the government, and getting a lot of credence. The other, well... we've heard what they have to say.
Drawing on Libyan official sources, R. Breki Goheda’s video Libyan Crisis: Events, Causes, and Facts has intense attacks on the 18th - by protesters, and against the city’s main military base, the Katiba as it's commonly called. These, he says, involved small bombs, Molotov cocktails, and at least one bulldozer used against the Katiba's high walls. Goheda cites 24 killed in the process, mostly martyred attackers one presumes.
The 20th would see the Katiba’s fall – and Benghazi’s - to an al Qaeda style suicide bombing breaching the north gate, in tandem with a lynch mob then loosed upon the exposed military. These are confirmed by numerous sources, but Goheda’s video adds that seized tanks and artillery were used in this final push, providing rebel pocket video of such weapons deployed, if not used, in Benghazi.
But February 19 seems to have been the relative calm between these two bloody days. The video makes no mention of attacks on the walls, only mentioning the attackers having better arms – a number of “machine guns confiscated from Shehat City.” This was well to the East of Benghazi, near al Baida, and fell on the 19th (video of liberated Shehat). The guns were apparently sent to Benghazi the same day by swift truck, but the heavy weapons took more arranging and didn't get there 'til the next day, perhaps explaining the lull in sieging the Katiba.
For comparison, the UN Human Rights Council fact-finding mission found for death toll in Benghazi for these days: "The Commission received information that 20 demonstrators were killed in Benghazi on 17 February with a further 20 killed on 19 February and 60 killed on 20 February."[PDF link] Comparing Goheda/UN we get these stated estimates: Feb 17: 14/20, Feb 18: 24/NA, Feb 19: NA/20, Feb 20: "more victims from both sides"/60 demonstrators.
The Rebel Version: A Funeral Massacre
Goheda's video offered no number of deaths for the 19th, the UN mission gives 20, and initial Western media reports were clear in the lowest number - fifteen protesters. Consider with this from the morning of the 20th, in the UK Telegraph:
Mourners leaving a funeral for protesters in the eastern city of Benghazi came under fire, killing at least 15 people and wounding many more. A hospital official said one of those who died was apparently struck on the head by an anti-aircraft missile, and many had been shot in the head and chest.
The paper added, up top, some other parts unsupported by the reportage or anything much else:
140 'massacred' as Gaddafi sends in snipers to crush dissent ... Women and children leapt from bridges to their deaths as they tried to escape a ruthless crackdown ... artillery and helicopter gunships were used against crowds ... thugs armed with hammers and swords attacked families in their homes ...
All they could show in support of any of this was a single video, which I've also found on Youtube as “Dozens killed in crackdown on Libya protests.” That was posted by user TOENews, February 20, and linked to an article of the same name at The Times of Earth. It was used there to support the same news:
Benghazi - There are reports that 15 people have been killed in Libya after security forces opened fire on mourners attending a funeral for anti-government protesters. The Associated Press and Al Jazeera television quote hospital officials who say the mourners were killed Saturday [the 19th] in the northeastern city of Benghazi. The officials say many other people were wounded.
The video, Then, Shows What?
It's only implied that the video shows a portion of this same massacre of mourners. Here's the video and analysis:
The camera comes in across a tree-rimmed square along with other civilians, converging there where others are already standing in the street. Across from them is a large building and low walled area with large trees, an official looking facility with a green band covered in Arabic writing across the top of its front entrance. The time of day isn't certain, but something says late afternoon, near sunset, on a hazy or smoky day.
One injured "protester", possibly dead, is carried by others from the left to the right (west to east?) in front of the building , suggesting the gunfire was elsewhere to the left, away from this building or at least this side of it. No one here seems terrified or running, but agitation, alarm, and in some cases dismay, is evident in the vocal soundtrack. As the body-bearers pass the building's sheltered doorway and this camera, it's clear those gathered there are huddled over another injured already laid there. Pools of his blood cover the tiled floor, and the mood indicates he had just passed from injured to dead.
Looking to the west and the setting sun's glow, the non-terrified crowd mills about, as a large bonfire burns about two blocks off. I was able to locate the site on Google Maps, mostly looking for areas with green islands fronted with trees like that, across from anything compatible with this building, perhaps near the Katiba (the large compund there marked with "Birka barracks" in the middle). It seems the building they're in front of is the Tariq bin Zeyad school, the camera is crossing the park south of it, and the wounded are being brought up Al Hijaz Street. They're coming from the direction of the Katiba's north gate, about 300 meters to the southwest, as I thought. All clues match that area, and so I say that's it, and for anyone who'd like to double-check, here is the overhead. Compare it to any scene from the video.
Also note, the injured were not being taken to Benamer hospital - if any, it was more likely al Jalaa, which I haven't located yet, and which they reportedly took over on the 18th - upon torturing and killing the managing director (see here).
Wherever the injured and dead were being taken to, it's fairly clear where they were coming from. One might think after two days of "funerals" there that turned into slaughters of the innocent, as they said, the "protesters" would have learned their lesson by the 19th ...
Why is this all there is? Times of Earth passed on that
Earlier, Human Rights Watch estimated at least 84 people were killed in this week's crackdown on protests [...] the toll included 35 people hospital sources say were killed by security forces in Benghazi. It says most of them were killed with live ammunition.
Yeah, that can happen if, for example, you persist in attacking the military base. But we saw almost nothing to prove either side's story, which is odd if the rebel's version is the slightest true. Western journalists noted they were for some reason getting very little footage from Libya (including the rebel side) in these days. We know they had plenty of pocket cameras – at least two filmed this strange scene of supposed brutality (but it seems to be only hype) on the 18th, and I’d say dozens are gleefully capturing this public beheading in Benghazi’s main square of a man they claimed was an Afrrican mercenary. At least two views of that made it to the Internet.
But when they're being massacred while simply walking in Benghazi, no one at all gets the footage of them actually being shot?
Another video, posted as "Violence 300 dead 5 shot in the head Libya2011", is a segment from the NBC Today Show, apparently of February 20th (the stupid title is not theirs). Correspondent Ron Allen conflated and combined the 15 reported killed the day before and HRW’s finding of 84 before that, into "Human Rights Groups are estimating as many as a hundred people may have been killed in Libya yesterday.” That should be as of yesterday.
And in Libya's main battlefield then, Benghazi, all we've seen is two civilians wounded, one at least apparently dead. The actual circumstances of their deaths, and that of any others, comes down to he said vs. he said. But it could be that the rebel video silence is because those killed were too obviously militant to send out to the news media. And here was Mr. Allen, left with and passing on an image of blasted bodies of helpless freedom-seekers, piled by the dozens on the streets of some unspecified peaceful neighborhood or public square.
And yet, on the morning of the 20th, Allen's sources claimed 20,000 more helpless people were in the streets anyway, surrounding a military complex and a courthouse. The base was being surrounded and attacked as he spoke with tanks, artillery, and a suicide bomber driving amongst yet another "funeral procession" right there on the field of battle. That would be the last day they had to repeat that charade.
---
Sept. 21:
Another video I found shows (after a cut at 1:00) the same scene from a different angle and much lower resolution.
This view is from within the school's doorway, and we can see the dead "protester." The resolution is awful, but that's a blessing. 1/4 of his head is a red mess. Just then, the second victim is carried by, just like in the other video. This one is dated February 18, so I'm left presuming, unless two exact repeats happened two days in a row, that I had the date wrong, and the other posting was just delayed a day.
This is a video I just uploaded on Youtube, part 1 of a planned series of probably very few videos, called How Freedom* Came to Libya. The asterisk means, more or less, the "freedom" sought by the rebellion and NATO - I chose not to spell it out. And the title may not prove accurate after all, but it was meant ironically enough I'll leave it.
Warning: as the "graphic" in the title suggests, there are some dead people and blood, but I did not go for the shock value of the more horrible footage available.
This opening salvo, How Protest Became War, expresses the Libyan government version, with supporting video evidence, of how "protesters" were led by Islamist extremists into stealing weapons to overthrow the government. It may not be 100% true, and is almost sure to have some omissions, but this stuff is, at the very least, worth more consideration than it's gotten yet in the West.
I chose not to go much into the Islamist, racist, or inhumane characters of the uprising (in this segment), just leaving them hinted at. The emphasis is mechanical - how the hell did "peaceful protesters" manage to take over half a country? That was my first question back at the end of February. I could see the defectors part, to some extent, and in fact I might have left it there if it weren't for being keenly aware by now that you trust the news regarding Libya at your own peril. They get framed and presented in fantasy colors all the time.
Lo and behold, the video evidence offers no proof for either the rebel or government version in toto, but the evidence seems to be leaning towards Tripoli's take.
I draw here, mainly, on three videos I've previously hosted - Goheda's video Libyan Crisis, events, causes, and facts, a Feb 28 press conference by Libyan spokesman Moussa Ibrahim, and a July 1 Russia Today interview with Seif al-Islam al-Gaddafi. I also used about a dozen downloaded Youtube videos, still images, and original animated graphics, plus my own music. I hope it's of some value.
There was in fact an underground prison used at the Katiba base in Benghazi. Or at least I'm willing to accept that, in itself, that makes sense. An entrance to some underground chamber is shown, and it was said prisoners were found in there after rebel forces blasted their way in. But the number of them and their conditions are not entirely clear.
I can see a few reasons, good and not so good, the government would decide to jail quite a few people during the uprising in Benghazi. One source (huge page, slow to load) claims
9:30 PM Reports of 1500 (some reports of 300) young men found trapped in an underground prison in Benghazi, left without food or water from the 15th of February to the 22nd. Reportedly still all alive.
The linked source has the 1500 number "confirmed" by "a caller." I'm not sure who said 300. Another report spoke of seven rescued from an improvised chamber with no food, water, windows, or even doors - buried alive, basically, in a little space with an air tube (the space is shown). It's not clear if they were to be dug out later or what, That would be rather inhumane, if true.
But the following account is almost certainly a bunch of crap, exaggerated into the type of horrifying catacombs rumored beneath the McMartin preeschool in the early 1980s. Here, in chambers that don't really exist, children were allegedly abused, with ceremonial regularity, in a sexual, satanic, and downright ridiculous manners. This more geo-politicaly relevant reincarnation comes from a self-described prisoner. The young man, comforted by another with an arm around him, is shown telling all in a Youtube video with English subtitles. These I've re-typed below, changing the spelling of Senusi to the Senoussi I'm familiar with, and fixing some punctuation, etc.
Transcript:
After taking our clothes off, they took us to an underground cell. We were about 70 men. I recognized a couple of them.
They whipped and tortured us. Saadi Gaddafi and Abdullah Senoussi were there. What were they doing? They were telling the guards to rape us.
We were naked by then and the guads were harrassing us... I can't tell you what they did to us. Then they tied our hands and feet and blindfolded us and left us in those cells. No food, no water. They came often to piss on us. They were from Tripoli and Benghazi too.
One of us, a very old man, was begging for respect, but Senoussi abused him, putting a stick in his ... He hung himself later in the cell.
They kept on beating us up for five days. Two soldiers helped us by giving us mobiles to call our families and tell them where we are.
Later on, Senoussi came back with black African mercenaries to execute us on the gallows. They managed to hang three of us but they were interrupted. The protesters blew up the gates. As for Senoussi and his men, they were busy fleeing the compound. Some ran, some were killed, and some took us as hostages. We looked death in the eye.
Wow, what a dramatic conclusion - only the suicide bombing of the north gate and an influx of Islamist rebels was able, at the last moment, to save all but three of the remaining prisoners. And according to this kid, the über-villain Abdullah Senoussi was among those running just ahead of the crowd. For those unaware (the video also pauses to explain), he's col. Gaddafi's brother-in-law, and after the leader, his sons, and perhaps Moussa Koussa, the most senior official accused of a huge range of atrocities, within Libya and without. He was actually convicted, in absentia, for planning the destruction of an airliner (UTA 772) - as if that means much as far as what really happened. It's possible.
And here Senoussi is in person, allegedly, sodomizing old men in an underground prison, alongside African mercenaries. And with Gaddafi's son, Saadi, who was in fact sent to Benghazi in the early days, ostensibly to negotiate with the rebels at large. But here he is, allegedly in the same dungeon, taking the time to order guards to rape these prisoners.
Yeeeaaaah... This FLV fairytale has been widely re-posted and repeated as "shocking," and joins the heap of thousands of such urban legends the world seems to just want to believe.
The final line in the video is spliced in out-of-order so it can close on the political implications, for the Gaddafi regime and family, of this extremely impure - alleged - behavior.
Saadi Gaddafi pushed his shoe in my mouth and told me "my father's honor is purer than that of you and your family."
"Oh, that is such bull!", the viewer is intended to respond. And it's pretty clear that something here is. Consider the other allegations of rape hurled against the Libyan government in this three-month old campaign. Every time, it's mentioned how there'd be more such reports if it weren't for the social taboo in Libya (and, I think, in the Muslim world at large) against discussing sexual violence. Some women report being shunned by their husbands or families afterwards, and hypothetically, they could be bodily killed as the only way to cleanse the crime away. I'm not aware of that happening in Libya, but it shows how far the basic idea of sexual "dishonor" can go.
Consider too Arab attitudes towards homosexual behavior and it seems a little odd that here is this Katiba prisoner, telling the whole world of all this sexual abuse, falling silent only at the smallest, least necessary gaps ("they raped us," and "anus.") The guy next to him has his arm around him. "It's okay Buddy, we all accept you fine, it's not your fault. Raped by thugs, you need a hug. And to get it off your chest. Just tell all the world what they did to your butt, and how Gaddafi himself ordered it all right before your very ... no? We can't say that? He was live on TV in Tripoli? Well, how about ..."
