Video Study: Rebels Attack Libyan Barracks

July 7, 2011
last update November 12

We start with two videos collected at this page of the "Libyan War" blog/site, as showing "peaceful protesters open fire at direction of army compound in Benghazi." The actions described seem accurate. One video (below, posted Feb 22) shows an ambulance leaving a compound, followed by what I believe is an internal security paddy wagon. (Update Nov.11: Reader Felix says "The black "padded wagon" in video 1 is certainly no internal security van,as it is labelled in arabic (of course!) Inna Lillahi Wa inna ilayhi raji'oon : To Allah we belong and to him we return - إِنَّا لِلّهِ وَإِنَّـا إِلَيْهِ رَاجِعونَ." This sounds kind of like a "hearse," indicating someone has died.)

They drive at medium speed down a dusty road amid a scattered crowd of apparent protesters, and dense gunfire they're not running from. Its youtube posting idiotically entitles the thing "Libya : Random Shootout Towards Ambulances and Protestors." Looks like the shooting is coming from the civilians, and only might have been towards the ambulance. More likely they're firing in the air, in celebration for the injuries it seems were inflicted on someone else prior to this point.

The next video shown, posted by the same user (LAKOMTUBE) on the previous day (Feb 21), supports those calls. This time, we're seeing "Live Fire between People and Gaddafi Regime." It shows a smaller and denser group of "protesters" hiding from lines of fire inside, while at least one aimed an assault rifle in and fired repeatedly, trying to "express himself." Something they got inside has also started a few of the trees on fire, starting the smoke chaos "non-violent insurgencies" seem to love. (the real smoke, we'll see below)

There was another video once shown at that Libyan War post, called "Protestors gather around a compound," but it has since been removed by the user. But in R. Breki Goheda's half-hour documentary video (part 1 embedded below) is a scene, perhaps the same as the one lost, of what I've decided is clearrly the same site. Shown at 5:40 (by luck with the scene in question chosen as the thumbnail), this is given as a military barrack besieged by hostile and, as we've seen, slightly armed criminals.


The narrator says of the response to thie civilian onslaught:

This video demonstrates that soldiers refused to open fire at protesters. Rather, they retreat into the center of the barrack, and open fire into the air as the attackers were advancing in the barrack.

Indeed, inside we see clustered soldiers and vehicles in the mid-distance. They seem to be armed but only at the ready. He says further the insurgents were later "able to storm" the place, among a list of three places (see below), between them seizing a fair amount of weapons.

Update, Nov. 5: More Views and a Location
The location of this incident, for one thing, vexed me for quite a while. Then recently while skimming videos from al Baida, in a playlist made by molibya, I saw the same scene explored here, in a slightly different video. Was this base in or around al Baida? The title doesn't help:
مشاهد حية للإشتبكات في ليبيا [trans: Vivid scenes of clashes in Libya]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mts_qRO4nLs
Uploaded by brqnetwork on Feb 21, 2011

It's apparently the same video from above with the one rifleman firing into the gate. It's lower resolution, but has some extra footage at the beginning that to me shows something interesting. A military hostage, perhaps, against the wall just on the right side of the gate. In an olive green shirt, fair skin and dark hair, he's facing the opposite way of most others. At first glance, he seems to be being frisked or manhandled somehow by another guy. Then he's briefly seen looking to the side, and putting his hands out submissively.

Then down the list I saw a video that made me jump - a very high-res version of the video I had to cite Goheda's video for above (saved a copy).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8wPx9pgPII

Uploaded by hamd95 on Mar 1, 2011, and no further date given.

This helped me see more clearly the interior of the base and forces within, and everything else. I don't see much armed activity here, I have to say. People are bending over to pick up rocks, or throwing them. Some fiddle with other devices, perhaps (guy in trench coat, lower right in the image at the very bottom, for one)... many clues are available here.

The title of this posting is what help narrow down a location: اول كتيبه تسقط فى ليبيا من نظام القذافى ( مدينة شحات) [trans: Down with the first battalion in Libya of Qaddafi's regime (the city of Cyrene)]. I looked up Cyrene, and it's a modern small town as well as archaeological site (and clearly the origin of the whole region's name-Cyrenaica). It's on the northern outskirts of Shahet, just east of al Baida.

The army base at Shahet fell to rebel forces on February 19, I have heard, two days after the Day of Rage. The video location is not at Cyrene, but on Shahat's eastern flank. There I found an expansive walled compound, where an angled road passes a gate, in a heavily-treed area. Matching the video, this area has dense trees on both sides of the wall, making the gate area invisible from above, but with the right-hand-side (when facing in) more open.

Base and takeover details from reader Felix, as submitted in a comment, trumps my sloppy old guesswork:

The military barracks which the commentator around 6.00 in the causes and facts video 1/2 says "Attackers were able to storm Hussein al-Juweifi and Shahat Military Barrack..." Anmesty International, in their May 2011 report actually mentions Hussein al-Juweifi military barracks in Shahat (are they the same, or are there two barracks in Shatat?): In al-Bayda, a resident told Amnesty International that on 18 February, as soldiers inside the Hussein al-Juweifi military barracks in Shahat, east of al-Bayda, were beginning to lose control after protracted battles with protesters, he attempted to mediate to avoid more bloodshed:

“I asked to speak to a senior officer at the compound whom I knew from before… I gave him my word and said: if your soldiers surrender, they will be safe. As the group of soldiers were coming out to surrender, the protesters were very angry and shot dead two soldiers… they were Libyans, not foreign mercenaries… I feel guilty because was it not for me, they may not have come out.”

The barracks were at one time commanded according to this document by Colonel Al-Jarih Farkash. Several nephews of Gaddafi were Captains at the base..Abdul Qadir Saeed and Abdul Rahman Abdul-rahim al-atrash. The battalion was at Al Beida.(1993 data) (Libya's Qaddafi by Mansour O El-Kikhia, University Press of Florida, USA) [...] The barracks are also called Al-Jarah barracks, even though the arabic title says Medina Shahat - Katiba Al Juweifi in this video, Al Jarah Barracks battle (not really). A non-faked video shows it being demolished in May 2011.

It seems to all be the same place, now with a location and a name and, as we'll see, tons of more video views spanning, perhaps, nearly two weeks. But the soldiers were surrendering on the 18th. Why it was later torn down isn't clear.

After The Battle...
So... this is some part of the Shehat campaign, somewhere around the 20th. Earlier in the same Molibya playlist were mentions of a battle of Cyrene. One of them:
"20110218149"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R146AFzeJkc
Uploaded by coffeeaddict99 on Feb 19, 2011.

The title suggests a date of the 18th, Petri Krohn tells me Mediainfo gives its record time as UTC 2011-02-18 14:50:33. The description says, Google translated from Arabic:

This is the return of the al Baida youth after their return from the battle of Cyrene, which Lapid [??], the remainder of the brigade a battalion called the enhanced 32 Thurs [??} [??]

Felix suggests this may mean 32th, or 32nd, and may thus refer top the infamous and ubiquitous Khamis brigade, "otherwise known as the 32nd reinforced Khamis Gaddafi battalion, as noted in this Al-Jazeera interview with General Fatah Younis, Gaddafi's friend turns foe , uploaded early on 1 March 2011." Here on whichever day and after defeating whoever, we see "protesters" in general control of at least part of al Baida, returning from a raid with weapons. We see face-covered militants, machine guns, boxes carried. Rockets for RPGs are held aloft in one passing truck bed to fervent cheers, then tank shells, larger rockets, and strings of heavy bullets. Only a few rifles are fired into the air in celebration, however.

And here's another Coffeeaddict99 video from the 19th:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz2ZkHP1s-I
The title, translated by Google: "Young white [al Baida] city Mtugeon [??] to attack the camp of Cyrene This is one of a group of 106 anti-defender." We see a big barrel artillery piece in the bed of a pickup truck, surrounded by wowed, victorious, knife-wielding young militants. There are  no military defectors to be seen in any of this.


All Shahet "Battle" Videos: Feb 16-18

Starting from invaluable comments below, especially from reader Felix, I'll use this space to organize the videos covered above and others, in the hope of establishing what happened and when in Shahet. Reader Petri Krohn has tipped me off to software that will (usually) show the date and time a video was recorded  (if it's raw and converted from Youtube, not a FLV downloaded with Safari). This will be called on when relevant below.

The earliest - and often most fascinating - glimpses I've seen are compiled in this video: 

Sahat [sic] intifada story

http://www.feb17images.com/sahat-intifada-story

Source: ORWA31

duration 9:34. Credited on-screen as: "Cyrenaica for International Production."

Covering only a three-day span, this compilation suggests an "Initifada"of Feb. 16-18. It starts with video from the night of Wednesday the 16th. We see a peaceful march with chanting, but also a bonfire just outside some walled compound, with no one running from live fire, and another building roaring with flames inside it. 

Nothing is shown in this video for the 17th, which is strange. That was exactly the called-for "Day of Rage," where other cities were provoking state violence and reaping the PR windfalls on video. But along with much of what happened in other towns, Shahet's total activity shared on video seems to be zero.

Footage resumes on the afternoon of the 18th, from the angle of sunlight and deducing from the presence of "18" and no other numbers appaearing amongst the Arabic text I cannot read. It shows no clear fighting but sudden control achieved by angry, unarmed civilians. A walled compound has fallen, or at least its walls are vulnerable. A dump truck is backed into it, knocking a hole. To the left are two more rough portals through the wall, one smoke-stained. How many do they need before they can finally get in? 

The following edit makes it seem this is the same wall (and it apparently is) as the compound then shown, the same al Jarah barracks examined here. It's late afternoon, the gates are open, and people are walking in like they would to the zoo. There's some sort of white car to the right of the gate, which I thought seemed burnt. Atop the wall is the guard station, never shown manned, looking to like it was burned and soot-covered as well. Another video below confirms both hunches.

Here's another Youtube video claiming to be "Fighting in the city of Cyrene the first day of the Libyan revolution." It was only uploaded in late April, and mediainfo says April 28 - the date it was stamped in a program I presume. So we cannot say a certain date, but it seems a best fit with early afternoon of the 18th. The white car is seen at the beginning, trashed and tireless if not burnt. It's very shaky, bad camera work, filmed at the gate, panned in too close to give much detail. People are seen both walking in triumphantly, clapping, and also running out, at gunfire as if under attack within the base. Then they feel safe and keep going... There must be hundreds of "protesters" inside by now, burning a truck and piles of junk near the gate. No guns are seen, just clubs and sticks and a whole limb from a tree, held by people continuously running back out (like the masked militant at left). Then an ambulance and a black van drive out, in a clearly different scene from the one we opened with.

Back to the "Sahat intifada" video from ORWA31. The trashed interior is also shown after another cut, presumably some other time on the 18th. Within the expansive lot, rebel types mill about, loot, burn, and film freely. There are trees and green fringes, but it's smoke-filled, junk-strewn and spotted with wildly burning vehicles and buildings. Clearly, this was among the earliest of military mass defection to the side of the people, but none of the defectors are shown (except one, high-ranking, and dead - see below).

Then there's  a view walking down the street outside the base (2:57). Two trucks, their occupants elsewhere now, are seen burning fiercely, as smoke pours from the open gateway of the base itself. Along the way, a rebel flag is seen, chanting about Allah, a man with a hatchet, and just immense amounts of smoke.

Then we see an injured loyalist, it seems, carried out and into a mob that surrounds him. Two middle-aged men finally escort him through, forcing past the hot-heads. Then a bus with a rebel flag, at 5:40 military trucks full of people with machine guns are seen driving by at great speed. Other trucks are shown being filled with as many fighters as possible, and speeding off. A single artillery piece, several masked men, a cheering crowd, and light-hearted dancing with bullets are also seen in the video as it closes its coverage of the 18th. Fascinating work.

Another, more amazing video from ORWA31 shows some events that seem to fit with this day.
إقتحام كتيبة حسين الجويفي بمدينة شحات . [Break into the battalion Hussein Jawafa city of Cyrene]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nPg1YThjdo
Duration 10:09

This densely-packed video compilation starts with a night-time scene, perhaps the 16th or 17th, in front of the main gates. Men are waving knives and chanting. Then a day shot with burned buildings. Various scenes of marches, a funeral, and gate protests are shown quickly, with molotov coctails being dispened in pepsi bottles (1:43). Two swords at least are brandished (1:54, 2:00), then we see the car to the right is burning and belching smoke (2:03). The guardhouse also looks unmistakably blackened at this point (below, stitched from a couple different frames).

The "break into the batallion"video then shows a few brave men walk far into the interior, taunting the apparent security forces still lined across the way. None of them are shown getting shot. But we do see several injured people, civilians mostly, being carried out; one man with a mustache is quite convincing - he has his right foot bloodied and just dangling (3:50).

There's a high-speed bulldozer to the walls, knocking a big hole, perhaps one of the ones we've seen (5:47). Then two dump trucks, knocking two holes side-by-side. Then a man laden with many belts of ammunition.

Feb. 19 is the date I've previously cited as the conquest of the barracks in Shahet. That wasa"no later than," and based on a video posted by Coffeeaddict and perhaps others on that day (not sure who's version I first saw or the name of it). Labeled in Arabic, the title translates to "Cyrene (Shahet) yesterday after the attack on the camp." It has a distance view of the smoke rolling south out of the base, dominating the horizon. In the foreground is a major intersection, the street running up to the base, a large empty dirt lot, and a small, partly-collapsed building. Perhaps security-related, it's got a circular structure on its top, and sits well away from the base, half a mile away. 

The video cited above, "Libyan Crisis: Events, Causes and Facts," says this conquest supplied machine guns used on the 19th in Benghazi. That makes plenty of sense, especially if the base was conquered, as the video evidence suggests, by the afternoon of the 18th. 

Feb 19: Lights, Camera... Stupid!

On the 19th, per the description, occurs another battle! 

48 - al Jarah barracks battle

http://www.feb17images.com/48-al-jarah-barracks-battle

Saturday, 19 February, 2011

Source: kadekke6

Armed civilian men resist the Gaddafi thugs just outside the base's walls, on a day it's apparently rained heavily. They take turns firing machine guns into at least two holes knocked in the walls. Little sense of urgency is apparent. 

The location seems to be a roughly north-south wall, late morning, on the barracks' east side.The best match I could find, with no visible road next to it, is at the southeast corner of the northern portion of the compound, a more residential-looking part of the base. It's possible loyalists still held out in there,   but I doubt this would be the best way they had of rooting them out. 

Special mention goes to this gem of a same-day video: 

"Shooting at protesters outside the barracks."

http://www.feb17images.com/7-shooting-protesters-outside-barracks

Saturday, 19 February, 2011

Source: ahmadkadar

On this more famous side of the barracks wall, a few hundred yards away from the last video, the ground looks much drier than the other video, if still extremely moist by Libyan standards (the region is known for that, BTW). It seems to be afternoon and sunnier, so that could be.

People run and scramble to hide from the sound of gunshots - hundreds of feet away from these ...weaponless attackers? ... clustered on the main street. Some others lay there helpless on the pavement, un-helped, not carried away, but not bleeding either.

One of the victims sits up and looks around, waving at people. Another victims then wanders over and, apparently having been shot, lays splayed-out among them (at right, starting to kneel). As reader Felix describes it "this video clearly shows a "protester" ambling onto set (and it is essentially a film set with actors) then slowly getting down, then lying dead on his back, at about 0.16 onwards. He occasionally pops his head up just to check he isn't dead." Another victim in the struggle!

Indeed, anyone else take a look and see how ridiculous this is. Note also the creepy stiff man in a black trench coat who at the end walks right over to that same jackass and stands over him. As if to say "what the hell was that? Don't you realize what we're trying to do here?" He seems unconcerned that they're failing all around.

There are videos I'll link here soon showing some fighting near or perhaps inside the base, and of tanks being driven through holes in the wall, given as Feb. 19.

Next we turn to a sequel to the Sahet Intifada video, again by Cyrenaica, but this time on Youtube and starting on the 19th.
إنتفاضة مدينة شحات _الجزء الثاني . [Uprising in the city Cyrene _ Part II]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY4JNiq-Aa4
Uploaded by ORWA31 on Aug 3, 2011

Feb 19: a cloudy, rainy, windy day from random footage of the city. Already we see the Aruba School captives, who were captured at the nearby airport and held in Shahet. More of theseblack-skinned Libyan deputized security men seem injured in this view, but the location is the same and one captive at least is identifiable in common between this and the other video. The location, as Felix suggested, might be within the base they just captured. At 3:22 some apparent, alleged, generic viagra is shown, one pill already taken, along with paper (prescription?) and ID (foreign?) plus emphatic explanation of the significance (in Arabic of course). Apparently on day three of "protests," Gaddafi's "African mercenaries" were already coming to rape their women.

ORWA's "break into the battalion" video shows for the apparent 19th more barracks battles inside and out, on a rainy day, armed with the weapons they got wherever, running around, ducking, shooting, amid fire and smoke. We see firing a grenade, driving out tanks belching smoke. An anti-aircraft gun, two burning trucks, an old man injured, being carried. There's a parade with tanks, a hanging effigy, and a large rebel flag. It closes with two black men interviewed, one of whom might be Mohammed, the other the gray old man I recognize from the Aruba school prisoners. Both are said to be from Chad, among the five (2.5%) of these "mercenaries" who were not Libyans.

That they were captive on the 19th is interesting. It suggests the L'Abraq airport battle, starting on the afternoon of the 18th, was shorter than I thought, suggesting more of a mass surrender and capture than a prolonged struggle. 

Endless Struggle: Feb 20 and After
By the 18th they had their base, might've been bringing captives there by the next day as they drove out the heavy weapons. The 20th followed in "break into..." with armed crowds in town, driving over a large, dirty, barely recognizable portrait of Col.Gaddafi (3:42). It seems to be an incredible boring day.

But another flesh-and-blood col. Gaddafi is shown in another video for Feb 21:
Colonel Shahat Brigade
http://www.feb17images.com/50-colonel-shahat-brigade
Description: Colonel Mustafa Al Gaddafi killed by mercenaries while he was protecting civilians
Monday, 21 February, 2011
Source:  ahmedomran80

"Colonel Mustafa Al Gaddafi," killed for trying to save the people allegedly, yields no hits on Google besides the Feb 17 images video and now this article. Some amazing hero, then, this col. Gaddafi must've been. Even translated to Arabic "العقيد القذافي مصطفى" it yields nothing that doesn't actually refer to the villain Colonel Gaddafi. But his dead face is shown up-close (intact but pained, with blood on the chin) in an old rebel video three days or so after his base had fallen. He doesn't look decomposed at all, so one wonders if the video is days old, if he was just holed up until then, or if he was executed after his capture. How many officers under him were killed? By whom exactly and where did the killers escape to?

It's only at this point the videos I opened with were finally filmed, it might seem judging by the time stamps and posting dats suggesting the 21st. The "live fire" video, posted Feb. 22, is time stamped UTC 2011-02-21 07:24:21 - nearly three days after people had first gained apparent control of the whole place. But the time's off - the encoding is in the morning, with the action being afternoon. It's the same with the others: The longer "vivid scenes of clashes in Libya" version of the same video has an earlier encoding: UTC 2011-02-21 06:43:46. "Libya : Random Shootout Towards Ambulances and Protestors" is marked UTC 2011-02-21 08:42:01.

My guess here is these are the times they were processed and stamped with logos, 6:43 to 8:42 am by whoever exactly. The actual events could be from any point in the previous days. Further, the two versions of the same video can be neither derived from the other. The one has extra footage, the other better resolution. So both must draw from a previous version that may still be out there...

Interestingly, the wall-top guard house is seen in neither of these videos. It could well be burned up there out of view. The burnt car as well is kept out of frame with what seems more careful camerawork than used before. The smaller guard shack inside the gate to the left is visible however, with milder soot stains coming from its window.

Finally we have the very high resolution video "Down with the first battalion in Libya of Qaddafi's regime (the city of Cyrene)." This one pans all over and shows smaller fires inside, no rebel guns at all, and the army just inside. It was posted by Hamd95 on March 1, and as with all posting dates, it's only a "no-later-than." The media info timestamp is no different, as we've seen. But this looks like raw video, un-stamped, and it's from only the previous day: UTC 2011-02-28 15:35:38. This could even be the time of filming, judging by the angle of afternoon sunlight. But ten days after they first took the place?

What else stands out is that finally we can see the guardhouse again and it's pristine, un-burnt. Beneath is is what looks from a distance like a new white car resting high on fancy tires, replacing the burnt one we saw later (earlier?). I can't tell if any of the pointless holes they knocked in the wall are present here. That stretch of wall is distant and washed out with sunlight.

So is this really an amazing early video that's only gotten to us by this later re-posting? Or is this a staged re-enactmentafter they cleaned the place up, to cast a more poetic light? Was it the first staged video, aside from the obvious"Shooting at protesters outside the barracks," or the last in an awkward sequence? Why have we still never seen the footage of when the base apparently actually fell - on Feb. 17 and into the early 18th?

The Aruba School Captives

Mercenary Myths I 
October 24/25, 2011
last edits Nov. 12

The African Threat That... Wasn't?
The myth of well-paid units of African mercenaries flown in by the thousands to brutally crush the protests was aired by day three of the armed insurgency. They were paid thousands of dollars, it was reported, to commit barbarity native Libyan's just couldn't commit against their own, and also helped "prove" the military had primarily defected this early in protest. As such, the claim was doubly crucial to setting the stage for intervention - it was justified by the paid repression, and would be easy considering the lack of domestic support Gaddafi was thought to enjoy.

Among the early stories supporting this meme, one of great importance was the large force flown in to crush the uprising in al Baida. As told, more than 300 fighters from Chad were intercepted at the airport by angry mobs who overwhelmed them, killed many, and detained most of them. These were held in the Aruba school in Shahet, a small town between the airport and al Baida, and were after a few days shown to the world as proof of what the people of Libya were up against.

One article I was presented with, by Nick Meo for the UK Telegraph, set this investigation off brilliantly. The main captive spoken to and shown there is "Mohammed" (family name not given), "a boy of about 16 who said he had arrived looking for work in the southern Libyan town [of Sabha] only two weeks ago from Chad, where he had earned a living as a shepherd."[1] He was presumably just one among many of these mercenaries from Chad (the rest presumably from Niger, Mali, Sudan...), and picked for the headlining spot due to his youth. If he's under 18, Gaddafi was also using child soldiers among these African mercenaries.

In Sabha he was recruited to support the government in what was called "a demonstration" in the capitol. As for where young Mohammed was flown to, I checked the article and as I suspected:

Instead of Tripoli, he was flown to an airport near the scruffy seaside town of Al-Bayda and had a gun thrust into his hands on the plane. [1]

That would almost certainly put him on the first, last, and only batch of alleged Afro-mercs flown into L'Abraq airport, about eight miles east of al Baida. They came in from Sabha, they were mostly black, and were greeted by an unwelcoming party quickly upon arrival. I have a post on this battle, from the colorful point of view of a "demonstrator" named Said. It's based on an article from Der Spiegel English, February 26, that said in part:

Farj and Said were fighting on the front lines against the Gadhafi regime when they were gunned down. On Friday one week ago [Feb.18], the two were taking part in a protest in Bayda with 23 other friends when they heard a disturbing rumor making the rounds. A giant Ilyushin transport plane had landed at the airport carrying 400 African mercenaries. The demonstrators knew immediately what the mercenaries' mission was. As they had in other cities, the well-paid unit was to brutally crush the protests, if necessary by firing indiscriminately into the masses. Said and Farj rushed to the airport.
[...]
[When they] arrived at the airport with hundreds of other insurgents, armed only with wooden clubs and steel rods, the mercenaries opened fire with their machine guns. [2]

Yet somehow these same overwhelmed underdogs took the air base completely by the 20th at the latest, while securing the town of al Baida itself a day or two earlier. The mercenaries remaining were taken captive. Fifteen of them were publicly lynched in al Baida between Feb 18 and 19, confirmed by eventual NTC strongman Mustafa Abdel-Jalil. There were others however, totaling at least fifty. The Guardian reportedon February 18, the third full day of protests:

Amer Saad, a political activist from Dernah, told al-Jazeera: "The protesters in al-Bayda have been able to seize control of the military airbase in the city and have executed 50 African mercenaries and two Libyan conspirators." [3]

Another 22 men apparently captured at the airport, a combination of Arabs and Blacks in a mix of military, internal security, and civilian clothes, were executed by rebel forces sometime prior to February 23. The possibility that this mass killing, and related capture operations, were carried out by Afghan-trained al Qaeda operative Ibrahim al-Hassadi is explained at the previous link.

A majority of the mercenary unit remained alive in custody, however, were shown to the media, and even checked out by a relevant expert from Human Rights Watch, Peter Bouckaert. He found that what they had "were, in fact, 156 soldiers from the south of Libya," Radio Nehterlands Worldwide reported, "and not from another African country. After talking to them he found out that they were all black Libyans of African descent."[4]

Bouckaert said, on March 2, that those remaining were released. It was done quietly. The first part of this story is remembered far more clearly than the second part. And further, there's little to contradict the prisoners who uniformly swore they had only ever agreed to join counter-protests, never to kill anyone.

How did this disconnect come about? The truth seems to be somewhere between the Telegraph and HRW versions, and will emerge as we consider these and other sources to suss out the situation.

The Captives, in General: Two Classes
The Telegraph's Meo, on February 27, described 50 prisoners in one room, and up to 100 elsewhere in the prison. [1] They were described as "Libyan loyalists of the dictator and black African recruits," with no numbers provided for each category. A picture caption called them simply "foreign fighters captured by local Libyans." [1]

New York Times reported on them on February 23, and specified 76 crowded into the one classroom and specified "teenagers from Chad were among about 200 people detained in a school, people the government apparently sent to put down the uprising." [5]

Chadians in captivity.  David Dengers photo,
Wall Street Journal (source link) 

The Wall Street Journal ran a photo series on the 24th, featuring the Aruba school prisoners. The caption beneath one photo read "pisoners, who say they are Libyans from Sabah, Tripoli, and Fazan were captured in fighting against anti-Gadhafi forces." Another photo (at right) shows four people - three young men and a bearded, gray, older man, and said "captured pro-Gadhafi fighters told the photographer they were from Chad, seeming to confirm previous reports that Col. Gadhafi has employed foreign fighters to swell the ranks of his army and put down the uprising against his rule. [6]

It should also be noted that all those shown in these other photos aren't so much purely black African looking as a melange of that and of mixed race, some seeming to be dark Arabs.

Time's reporter Abigail Hauslohner went to Shahet and  the re-purposed Aruba school. For her nuanced February 23 report, she reported on the number of prisoners: "roughly 200." "Given their claim that there were once 325 of them," she said, "the remaining men consider themselves lucky."[7]

"There are snipers among them, but they won't talk," a guard told Hauslohner, pointing into the room-full of 76 men. On their identity, she wrote "there may not be a single or clear answer to who exactly the Aruba School prisoners are," but offered the following:

[M]any of the prisoners at the Aruba School are dual nationals — Libyans with roots in Chad or Niger. And some are entirely foreign. Three men, two 19-year-olds and an 18-year-old, crossed the porous Saharan border from Chad into Libya's south just a few weeks ago, looking for work. They wound up on the Aruba School floor, they say, after being told by a taxi driver in Sabha that they could get a free plane ride to Tripoli.[7]

Three truly foreign teenagers ... She doesn't specify this is the full number of foreigners, and without even an exact count of the "roughly 200" captives, she couldn't do so. In fact, the number seems to be a bit higher than that, at least about seven. This is explained below.

To clarify the narrative below, it seems the eventual prisoners flew in on two separate aircraft. The first one's passengers were taken to a secure facility nearby before being captured there, and the second one was intercepted at the airport. An important distinction I can't clarify is the full original number: did the cited 325 refer only to the original Ilyushin rumored to carry 400? Is the total 325 or that plus however many were on the second flight?

And finally, note the downward trend in their numbers over time. The initial 325 (or perhaps something like twice that) became an unclear number captured alive. This then became "roughly 200" on the 23rd, about 150 on the 27th, and 156 whenever Bouckaert saw them. The missing 50 or so could be from transfers, early release, execution, or "other." And at least about 125 were shaved off the top, one way or another, before outside eyes got anywhere near them.

Captive: Mohammed
The youngest captive cited by Hauslohner was 18, and Chadian. The NYT had seen an unstated number of "teenagers from Chad." The Telegraph showed three submissive, shamefaced young men [direct link], and spoke with one, Mohammed as introduced above, the hooded one in the center. The one on the left could be one of those shown to the Journal, in different clothes, but the guy to his right is someone new, as is Mohammed. That makes ate least six or maybe seven men we've seen in photos singled out as Chadians, and predominantly very young or, in the one case, pretty old.

Mohammed's age is given as "about 16." The Telegraph reported this summary of his account:

"A man at the bus station in Sabha offered me a job and said I would get a free flight to Tripoli"
[...]
In halting Arabic, Mohammed, the young Chadian, tried to explain how he had ended up on the wrong side in somebody else's revolution. [...] "I wanted a better life, not war and destruction," he said. [...] "I didn't really know what was going on. They told me to do these things and I was really scared when the shooting started."

From his mumbled, incoherent account it was clear that he didn't really understand himself how it had happened.

Note that these men apparently weren't hired for money, but willing to do this just for a free flight to Tripoli, presumably one-way. As a place with better job opportunities, this is an inducement, and would raise the question of how sincere their protesting really would be. But it's also not quite the same as directly paying for fake protesters, or anything like securing mercenaries of any caliber, who'd be negotiating terms and getting down-payments, etc.

Captive: Ali Osman/Osman Ali
Time's reporter, Hauslohner, spoke mostly with one of the Libyan captives, "Ali Osman, head of a state-affiliated youth organization." He was perhaps one of the recruiters, being the one who knew how many people there were to start with.

[Ali] says they fell victim to invitations to attend a pro-Gaddafi rally in Tripoli, only to wind up on an army base in al-Baida. [...] Ali insists they are innocent. "We were brought to the airport in Sabha and told we were going to participate in peaceful protest in Tripoli to support Gaddafi," he says. After a 1.5-hr. flight late last week, he was surprised when the plane landed at Labrak.
[...]
"At the same time, there were people outside who lost their relatives in the clashes, and they were shouting. One tried to attack us. People at that time didn't know who's Libyan and who's a foreigner." [7] 

And even more people, worldwide, remain grossly confused about it to this very day. The New York Times had the name the other way around, as "Osman Ali," and adds a stop to their journey, in Benghazi.

He said he and his fellow prisoners, along with hundreds of other people, were asked to attend a pro-Qaddafi rally in Tripoli last week, and then were put on a plane.

They were flown to Benghazi, he said, and were then sent to an army base that was surrounded by angry citizens. [5]

Captive: Othman Othman
The Telegraph, who was given the most shame-faced lineup of them all, described this Libyan captive as "The man most responsible for Mohammed's ordeal – excepting Colonel Gaddafi himself." And of course excepting the armed, angry, rumor-poisoned mobs who actually captured him and killed at least 125 of his cohorts. Having recruited Ali and the others, Mr. Othman "was a small cog in a cruel machine of repression," Meo observes, "although possibly a willing one."

"I am sorry for what happened," said Othman Fadil Othman, a Gaddafi loyalist from the southern town of Sabha, just across the Chad border. [...] It was Mr Othman who had approached Mohammed at the bus station in Sabha as he rounded up recruits. Now Mr Othman was desperately trying to excuse himself.

"Gaddafi betrayed us all. We were told we were being sent east to stage demonstrations in favour of Colonel Gaddafi. I didn't know there was going to be an attack on the protesters."
It seemed more likely that Mr Othman was trying to save his skin than tell the truth.

Consider the last two witnesses together. Both seeming like organizers of this "mercenary unit," and with oddly similar names, it's worth wondering if Mr. Othman Othman and Mr. Osman Ali (or Ali Osman) are the same guy. The one spoke to two reporters on the 23rd, the other to a different one four days later.

Either way, it's worth noting how little word we've heard from the masses, the recruits. Their recruiter(s) and the youngest kid only were singled out to speak with the media, it seems, and few if any others spoke out of line (in itself interesting).

Change of Plans: How They Were Most Similar To Mercenaries
The detour to fighting in al Baida, after an agreement to go to the capitol for demonstrations, is generally framed, by the media and Mr. Ali, as the real plan of the Gaddafi regime all along and a trick on the recruits. But that's a leap of imagination that fails to account for the rapid and very real turn of events on the ground that could well have forced a genuine last-minute plan change.

On the 18th al Baida, above all other cities, was in chaos. "Protesters" there had begun rioting late on the 15th (along with az Zintan and Benghazi), and started burning police stations on the 16th. By mid-day on the 18th it was reported that two police officers at least had been killed there by hanging, and apparently the growing mobs had become armed with professional weapons of war (from a couple defectors, it seems). There was suddenly, on the day after the Day of Rage, a real danger they would soon conquer a whole city.

As Mohammed and the others signed up, presumably back on the 16th or so, the one plan made most sense: show loyalists from across Libya gathered in Tripoli as well, in crowds waving green flags and perhaps counter-rioting against any escalations. Shaken by early rumblings there, this idea might hold until some point on the 18th, when panic might set in at developments all over, but especially al Baida.

So the recruits were taken there, and particularly, Mr. Osman/Ali told Hauslohner, to the army base there. This suggests a military purpose had been chosen for the men from Sabha. It's possible they were to be armed and then sent out to fight the insurgents, but considering the situation there, it's doubtful 300 armed amateurs could do much to help.

At that point, it would makes the greatest tactical sense to focus all energies on secure installations, especially those with weapons. The mob's interest in and use of them was now known, and inside the base were more of the same - tanks, rockets, machine guns...

The least logical choice would be to say "screw the bases, let's try to re-take the streets," or even "since we can't do that either, let's just try to kill some more people before they overwhelm our pathetic forces." They're expendable third-rate troops, it could be argued, and aren't fit to play guards. You don't use cheap blacks, a few of them Chadians, on guarding valuable bases or keeping an arsenal out of rebel hands, such reasoning goes. They should be out there doing the dirty work, hacking and blasting the people apart. Later on, their severed heads can be lobbed over the walls of the base before it's overrunby "the people," 325 stolen guns stronger. The remaining personnel inside would be captured and/or killed and the weapons taken to help attack the next city.

It should be quite clear how perfect that plan is - for rebel fiction-writers.

Mercenary Violence in al Baida: By and Against
The Telegraph, no surprise, lays out this most illogical scenario and enhanced the idiocy of it.

Gaddafi's commanders told the ragbag army they had rounded up that rebels had taken over the eastern towns. The colonel would reward them if they killed protesters. If they refused, they would be shot themselves [by the commanders?]. The result was bloody mayhem.

About fifty people were killed in Al-Bayda city and twenty more in a village near the airport. Dozens of anti-Gaddafi militia were killed or wounded during a terrific firefight at the airport where 3000 local men gathered to attack mercenary reinforcements as they disembarked from a plane. [1]

Of course, the armed mob -of 3,000 - stood between them and any protesters to shoot. At that point, the insurgents are the aggressors, and self-defense actually comes into play for the "mercenaries." There are no videos of photographs of this violence to let us see even a bit of the verifiable truth of this battle. The given death toll, "dozens" out of 3,000  compared to about 125 from among 325, supports that the rebels were well enough armed by then to take care of themselves and need no boo-hooing.

Violence by and against these "Mercenaries," as explained by Meo, is the following:

The Sunday Telegraph was shown video footage shot on mobile phone cameras of a young protester being shot in the head by a secret policeman during a demonstration, slumping lifeless to the ground with blood pouring from his head. 

Another showed a captured mercenary lynched from a street lamp after he had surrendered. A third film showed a black African hanging on a meathook, with angry young men crowding round to stare at his corpse.

The counter-violence is clearly against them, but the opposite isn't clear at all. He only was able to call on one supported incident, the shooting during a funeral procession on Sharia Omar al-Mukhtiar. I've actually seen two non-combatants shot down in that same procession. If we take the obvious version, the shots were fired by the forces down the street. These were mostly blue-clad internal security men (not secret) with someone in different uniforms, maybe mercenaries, color unclear from the distance in question. It wasn't from any of the captives under study here, because this shooting happened on the 17th, the day before they were flown in. And further, the obviousversion doesn't explain the two guys in magenta and red jackets with a black, rifle-shaped object and a sheet metal privacy wall (a handy sniper's nest) filmed on the rooftop another of the videos was filmed from.

Besides, there's some evidence these alleged mercenaries were captured before taking up arms or even necessarily agreeing to do so.  Ali says he was offered a gun, but as the New Times reported "Mr. Ali said he and the other men never picked up weapons, but, he added, “We’re ashamed of what we did.”" [4] By Time's account, however, Mr. Osman may have taken a gun:

The men were put on buses and taken to an army base in al-Baida. Then, says Ali, a protest outside the base turned into an intense firefight between those outside and those inside. At some point, the soldiers on the base offered the men from Sabha weapons. "They told us the people of this city want to kill you because there are rumors that there are mercenaries among you," Ali says. By the night of Feb. 18, soldiers began to defect, joining the revolution. And that's when soldiers turned to the men from Sabha and said they should run, or they might be killed, Ali says.

He surrendered when ambulances pulled up and the people inside were informed that they wouldn't be hurt if they laid down their weapons. He and a group of other prisoners were taken to a nearby mosque and guarded by local elders, he says. [6]

The killing of mercenaries started on the 18th, as those with Osman were brough to the base. Reports claim the rebels took the base that day, and so their captives were most likely taken there, as the part about "the people inside" suggests. If they were to come out and kill, they never got to it.

Mohammed said he was armed on the plane. We know one plane was intercepted, apparently before being off-loaded even, so this is probably like the guns offered the others at the besieged army base. Why there were guns on the plane is a good question. Apparently the military shift was decided before loading and takeoff, rather than mid-flight. Maybe the authorities hoped to re-supply the army base as well as increasing the security force there.

Ilyushins are large planes, capable of carrying tanks as well, which Der Spiegel reported were used in the airport battle. But the fighters were mostly novices, it seems. They wound up with guns, just in time to look more like mercenaries, despite their civilian clothes and bewildered looks. Some fought, I'm sure. But whether it was the pitched battle with protesters fighting with sticks as described to Der Spiegel, I rather doubt it.

Final Assessment
A handy list of criteria making a mercenary is available here. Let's use its points to assess if these 325 guys flown to al Baida were mercenaries. It lists six criteria spelled out in the Geneva conventions and clarifies that "all the criteria (a – f) must be met, according to the Geneva Convention, for a combatant to be described as a mercenary."[8]

(a) is especially recruited locally or abroad in order to fight in an armed conflict;

They say it was for peaceful counter-protests. The agreement should be the benchmark. So unless they're lying, it's no on (a).

(b) does, in fact, take a direct part in the hostilities;

The degree and nature are in contention, but it seems some of these guys wound up fighting and killing people with weapons. (b) is a fit.

(c) is motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf of a Party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the armed forces of that Party;

Getting out alive seemed to be Ali's motive, but Mohammed specified they were also promised rewards (in addition to survival), plus not getting shot by the Gaddafi people either. Kind of forces the decision whatever you believe, and makes (c) kind of irrelevant here.

(d) is neither a national of a Party to the conflict nor a resident of territory controlled by a Party to the conflict;

The Chadian teenagers' precise residency status could be questioned, but otherwise this is a fail. Again, all but a few, it seems, were Libyan citizens. This seemed the crucial criteria to Bouckaert, andwith good reason it seems. By this one qualification alone, if none of the others, these guys can't reasonably be called mercenaries.

(e) is not a member of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict;

Bouckaert called them soldiers, but this appears to be honorary, from the attempt to use them as such and the reasonable impression the rebels held of their quarry as serious fighters. The simplestexplanation for allof this is that these men were hired to protests like they say, and the switch to fighting was impromptu as protests turned to war around them. So by this, they could be considered possible mercs, depending how the other criteria pan out. In this case, they do not.

(f) has not been sent by a State which is not a Party to the conflict on official duty as a member of its armed forces.

Irrelevant.

So these guys cannot be called mercenaries, and legally must, therefore, be treated according to certain norms. Not that it mattered to the lynch mobs of al Baida. As Karim Fahim drily noted for the New York Times, "nothing set off both anger and talk of brutal revenge like the mercenaries," or even unfounded rumors of them. "Cellphone videos were passed around among friends, showing black men, dead or being beaten." [5]

Big Update, November 9:

I've been alerted to a video of some of the Aruba school captives, which I've analyzed separately. It shows about fifty of the prisoners being displayed and harangued in Shahet on Feb. 21. The image at right is a still from that video, whowing an injured black man being handled roughly. The video was posted as "mercenaries surrender."

Here I'll add some details I missed before, primarily from a follow-up article by Abigail Hauslohner, run on Time's website on March 1. This relates her second visit to the school, on February 28. Peter Bouckaert is mentioned, and his recommendation to release the remaining 156 prisoners had been lodged and complied with by then. Hauslohner verified that by speaking with a couple of guards and the last, oddball, prisoner, named Omar.

"If they're wearing civilian clothes, it's difficult to tell who they are — if they're mercenaries or not," concedes Ahmed Noori Esbak, one of Omar's guards, and a prominent resident in town who says he fought pro-Gaddafi mercenaries in the streets two weeks ago.
[...]
The town's men say the prisoners were released in large part due to the murkiness of their situation. [...] "We released them because they're all Libyans and we want people in the West and other regions to stop holding people from the East. It could start a tribal war otherwise," [threatened]Ahmed Salem Salah, a teacher-turned-prison guard. 

The Libyan citizens aside from Omar, it was reported, were released to their families. Even the "at least five Chadians" had, well, gone somewhere:

"Even those five Chadians," [Esbak] says of the five who were held at the Aruba School, "We're not sure they were mercenaries." But no one is sure where they are. The men at the school say the five were transferred somewhere because there were no relatives to pick them up. But in town, no one seems to know what exactly has happened to them.

On the 28th, Hauslohner wasn't allowed to speak to the two black men arrested just that day, but spoke with Omar, a skinny dark-skinned kid whose familywas from the country's south. He was flown in from Tripoli, however, not Sabha, and arrived two days ahead of the other two planeloads. "Omar says he was sent to the town of al-Baida in eastern Libya to participate in a pro-Gaddafi demonstration on Feb. 16. His captors say the skinny teen from Tripoli was sent here to fight. But in the fog of Libya's liberation war, no one may ever know for sure." He was among those capturedat the army base, as opposed to the airport.

Omar was a well-trained member of the infamous Khamis brigade, he said. This is an aspect of the prisoners I didn't mention above but should have. When Haulohner visited the prisoners on the 23rd, she wrote that some prisoners "raise their hands when asked if they're members of "Khamees' battalion" — an allegation spread widely beyond the school's walls." The elite brigade run by col.Gaddafi's son Khamis was a much-mentioned unit that rebels would frequently blame for various acts of brutality.

Even if the claim of membership by the prisoners is true and not coerced, all Hauslohner can cite for the implications came from the NTC's shifty strongman MustafaAbdel-Jalil, who "says that each son controls a unit of Libya's military. "Every one of Gaddafi's sons has an army and does whatever he wants with his army," he says."

More details of the ordeal, as per Omar:

As Omar tells it: the day after he arrived at the base in al-Baida, a group of minibuses came to transport him and 70 others into town for a protest. He claims to be one of nine who didn't make it onto the bus — there wasn't enough room — and he was forced to stay behind. When fighting between those on the base and those outside ensued, he says he never picked up a gun, but those around him did. Later, after a three-day firefight, 70 men surrendered when the rebels overran the base and a "sheikh" outside told them to come out and give up. This was a different 70 from the men he arrived with, Omar says; many of his fellow captives were men flown in from Sabha. Says he, "Whoever went in the bus [that first day] to the protest never came back."

I'd also like to pass on additional images I learned of from reader Felix, hosted at Felix Features. (Coincidence?) Some show the airport after the battle, somes how Omar and other captives, and aone usefulimage of the 27th shows the same Mohammed, the kid of "about 16" that the Telegraph introduced us to that same day. Lounging unhappily with one of his photo mates and what looks like the old man from another photo. The kid is described there as "18 year old Mohamed Al-Madani, from Chad." He'd be among the five, then, who seems to have just vanished.

But as we've seen, the rest of the Aruba School prisoners were Libyans. Robbed of their original claim of "African mercenaries," the rebels used the truth of the situation to lob another accusation at the regime  - trying to start a tribal war,for some evil reason.

But they also say they feared retaliation from the tribes who were most strongly represented among their prisoners; tribes like the Fezzan of the southwestern Sahara, which Omar belongs to, or the Gaddadfa, Gaddafi's tribe. "We released them because they're all Libyans and we want people in the West and other regions to stop holding people from the East. It could start a tribal war otherwise," Ahmed Salem Salah, a teacher-turned-prison guard explains. If the Libyan opposition is to get through this period of turmoil, liberate Tripoli, and reach the final goal of a united, Gaddafi-free country, he reasons, now is not the time to hold grudges.

"If this was Gaddafi's system, we would have killed them and buried them in secret," Esbak adds. The guards all agree that the liberated East is far more humane.

This rationalization, do recall, comes from the same people who used their fellow citizens' skin color, ignoring the explanations they surely heard in their native Arabic, to brand them as the lowest of foreign killers. This is the same camp who then used that cover to lynch at least fifty, and perhaps hundreds of their countrymen before compassionately letting the rest go. More humane indeed - than the cartoon villain Gaddafi being re-continuously created with every new lie. Lucky they set their own bar so low.

Nov. 12: I was alerted to another video of the captives in apparently the same placeas the video showed. Dated Feb. 19, it's included in this compilation (part II) of Shahet videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY4JNiq-Aa4

It's pretty much the first half of the video, with at least one recognizable prisoner in both videos (here at 1:46, guy in black, same one being harangued by grinning dude above). More wrapped head injuries are present in this view, and more accusatory pointing. The real prize is a packet of two blue pills (erectile? it's not proper Pfizer brand Viagra at any rate...) One's been taken, and the remaining pill and empty bubble are shown along with papers as if it mattered. Months before the concerted effort to sow the idea, on day day four of protests, they had "proof" that Gaddafi's Afro-mercs were there to rape. 

Sources:
[1] "African mercenaries in Libya nervously await their fate" Nick Meo. Photo: Julian Simmonds. The Telegraph. February 27,2011. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8349414/African-mercenaries-in-Libya-nervously-await-their-fate.html
[2] Der Spiegel English. Feb. 26. http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,747909,00.html
[3] Ian Black and Owen Bowcott. "Libya protests: massacres reported as Gaddafi imposes news blackout." The Guardian. February 18, 2011. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/18/libya-protests-massacres-reported
[4] http://www.rnw.nl/africa/article/hrw-no-mercenaries-eastern-libya-0
[5] Karim Fahim. "Rebels Hope for Qaddafi’s Fall but Remain Fearful" New York Times.February 23, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/24/world/africa/24rebels.html?_r=1
[6] "Inside Libya – A Photographer Reports" Photo journal: photographs by David Degner, text by Jon Levy. The Wall Street Journal. February 24, 2011.
http://blogs.wsj.com/photojournal/2011/02/24/inside-libya-a-photographer-reports/
[7] Abigail Hauslohner. "Among Libya's Prisoners: Interviews with Mercenaries" Time. February 23, 2011. http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2053490,00.html#ixzz1bgB3gDjQ
[8] http://www.mercenary-wars.net/law/definition-mercenary.html

Video Study: Mercenaries Surrender in Shahet

November 8, 2011

The video:
30 - Mercenaries surrender 
duration: 5 min, 8 sec
Submitted by rmby on Wed, 03/08/2011
Shahat, Monday, 21 February, 2011
Source: bmatrixtmz

This video shows something like 50 primarily black men and several lighter Arab captors interacting loudly in an unidentified, crowded room. This is on February 21, the video says, somewhere in Shahet, just east of al Baida in eastern Libya. The apparently recent nature of the capture suggests these men seated along the walls were taken not from the army base in al Baida, which fell on the 18th, but rather at L'Abraq airport, which only fell on the 20th at the latest.

The video is very dark, but I enhanced some segments and stills. The first captive seen, at right perhaps over-lightened, is acutely in custody. He wears a dark jacket with green fabric, perhaps a loyalist scarf, beneath, by which a hefty Libyan bubba hold him like a short leash. The captor's hand has blood on it, and there's a thick little splatter of it on his shirt too (visible at 0:19) The captive is clearly injured with abrasions on the left side of his face and head. His upper jacket is perhaps wet with blood, but not the green cloth, by which he's tugged out-of-frame just after the image at left (0:30). 

By the date, locale, number and type of captives, Iconclude that this is a rare video glimpse of some of the "Aruba school captives" captured between the base and the airport. These were called vicious African mercenaries, flown in from Chad and Mali to slaughter peaceful protesters before being captured alive in the hundreds. But in reality, only a few (five) were foreigners, and none had come to fight, only counter-protest.

They were primarily black Libyans from Sabha, flown in to help quell the rioting in al Baida. This had, at the insurgency's initiative, turned to open warfare beneath them, so they landed in a war zone that overwhelmed them quite swiftly. There were only 325 of these recruits to begin with, met at the airport by a well-armed mob of 3,000. Some of the Sabha men took up arms in self-defense, but it seems 200 of them were captured alive with minimal fight.

The remaining prisoners were seen at the Aruba school in Shahet by members of the media and a man from Human Rights Watch, starting on the 23rd, two days after this video was made. Whether this is filmed at the re-purposed school or elsewhere isn't clear. The clues include the room as the camera enters it (below), and a small bookshelf (right, visible at 2:21 in the video). I'm not myself sure what to make of these clues.

we see the cieling, two walls, and a support column at the video's beginning, later windows and a bookshelf. Where would one see these sorts of books-a school, a Mosque, or what?

This guy had a lot to say
late in the video, but I doubt
anyone can make it out now. 

With many videos, dialog is limited enough that knowledge of Arabic isn't needed. But in this case, as Libyans talk among themselves across a great and sudden divide, it would matter, but the audio is all but useless. Nearly all the captors here are screaming dozens of questions and curses in dozens of directions at once, creating a maxed-out wash of near-total noise. One wonders in fact if the audio wasn't over-saturated on purpose to conceal clues that these weren't, in fact, "African mercenaries" who'd surrendered.  About 2/3 of them who survived to do so, anyways. (Interestingly, within a week, there would only be 156 of them...)

One captor in particular, apparently a companion of the cameraman, seems to be enjoying himself questioning one black man, judging by the goofy, leering look on his face.  By the lack of one on the captive's face, he's not as amused, trying to show his submissiveness and worry. But judging by how he finally gets visibly angry, waves the creep off and walks away after a while, he's not as cowed as some of the others. Not yet, anyway.

Most captives just sit silently along the walls, panned across like trophies, some trying to hide, some perhaps wanting to be seen and helped. Some are injured. The man at left has a fairly serious head injury it seems, by the amount of blood on the pillow he's got held to his head and hides behind a bit.

A fair number of captives seen here, interestingly, aren't black men at all. Some are light-skinned Arab men, like the two apparent soldiers seen at at about 2:45. One has a severely cowed look on his face and his hands up in over-done surrender, passive-aggressively showing an injured right hand wrapped in a bloody cloth.

A similar but subtler effect is given by the blue-clad, Elvis-looking Arab man, apparently internal security, seated in the corner at 1:06.

More perhaps forthcoming, here or in the comments below, on this rare glimpse and related issues.