Rape Allegations Ganging Up on Gaddafi

Friday, April 29, 2011
last update Feb. 4, 2012

Note June 10: The top prosecutor for the International Court that's Criminal (ICC) has just added mass rape charges to the arrest warrants sought against Muammar Gaddafi, his son Saif al-Islam, and brother-in-law Abdullah Senoussi. Therefore, the cartoonishly thick allegations below have taken on more importance suddenly (see also, at bottom, update for June 13.

Iman, in Passing: A PR Stunt for War?

The issue of rape as weapon in the Libyan Civil War is, by design, tied in with its most vivid and personal allegation, by Iman al-Obeidi. On March 26, the soon-to-be anti-Gaddafi icon dramatically revealed a multi-day ordeal of gang rape, abuse, and himuliation by 15 of Gaddafi's troops, one of whom she was able to identify as a high-ranking officer and a relative of Col. Gaddafi's.

The effect was huge. No one could be factually sure - even if the allegation was all true - that this was a crime of the regime as opposed to some drunk soldiers behaving very badly. But of course it was generally taken as the first. The appearance of cover-up hasn't helped, from her famously being dragged away to the government smears and insults, and the fear of being silenced she's expressed to the several western journalists who've been able to speak with her just fine. But her story, which I'll cover separately in more detail, is far from established truth.
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Update June 10: In fact, her later exploits raise further doubts - she later escaped to Qatar, only to be shipped back to Benghazi battered and bruised anew, this time she said by the Qatari government.
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An article of April 28 in the Nation of Islam-linked journal The Final Call gave the al-Obeidi story as reason 10 of "Ten reasons why the US War in Libya is a CIA Operation."

Rape is charged. A distraught, English-speaking, Arab woman fortuitously finds her way from days of gang rape by Gadhafi's soldiers into the only hotel in Tripoli where foreign journalists are encamped (apparently dropped off by her tormentors) where she reports of her ordeal to the gathered media who immediately, unquestioningly, broadcast the brutal crime to the world as proven fact. She claimed that she was detained at a checkpoint, tied up, abused, then led away to be gang raped—all whilst her assailants were defending Tripoli against a Western bombing campaign. “They defecated and urinated on me and tied me up,” she said, her face streaming with tears. “They violated my honor, look at what the Gadhafi militiamen did to me.”

Everybody who heard this woman's claims—except 100 percent of the Western media—immediately remembered October 1990, when a sobbing 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl gave unsworn testimony in a Congressional hearing chaired by Zionist congressman Thomas Lantos in which she described what she saw in a Kuwaiti hospital with her own eyes: “While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where … babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die.”

The girl was actually the daughter of a Kuwaiti ambassador, and had been coached by the public relations firm Hill and Knowlton to give false testimony. Three months passed between the hearing and the start of the first Gulf War during which the fabricated incubator story was repeated over and over again by seven U.S. senators and ten times by President G.H.W. Bush himself. It was recited as fact in congressional testimony, on TV and radio talk shows like Nightline, and at the UN Security Council. It is cited as the single most persuasive reason that the American public backed the first Iraq War. None of those involved with the hoax have ever faced legal reprisals. CIA √

Actually, that highly relevant stunt has a better parallel, subject-wise, in the fakery-supported claim of Gaddafi's snipers picking off young children. But this additional charge has been more effective and convincing than that cartoonish claim. As Wikipedia explains it "[al-Obeidi's] insistence on telling her story in public had the effect of challenging both the Gadaffi regime and the taboo that surrounds discussion of sex crimes in that country." In a time of no shortage of challenges to Gaddafi, this one was always sure to "win the women's vote" for regime change, as it were.

And the impression given by the "taboo" part, is that this social pioneer is our first glimpse into a dark pit of systematic sexual violence. Prurient puritanical imaginations tend to run wild with things like this, and it's been widely presumed Iman represents but a screaming tip of a silent iceberg.

Africans Here to Rape our Women!
Indeed, it's much larger, say the balanced experts in rebel territory. The fear of rape by big, black, African mercenaries is a common theme of the alarmism of the early days. First, there are valid questions over how many foreign merceenaries there ever were in this war. Many or all of those captured as such, who have been double-checked, are either Libyan fighters from the south, or foreign workers (see below).

Yet these peoples' pigmentation had allowed a near-hysterical conflation of these into a mostly phantom enemy - the foreign, black African fighter. They were largely killed, forced into hiding, or chased away. They were captured in the hundreds by armed rebels, bludgeoned to death by gangs and de-pantsed in public, shot execution style in the dozens, hacked down, hanged in the squares, burned to a crisp, and in once case, awkwardly decapitated at the center of a night-time celebration in Benghazi's main square. (see: Rebel Atrocity Videos)

A few hundred other black African workers die each time one of the vessels carrying them capsizes in the Mediterranean, trying to flee this madness to Italy. Gaddafi is blamed, and it's called an attack on Europe.

With their skill identifying the nationalities or combatant status of their victims, one wonders if any of the rebel claims of the mercenary rape spree were reliable either. This from the Monthly Review, April 20

The Independent's Michael Mumisa observed that "foreign media outlets have had to rely mostly on unverified reports posted on social network websites and on phone calls from Libyans terrified of Gaddafi's 'savage African mercenaries who are going door-to-door raping our women and attacking our children'," and he speaks of "a Twitter user based in Saudi Arabia," who "wrote how Gaddafi is 'ordering african mercenaries to break into homes in Benghazi to RAPE Libyan women in order to detract men protesters!'"

Some of the particular Twitter tweets of rumors that managed to get in and out of Libya, despite the internet shut-down, and might have wound up stoking that ethnic cleansing:

LibyanThinker URGENT!!! From contact in the Army: So far, 1300African Mercenaries have arrived in #Libya to date. Cant' the World hear our cries??? Sat Feb 19 2011 23:21:00 (Eastern Standard Time) via TweetDeck Retweeted by you and 84 others
[...]
Tripolitanian I URGE THE LIBYAN ARMY TO SIDE WITH THE LIBYAN PEOPLE - don't let these African mercs kill your family! #Libya #Feb17 Sat Feb 19 2011 20:23:04 (Eastern Standard Time) via web Retweeted by you and 54 others
[...]
LibyanThinker NEW! #Gaddafi has given the African Mercenaries full freedom in raping Libyan women. #Libya Sat Feb 19 2011 19:57:04 (Eastern Standard Time) via web Retweeted by you and 20 others

Might be A Hundred / Family Values Assaulted
On April 17, The First Post in the UK ran a more scholarly article supporting this tactic by the more regular forces, if not the mercenaries. It's entitled "Gaddafi's Men use Rape as a Weapon of War," and reads in part:

Horrifying accounts of the systematic use of gang rape as a weapon of war by fighters loyal to dictator Colonel Gaddafi have emerged from Libya. Women have been violated in front of their own children - and some have asked their relatives to kill them rather than face Gaddafi's men.

Khalifa al-Sharkassi, a German-trained doctor based in al-Baida in north-eastern Libya, told the Sunday Times he is collecting the testimony of abused women. He believes as many as 100 have been subjected to gang rape.
[...]
Sharkassi decided to speak out despite rigid taboos on discussing rape or "dishonour" as it is known in Libyan society. He told the story of one 28-year-old mother of two, identified only as Leila, who was violated with one of her young children in her arms. Leila told Sharkassi she was raped on the night of March 14 by Gaddafi's soldiers who came to her home when her husband was away fighting for the rebels. She said: "The soldiers told me they would kill my children. They sneered 'you or your children'. I held one son close but one of the men forced me down onto the bed, then it happened..."

The attack took place as her children, aged 4 and 5, watched. Such is the shame associated with rape in Libya that Leila's husband will not see her and she is contemplating suicide.
Reporter Hala Jaber says this is just one of many cases he [sic - a she] has been told about. In another, a woman was raped over several hours, losing consciousness and waking again to find a bad bite on her breast.

These stories are emotionally upsetting and such atrocities are possible enough in a war situation. But they are neither confirmed nor proven, serve a suspiciously useful role as anti-Gaddafi propaganda, and even if true do not prove - or even strongly suggest - any government sanction for mass rape as a tool in their campaign.

Only Regime Change can Save these Kids
Social taboos are cited for the lack evidence of widespread sexual violence in this war. But children can be so much more open, with the social norms of the adult world not as firmly imprinted yet. It was so that Michael Mahrt, with the organization Save The Children (and who could disagree?) oversaw hundreds of interviews with children displaced by the fighting. Reuters reported, April 23:

Save The Children said it had spoken to nearly 300 children in six temporary camps in rebel-held Benghazi and heard reports of rapes and murders committed within the last four weeks in Ras Lanuf, Ajdabiyah and Misrata.
[...]
In one case mothers who had fled the fighting told the charity that a group of four or five teenage girls in Ajdabiyah had been abducted, held hostage for four days and raped.

"The stories are similar that we get across these camps. I am completely confident that this happened," [Mahrt] told Reuters.

Please note that Mahrt "said the families and children spoke of "soldiers" committing the assaults, but the charity could not say which side they came from." This leaves it open, in some instances at least, that rebel fighters could be responsible. In fact, if all of them used the same vague term - "soldiers" - it might be a sign of coaching. It is well-established that a majority of child sexual abuse is committed by those within the home, or from near it.

The interviews were carried out in "temporary camps in rebel-held Benghazi," and detailed attacks "within the last four weeks." But these were newcomers, with tales from "Ras Lanuf, Ajdabiyah and Misrata," places where fighters of both sides have had some free reign. In civilized and loyalist-free Benghazi, rape of children has probably been eradicated, we're to believe.

Clearly, the effect of that STC report, like the others, is more demonization of the regime. Even leaving the identities of the pedophiles unclear (perhaps because 2/3 of the kids described rebel attackers?), few people out there will read this and decide we have to "save the children" from perverts among the freedom-fighter camp. That would be rather an uphill battle to start without even offering any specifics, considering this media climate and that the rebels are becoming the recognized government of Libya day by day. Now more than ever, the bad things must have been done by the bad guys. 

"Male Enhancement" from the Regime of Rape
As if it's not enough that "Gaddafi's men" are using sexual violence against women and children, the United States' top voice at the United Nations is taking a cartoonish new twist on a new offensive for international support. The US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, says Gadhafi troops have been issued Viagra to enhance their drive to war-sex-crimes! As reported by MSNBC, April 28

UNITED NATIONS — The U.S. envoy to the United Nations told the Security Council Thursday that troops loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi were increasingly engaging in sexual violence and some had been issued the impotency drug Viagra, diplomats said.

Several U.N. diplomats who attended a closed-door Security Council meeting on Libya told Reuters that U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice raised the Viagra issue in the context of increasing reports of sexual violence by Gadhafi's troops.
"Rice raised that in the meeting but no one responded," a diplomat said on condition of anonymity. The allegation was first reported by a British newspaper.
[...]
Several diplomats said Rice provided no evidence for the Viagra allegation, which they said was made in an attempt to persuade doubters the conflict in Libya was not just a standard civil war but a much nastier fight in which Gadhafi is not afraid to order his troops to commit heinous acts. "She spoke of reports of soldiers getting Viagra and raping," a diplomat said. "She spoke of Gadhafi's soldiers targeting children, and other atrocities."

Rice's statement, diplomats said, was aimed principally at countries like India, Russia and China, which have grown increasingly skeptical of the effectiveness of the NATO-led air strikes, which they fear have turned the conflict into a protracted civil war that will cause many civilian deaths. Most council members, diplomats said, had expected Gadhafi's government to collapse quickly. They said the frustration felt by India, Russia and China would likely grow if the war dragged on.

Ouch. That didn't go well. One should hope. No one else finds it reputable. MSNBC again reported on April 29

There is no evidence that Libyan military forces are being given Viagra and engaging in systematic rape against women in rebel areas, US military and intelligence officials told NBC News on Friday.
[...]
While rape has been a weapon of choice in many other African conflicts, the US officials say they've seen no such reports out of Libya.

Not only the Viagra aspect of the rape campaign, but the rape campaign itself is unsupported, say these unusually square-sounding (but unnamed) military and intelligence sources.

This claim is cited as originally coming from the British tabloid press, but it seems to have been aired earlier yet on al-Jazeera, March 28, and that came from those trustworthy rebel-affiliated doctors:

Several doctors say they have found Viagra tablets and condoms in the pockets of dead pro-Gaddafi fighters, alleging that they were using rape as a weapon of war.

They say they have been treating female rape survivors who were allied with pro-democracy forces.

The stuff allegedly found in the pockets of dead men was evidence for the allegation. The only evidence, for the highly useful allegation. The UK Daily Star was one to repeat it on April 18:

A Libyan doctor says there has been over 100 cases of rape and Gaddafi has even issued troops with Viagra to fuel their attacks.

Sounds like our good friend Dr. Khalifa al-Sharkassi, whose work I gave some credence to above. A bit less now. The Daily Fail was another, on April 18:

Details also emerged yesterday of gang rape being used by Gaddafi’s soldiers, many of them African mercenaries supplied with Viagra by the Libyan leader’s officials.

And now after Rice they're recycling it, predictably mixed-in with Save The Children's Concerns. The Mirror, April 27:

Gaddafi thugs 'rape children while pumped up on Viagra'
CHILDREN as young as eight have been raped in front of their families by Viagra-fuelled troops loyal to Colonel Gaddafi, aid workers claim.

Otherwise, it's a repeat of the previous findings, with no support for the Viagra part, from aid workers or otherwise.

Who Else in Libya can Combine Violence and Penises?
Recall the frenzied tweets about Afro-Mercs and therir door-to-door rape sprees. The new authorities caught some of these dark foreigners and managed to get them into a jail alive. The proof was shown, about 50 captured Africans, paraded before journalsists in late March. Unexpectedly, one of the trophies spoke up, and was noted by a writer for the Los Angeles Times:

“I am a worker, not a fighter. They took me from my house and [raped] my wife,” he said, gesturing with his hands. Before he could say much more, a pair of guards told him to shut up and hustled him through the steel doors of a cell block, which quickly slammed behind them.
[...]
Times reporter David Zucchino, our interpreter and I skipped the bus ride back and instead got a lift from a passing motorist. In the car, our interpreter, a Libyan national, asked Zucchino: “So what do you think? Should we just go ahead and kill them?”

Between these two exchanges, the man in question was argued down, by a gaurd producing his Gambian passport, which "proved" he was a mercenary killer, not a Gambian worker living in Libya with his wife. His name was written down, as Alfusainey Kambi, and someone should check up on him. One can only wonder, if this brave man's story is true, does it show a fluke incident, or is Mr. Kambi the vocal tip of a silent iceberg?

It's also said this video's audio track is of a woman explaining how she and at least one other young woman who supported the government were punished - with gang rape - by part of a rebel mob. I can't understand spoken Arabic, but it's said "she is calling for the Libyan army to come to save them!" As is sometimes said of the rebels making their i-phone videos, this girl might be risking her life to come forward with this charge, living as she is behind enemy lines and there's no one coming to the rescue.


I've always wondered what life is like for known Gaddafi supporters in Misrata. The rebels are in charge there but under siege from without, and maybe looking for fifth columnists within, or seeking to intimidate them into silence or death. Here is a horrifying account of systematic mass rape, murder, dismemberment, and so on that I'm inclined to doubt. I hope to God it isn't true and we have a desperate lashing back in the rape-baiting ring of this propaganda war.
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Update May 23: Rape Parties in Misrata New allegations from the BBC's Andrew Harding of mass rape come from two young black men captured in Misrata. They confess in some detail to being forced into a huge cue to rape some young rebel women. Analysis and de-bunks split off to this dedicated post.

In summary, the two boys, aged 17 and 21 and apparently from nearby Tawergha, said they were compelled (and paid a bit) to partake in the gang rape of four daughters from a certain family. There was smoking and dancing to pop music, and family members were bound, shot in the legs, and forced to watch. They said they heard broadcast on the military radio bragging about doing this to 50 families.

When they were later interviewed seperately by a professional from Amnesty International, the captives' stories changed, conflicted, fell apart. All in all, I conclude there's a damn good chance they were just coerced by the racist rebels. The myth of mass rape by black Tawerghans was seeded in the minds of Misrata's rebels and told to the world outside, to pump up the one for the coming purge of the enemy town, and to explain to the other why their final solution for their southern neighbors was justified.

Update May 30: Male rape in the Benghazi underground
Considering the social taboos against discussing rape, and additional taboos against homosexual behavior, a Youtube video conveys something I find odd. To the whole world, a young male allegedly freed from an underground dungeon at the Katiba base in Benghazi, openly speaks of his rape and that of others, by government soldiers.

He tells of the sodomizing of an old man with a stick, and their being urinated on - as well as generally tortured and humiliated, starved, and finally slated for hanging, in a busy five day ordeal. Much of this was done by African mercenaries, the rest by col. Gaddafi's own son Saadi and his trusted aide Abdullah Senoussi.

The brutal end of all this was only averted at the last minute, he says, by the fall of the Katiba. Praise God and pass the popcorn - it's like a snuff movie where reality itself is the victim.

Update June 13: The ICC's announcement of expanded charges to include mass rape led to a small controversy. A top UN investigator who'd just been to Libya finding facts dismissed the broad sweep of charges, if not each and every one, as the product of a "massive hysteria," leading to impassioned rebuttals. But he had reason to say that, citing a questionable claim of 70,000 questionnaires being mailed in the midst of the war and receiving 60,000 responses with 259 reports of rape by regime forces. His mission asked for copies, but the woman responsible was unable to produce any for them. Yet it was her claim of "proof" of mass rape that convinced the ICC to add it to the reasons to arrest the three most powerful men in Libya today.

One of them. Sennoussi, was indicted for not planning but "participating" in attacks on civilians. See the previous entry and ask yourself, were these alleged attacks Moreno-Ocampo cites below ground level? We don't know - the ICC's evidence is redacted and secret.

Updates, Feb. 4, long overdue:
Allegations and Crimes of the Takeover Period and no more Gaddafi regime to blame anymore:
UK Daily Mail, Aug 31: Father slit throats of three daughters in 'honour killing' after they were raped by Gaddafi's troops
This was in Misrata, reported by Physicians for Human Rights. As the Mail put it, among other uncovered alleged crimes, "Gaddafi's men ... used rape as a weapon of war with deadly consequences." Even if the allegation is true, we can see they had a little help with the deadly part.

Richard Sollom, who was the lead author on the report, concluded that no one had evidence that rape was widespread - but the fear of sexual assault was endemic.
'One witness reported that (Gaddafi) forces transformed an elementary school into a detention site where they reportedly raped women and girls as young as 14 years old,' the report noted.

Distress: Iman Al-Obeidi claimed she had been raped by Gaddafi's men when she rushed into the Rixos hotel in Tripoli
It added that it had found no evidence to confirm or deny reports that Gaddafi troops and loyalists were issued Viagra-type drugs to sustain their systematic rapes.
Researchers also heard reports of suspected honour killings - including the murder of the three sisters by their father.
But PHR also noted that 'some in Tomina have stood up against this practice, including a well-known sheik who has publicly advocated for raped women and girls to be seen as brave and bringing honor to their families'.

Gaddafi's Revolutionary Nuns: Raped by Gaddafi and Friends?
Routine abuse of his own female bodyguards and other female soldier types, covered in a post here.

Gaddafi's Revolutionary Nuns: Raped and Killed by Rebels?
The flip-side.Again, both sets of allegations have problems and are less than totally convincing.

Male Rape at Abu Salim Prison
Araya Human Rights Organization reports, Oct. 3 the story of "eyewitness 1":

- Taken by force to the criminal investigation general administration –Tripoli.

- Confined to a collective crowded cell with neither places to sit nor to sleep.

- Bad smells intensively and intentionally hurt the prisoners.

- Garbage, rubbish, and waste products were accumulating and amassing every day, when prisoners asked to remove these material they were answered “shut up O’garbages” .

- Limited meals and drinks, just few loaves of bread, cheese and water.

- The guardians were all black skinned, non-Arabic speakers.

- Ten prisoners were raped and filmed to compel the others to stop talking about these crimes.

- A cousin of the witness (who had helped bringing the witness to the prison) visited him in the prison warning him that he would face the same fate if he didn’t accept to fight with Al-Gheddafi brigades, our witness said yes I would, he got out of the prison and fled immediately to Tunisia.

- Unfortunately, the witness family still supporting Al-Gheddafi and refused to receive our witness calling him a traitor.

Did they add "liar?"

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