Like other Libyans, the men had traveled to Afghanistan to fight against the Russian invasion and, later, against other groups of mujahideen. It all began in the summer of 1996, Haraga said, when guards brought in three new prisoners. Details of his story are corroborated by the accounts received by Human Rights Watch. Haraga offered new details about the events that led to the massacre, and a first-person account of the horror. He was touring the prison with a former cellmate, Mohammed Tukmak, revisiting his own cell for the first time since arriving in Gaddafi-less Tripoli. Haraga, who recently returned from Manchester to aid the revolution against Gaddafi, spoke with Al Jazeera on Friday evening just outside the cells where the killings allegedly took place. But the Libyan government has never given a detailed account. Only a few witnesses have come forward one spoke to Human Rights Watch in 20. Libyan human rights groups outside the country say up to 1,200 inmates were killed, out of a population of roughly 1,700. Families in Benghazi began regular protests in recent years over the lack of information about the killings, and it was the arrest of Fathi Terbil, a human rights lawyer representing some of the Abu Salim families, that sparked demonstrations in February that swelled into a revolution. Though Gaddafi himself alluded to the killings eight years after the fact, the Abu Salim massacre has always been shrouded in mystery, a cornerstone in the opposition’s hatred for the regime.
He spent the next 11 years in custody.ĭuring his time in Abu Salim, Haraga said, he also bore witness to one of the most notorious episodes in Libya’s modern history – the massacre of hundreds of prisoners in 1996. Haraga was taken to Abu Salim prison in southwest Tripoli, home to more than 1,000 political prisoners and fellow “heretics”. In Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya, that made him guilty of zindaka, or heresy, a crime prosecuted zealously by Gaddafi’s internal security forces. He wore a beard and traditional Arab Islamic clothes, and he prayed regularly. He was heading toward a promising career in computer engineering.īut Haraga had a problem. Haraga was newly married and had just returned from five years of study in England. Haraga (C) and cellmates Mohammed Tukmak (L) and Mohammed al-Busufi (R) spent a decade in prison Īnwar Haraga was 26 when men from Libya’s Internal Security agency came to his door in Tripoli one night.
0 kommentar(er)
