Swollen eyes, pelted backs from whipping, mothers bemoaning their kidnapped sons and praying for their return. These are the descriptions heading the human rights files in post-revolutionary Libya.

Having been imprisoned by Gaddafi’s brigades for several months during the revolution, poet and writer Rab’ie Shrair believes that the present cases of torture have reached frightful proportions, and are a mixture of retaliation, revenge, and childlike behavior.

Swollen eyes, pelted backs from whipping, mothers bemoaning their kidnapped sons and praying for their return. These are the descriptions heading the human rights files in post-revolutionary Libya.

Having been imprisoned by Gaddafi’s brigades for several months during the revolution, poet and writer Rab’ie Shrair believes that the present cases of torture have reached frightful proportions, and are a mixture of retaliation, revenge, and childlike behavior.

Shrair and a group of activists in the city of Zawiya, 45 kilometers west of Tripoli, intend to stage a demonstration against torture and kidnapping on April 23, under the slogan “No Legitimacy for Oppressors.”

“The planned protests are based on our faith, as young activists, that the state must be based on the rule of law, not vengeance. We endeavor to involve all those who have had honorable record in the revolution. However, if genuine revolutionaries have cleared themselves of these acts since they were against torture and other inhuman practices, who then are responsible for detentions and torture?” he wondered.

What ever happened to transitional justice?

There have been attempts, human rights activists say, made by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) to control prisons and bring them under the legal ambit of the government. However, when the minister demanded that all jails be under government control, an armed group attacked MoJ.

Libyan Human Rights Association (LHRA) spokesperson Nabeel Sukni said thanks to the new MoJ, LHRA was able to visit prisons under MoJ control in Tripoli, like Ruwaymi, Ain Zara, Metiga, and Jdaida prisons, without prior permission, and that there was a marked improvement inside those prisons.

Sukni, however, stated that most of the prisons in Misrata, in the Tajura area in Tripoli, Zintan, and eastern Libya were secret prisons controlled by “rebel’” brigades rather than the government and that LHRA failed to gain access to them.

Kidnapping

Sukni stressed that human rights violations were being committed inside the prisons of security committees set up by the Ministry of Interior (MoI), and that some members of these committees were ex-convicts. However, insiders said security leaders were also members of these committees, especially in Tripoli, and they committed human rights violations, adding that some of their victims travelled abroad to file lawsuits against them in Europe.

According to those insiders, when stability in Libya is achieved, the international community will present its observations about the human rights in order to make the Libyan authorities extradite those responsible for the security file during the transitional phase. “Many of those who have been kidnapped have either died under torture or suffered serious injuries and diseases as a consequence of torture inflicted by unprofessional jailers, like renal failure resulting from extended electric shocks, which explains why they cannot be released,” he added.

It should be noted that the security committees are affiliated to MoI and were formed after the liberation of Libya to accommodate the rebels returning from battlefronts. At present, these returnees are gradually being integrated into police force.

Life worth a bullet!

“Large numbers of prisoners are exposed to torture,” said Tawfiq Akrout, the legal representative of the Libyan Observatory for Human Rights, adding: “The only times we are allowed to inspect the prisoners’ bodies and see torture marks is when they are transferred from one security committee to another, since the new prison system would tell us that the torture was committed by the previous committee. But when we ask them to show us a prisoner whom they have arrested, they refuse, on the pretext that he is under investigation.”

“This is a serious indication that human dignity is not protected by the state. A man can be arrested from his house and he may be tortured and saved by a certain amount of money. His life is worth only a bullet,” he added.

Akrout agreed with Sukni, expressing some satisfaction about the prisons controlled by MoJ. He, however, was surprised about the arrests made by the security support units – a Ministry of Defense force dissolved by a recently issued decision – for more than a year without prosecution, while the regulations provided that detainees could remain in custody for a maximum of 48 hours.

Akrout also mentioned that cases of arbitrary arrests and abductions were concentrated in major cities, like Tripoli, Benghazi, Misrata and Sabha, adding that: “We have no idea about the detainees at the jails of the security support units because we are absolutely prevented from visiting them. But, based on citizens’ complaints, and the stories told by released prisoners, 90% of acts of torture are carried out for personal reasons. The jailors kidnap men and women for blackmail purposes and do not refer them to the office of the public prosecutor.”

Integration

MoI spokesman Lt. Majdi Arfi did not answer telephone calls and text messages sent to him via his Facebook page, asking about the whereabouts of those detainees.

For his part, Deputy Head of Supreme Security Committee in Benghazi, Fawzi Wanis, said all detainees in the Committee prisons were released when the integration of its members into the police force started and that those newly arrested persons were referred to police stations.

“We are sometimes obliged to hold a person for a period exceeding the time allowed by the regulations due to the public prosecutor office’s reluctance to receive him,” he explained.

Wanis admitted that there were a few violations in the early days of the Committee formation, which he attributed to lack of experience among its members. “True, some of the Committee members are ex-convicts because our mission was to absorb as many revolutionaries as possible, but now we are in the process of integrating them into the police force, and request enlisted individuals to produce a clearance certificate. The Committee comprises 7,000 members, of whom we have trained 400 members for a period of 45 days as a first batch. Only one member was found to be an ex-convict,” he added.

“No Legitimacy for Oppressors”

“During my imprisonment under Gaddafi, we, as prisoners, used to say that those prisons, which had no respect for their inmates in terms of proper ventilation and construction, must be removed after Gaddafi’s fall. And, should there be a need for prisons, they must take into account human rights. Unfortunately, human dignity is still violated inside these prisons and in other secret jails.”