Caricatures or perceived caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed have always proven incendiary— leading to outrage, protests, some of which turn deadly, to the issuance of fatwas.  The case is no different in Libya, where Ali Tekbali and Fathi Saqr of the Libyan National Party (LNP) were accused of blasphemy and abuse of Islam back in 2012. Their trial is on-going and if they are proven guilty, they could be sentenced to death.

Election posters

Caricatures or perceived caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed have always proven incendiary— leading to outrage, protests, some of which turn deadly, to the issuance of fatwas.  The case is no different in Libya, where Ali Tekbali and Fathi Saqr of the Libyan National Party (LNP) were accused of blasphemy and abuse of Islam back in 2012. Their trial is on-going and if they are proven guilty, they could be sentenced to death.

Election posters

It all started during the parliamentary elections in June 2012, when Tekbali, coordinator of political affairs and election campaigns in the LNP, distributed a large number of election posters related to social issues, such as the role of women, in Tripoli’s public squares.

In one poster, a bearded man with a big nose and a turban objects to women leaving their homes while another character opposes his view and stresses that women are an essential part of society. The poster’s message, Tekbali says, is that healthy societies are run by men and women without discrimination.

“The pictures remained hanging for nearly six months and no one said anything about them,” Tekbali remembered.  But once Tekbali appeared on Tobakts TV Channel in November 2012 and described armed Libyans as ‘militias’ saying “They illegally send young men to Syria and pay them money,” the harmless election posters suddenly became ‘anti-Islamic’.

The day after Tekbali’s TV statements, a group of bearded armed men attacked LNP’s headquarters, Tekbali claimed. “They broke down the door and took the posters as if they hadn’t already been hanging everywhere,” he said, pointing out that the men who broke in were never even charged.

List of charges

Tekbali and Fathi Saqr, the LNP’s Secretariat General, on the other hand, were charged severly by Prosecutor Basheer Zayani.

At the top of the list of charges came inciting sedition, division and civil war, a crime punishable by death under the Libyan penal code.

Another charge was promoting and possessing pictures that mock Prophet Mohammed, a crime also punishable by death.

A lesser of their charges was abusing the state’s religion by posting cynical pictures in public places, a crime punishable by up to two years imprisonment.

The list goes on, including publicly inciting people against each other, mocking their appearance, undermining public security and inciting sedition among different sects— all of these charges would make Tekbali and Saqr see time in prison, even if they were able to escape their death sentences.

“Someone called Muftah Qarir, member of the Twelfth Support Brigade of the Supreme Security Committee, filed the case. However, he was summoned to neither the prosecution nor to the trial sessions,” Tekbali said.

Sensitive cartoons

The prosecution claimed that the character in the posters is taken from a caricature that was featured in the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo in 2011 and 2012.

Tekbali stressed that this claim is unfounded as the picture cited by the prosecution was featured in September 2012 but the one referred to in the accusation was used in the LNP’s advertisements in much earlier, in June 2012. And still, the case was not filed until December of the same year.      

Amnesty International supports Tekbali’s account, reporting that the same character appeared three months later as an anti-Islam and controversial drawing of Prophet Mohamed. It was published in the above mentioned French magazine in September 2012.

Picture’s source

The picture that caused the problem, said Tekbali, was taken from the Internet “to manifest the party’s stand towards women and has nothing to do with the magazine. If we intended to promote abusive drawings, we would have published them on the famous social networking sites. Accusing us of defaming Prophet Mohamed goes against us being Muslims. It is a dangerous claim which may lead some zealots to kill us,” he said.

In June 2013, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International demanded that the Libyan Judiciary acquit the two men and in case they are convicted, they should be considered prisoners of conscience.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said the charges levelled by the prosecution breach the Libyan Constitutional Declaration and the International Human Rights Law and thus should be cancelled or modified, as they breach international laws protecting the freedom of expression.

“The prosecutor should have Googled me to find the truth,” said Tekbali who is surprised by how little media attention his case has received. “My positions, education and affiliation cannot be summarized by a picture that was featured in an advertisement. They can be revealed though my articles and my behavior.”