30-11-2011, 02:07 AM
Hi Keith,
Thanks for reading my stuff and responding. I too was incredulous - is that the word? - when I heard that number, but it turns out it was over 1200 prisoners killed in 1996 at Abu Salim prison Tripoli. As you noted, here's the Human Rights Watch report from 2006 - but we know a lot more about it today. They found the mass grave and the bones.
[URL="http://www.hrw.org/reports/2006/06/28/libya-june-1996-killings-abu-salim-prison"]
Libya: June 1996 Killingsat Abu Salim Prison
[/URL]In the summer of 1996, stories began to filter out of Libya about a mass killing in Tripoli's Abu Salim prison. The details remained scarce, and the government initially denied that an incident had taken place. Libyan groups outside the country said up to 1,200 prisoners had died. Thanks for asking as I hadn't read the HRW report. We now know a lot more.
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2006/06/27/li...lim-prison
Abu Salim prison is now a major tourist attraction, as I had posted a few articles about it. At least two foreign journalists covering the revolution were incarcerated there and lived, including one who later tracked down his guards and interviewed them,
Revolutionary Program: Reporter Tracks down Tripoli Jailer
and Mathew Van Dyke, War Zone Biker who when freed by rebels, joined them and helped liberate the prison in Sirte where his friends were being held.
[URL="http://revolutionaryprogram.blogspot.com/2011/11/van-dyke-phones-home.html"]
Revolutionary Program: Van Dyke Phones Home[/URL]
The mass murder of the 1200 prisoners is part of the revolutionary chronicles because it was the families of the victims who were petitioning Gadhafi to release the names of those killed so they knew who was dead and who might still be alive, and when their lawyer was arrested, it was their protests that started the February 15th revolution in Libya.
I started my blog two days earlier Revolutionary Program: Paying Last Respects to Mohamed Bouazizi, and knowing of the unrest there, predicted that if the turmoil spread to Libya it would begin in Benghazi.
Ten years before the Abu Salim prison massacre, Sadek Hamed Al-Shuwehdy was arrested, tried for treason and executed in a school gymnasium by
by the mayor of Benghazi Huda Ben Amer, whose home was one of the first to be burned by the revolutionaries.
When I posted a story about this and commented on it, a Libyan wrote back that it wasn't really that shocking because in some countries, like Libya "life is cheap."
http://revolutionaryprogram.blogspot.com...ngazi.html
Thirty years ago, a young Libyan, Sadek Hamed Al-Shuwehdy,returned to Benghazi after studying aeronautical engineering in the US and got a job at the airport. He was unhappy with the state of Libya, with Qaddafi's despotic rule. He was not militant activist, but he joined a group campaigning for change.
In a country where dissent is illegal, he was soon marked out as an enemy of the state and, in Qaddafi's Libya,that is an offense punishable by death. In 1984, he was arrested in the middle of the night by the secret police and held, but he was not immediately shot in jail, unlike all the other opponents of the regime. Three months later, he was taken to the city's basketball stadium and in front of television cameras and hundreds of school children and students from Benghazi's Garyounis University brought in they were told to witness the public trial of a traitor, he was hanged. Qaddafi had decided that his should be a very public death and a warning to students what would happen to them if they dared oppose him. There was no trial. The students were deeply shocked. Some pleaded in vain for mercy for Sadek. But not all.
As he was hanging and writhing but obviously not yet dead, Huda Ben Amer ran out from the crowd of students, grabbed onto his body and with her weight pulled it down to make sure he died.
http://revolutionaryprogram.blogspot.com...-lost.html
wff said...
Sorry but the report on Sadiq Hamed Shwehdi as an example ofGaddafi's "brutal" rule is out of all proportion and context and ismore of a cheap propaganda and demonization against Gaddafi than a serious analysis. Executions may have been more public in Libya and even more brutal due to the,dare I say with reservations, "less civilized" culture, development,etc., but even in the UK the death penalty for the type of act committed was still in force up until 1998, while in the US public televised executions are held even today. In many countries even now, life is "cheap" and seeing cruelty, executions, etc. does not have the same effect or significance as it does in the West, unfortunate but true.
I don't know what kind of "Proof" you need, but that's good enough for me.
Thanks for reading my stuff and responding. I too was incredulous - is that the word? - when I heard that number, but it turns out it was over 1200 prisoners killed in 1996 at Abu Salim prison Tripoli. As you noted, here's the Human Rights Watch report from 2006 - but we know a lot more about it today. They found the mass grave and the bones.
[URL="http://www.hrw.org/reports/2006/06/28/libya-june-1996-killings-abu-salim-prison"]
Libya: June 1996 Killingsat Abu Salim Prison
[/URL]In the summer of 1996, stories began to filter out of Libya about a mass killing in Tripoli's Abu Salim prison. The details remained scarce, and the government initially denied that an incident had taken place. Libyan groups outside the country said up to 1,200 prisoners had died. Thanks for asking as I hadn't read the HRW report. We now know a lot more.
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2006/06/27/li...lim-prison
Abu Salim prison is now a major tourist attraction, as I had posted a few articles about it. At least two foreign journalists covering the revolution were incarcerated there and lived, including one who later tracked down his guards and interviewed them,
Revolutionary Program: Reporter Tracks down Tripoli Jailer
and Mathew Van Dyke, War Zone Biker who when freed by rebels, joined them and helped liberate the prison in Sirte where his friends were being held.
[URL="http://revolutionaryprogram.blogspot.com/2011/11/van-dyke-phones-home.html"]
Revolutionary Program: Van Dyke Phones Home[/URL]
The mass murder of the 1200 prisoners is part of the revolutionary chronicles because it was the families of the victims who were petitioning Gadhafi to release the names of those killed so they knew who was dead and who might still be alive, and when their lawyer was arrested, it was their protests that started the February 15th revolution in Libya.
I started my blog two days earlier Revolutionary Program: Paying Last Respects to Mohamed Bouazizi, and knowing of the unrest there, predicted that if the turmoil spread to Libya it would begin in Benghazi.
Ten years before the Abu Salim prison massacre, Sadek Hamed Al-Shuwehdy was arrested, tried for treason and executed in a school gymnasium by
by the mayor of Benghazi Huda Ben Amer, whose home was one of the first to be burned by the revolutionaries.
When I posted a story about this and commented on it, a Libyan wrote back that it wasn't really that shocking because in some countries, like Libya "life is cheap."
http://revolutionaryprogram.blogspot.com...ngazi.html
Thirty years ago, a young Libyan, Sadek Hamed Al-Shuwehdy,returned to Benghazi after studying aeronautical engineering in the US and got a job at the airport. He was unhappy with the state of Libya, with Qaddafi's despotic rule. He was not militant activist, but he joined a group campaigning for change.
In a country where dissent is illegal, he was soon marked out as an enemy of the state and, in Qaddafi's Libya,that is an offense punishable by death. In 1984, he was arrested in the middle of the night by the secret police and held, but he was not immediately shot in jail, unlike all the other opponents of the regime. Three months later, he was taken to the city's basketball stadium and in front of television cameras and hundreds of school children and students from Benghazi's Garyounis University brought in they were told to witness the public trial of a traitor, he was hanged. Qaddafi had decided that his should be a very public death and a warning to students what would happen to them if they dared oppose him. There was no trial. The students were deeply shocked. Some pleaded in vain for mercy for Sadek. But not all.
As he was hanging and writhing but obviously not yet dead, Huda Ben Amer ran out from the crowd of students, grabbed onto his body and with her weight pulled it down to make sure he died.
http://revolutionaryprogram.blogspot.com...-lost.html
wff said...
Sorry but the report on Sadiq Hamed Shwehdi as an example ofGaddafi's "brutal" rule is out of all proportion and context and ismore of a cheap propaganda and demonization against Gaddafi than a serious analysis. Executions may have been more public in Libya and even more brutal due to the,dare I say with reservations, "less civilized" culture, development,etc., but even in the UK the death penalty for the type of act committed was still in force up until 1998, while in the US public televised executions are held even today. In many countries even now, life is "cheap" and seeing cruelty, executions, etc. does not have the same effect or significance as it does in the West, unfortunate but true.
I don't know what kind of "Proof" you need, but that's good enough for me.