Abu Salim prison

Abu Salim prison (Arabic: سجن أبو سليم‎) is a maximum security prison in Tripoli, Libya. The prison was notorious during the rule of Muammar Gaddafi for alleged mistreatment and human rights abuses, including a massacre in 1996 in which Human Rights Watch estimated that 1,270 prisoners were killed.[1][2][3]

People at a Benghazi rally looking at the photos of victims of Abu Salim prison massacre (February 2011)

In 2011, when the NTC invited investigators from CNN and other organizations it found only what appeared to be animal bones at that site and announced further investigations.[4]

Allegations of human rights abuses

Amnesty International has called for an independent inquiry into deaths that occurred there on 29 June 1996,[5] an incident which some have referred to as the Abu Salim prison massacre.[6] Human Rights Watch believes that 1,270 prisoners were killed. HRW also calls the prison a "site of egregious human rights violations."[7] Human Rights Watch also stated in a report that they were unable to independently verify the allegations of a massacre. The claims cited by Human Rights Watch are based on the testimony of a single former inmate, Hussein Al Shafa’i, who stated that he did not witness a prisoner being killed: "I could not see the dead prisoners who were shot..."[8] The figure of over 1200 killed was arrived at by Al Shafa’i allegedly calculating the number of meals he prepared when he was working in the prison's kitchen. Al Shafa'i stated "I was asked by the prison guards to wash the watches that were taken from the bodies of the dead prisoners..."[8]

Libyan Government rejected the allegations about a massacre in Abu Salim. In May 2005, the Internal Security Agency head of the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya told Human Rights Watch that the prisoners captured some guards and stole weapons from the prison cache. The prisoners and guards died as security personnel tried to restore order, and the government opened an investigation on the order of the Minister of Justice. The Libyan official stated that more than 400 prisoners escaped Abu Salim in four separate break-outs prior to and after the incident: in July 1995, December 1995, June 1996 and July 2001. Among the escapees were men who then fought with Islamist militant groups in Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq.[8]

Journalist Lindsey Hilsum explored the topic in her 2012 book "Sandstorm". She met with a number of families who claimed their family members had been at the prison. She describes the massacre number as an uncertain estimate for several reasons; the main problem being the government's long term silence about the whereabouts of prisoners and their condition. She also describes eyewitness accounts of a mass shooting.[9]

The families of the disappeared and killed formed a loose association and held numerous protests in Benghazi. Lawyer Fathi Terbil helped represent them. He was arrested several times for his trouble. Saif al-Islam Gaddafi (son of the dictator) tried to resolve the issue via his Gaddafi International Foundation for Charity Associations circa 2007.[9]

The Libyan government said in 2009, then controlled by the same people as at the time of the event, that the killings took place amid confrontation between the government and rebels from the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, and that some 200 guards were killed too.[10] In January 2011, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya confirmed that it was carrying out an investigation into the incident along with international investigators.[11] Statements made in an interview with the BBC by the captured Mansour Dhao, a prominent figure in the Gaddafi regime, provides further evidence for the massacre.[12]

When the Arab Spring occurred in Tunisia and Egypt, lawyer Fathi Terbil was amongst the first arrested by Libyan authorities trying to stave off a revolution. The Abu Salim families gathered to protest his imprisonment, and this gathering eventually contributed to the revolution in Libya. Abdullah Senussi, Gaddafi's intelligence chief suspected by many to have been involved in the 1996 massacre, reportedly tried to ask Terbil to make the protests stop.[9]

On 25 September 2011, soon after the previous government had been overthrown, the governing National Transitional Council (NTC) said that a mass grave had been discovered outside the prison.[13] Khalid al-Sherif, a military spokesman for the NTC, said that the grave was located based on information from captured former regime officials. He stated: "We have discovered the truth about what the Libyan people have been waiting for many years, and it is the bodies and remains of the Abu Salim massacre."[14] Ibrahim Abu Shim, a member of the committee looking for mass graves, said that investigators believed 1,270 people were buried in the grave but the NTC needed help from the international community to find and identify the remains as they lacked the sophisticated equipment needed for DNA testing.[15] However, when the NTC invited investigators from CNN and other organizations it found only what appeared to be animal bones at that site and announced further investigations.[4]

Before the civil war, the lawyer Abdul Hafiz Ghoga took the legal representation for the families of people killed in the massacre and negotiated with Gaddafi about compensations.[16] During the uprise Ghoga became speaker of the National Transitional Council, in April 2011 vice president, and held this position until January 2012.[17]

Inmates of Abu Salim prison
  • Ahmed al-Senussi, a current member of the NTC, was held here by Gaddafi until his release in 2001.[18]
  • Tawfiq Algazwani, a former Libyan citizen who was imprisoned for leading a Human Rights protest in Benghazi. The next day Gaddafi's forces arrested him and took him to Tripoli where he was taken into Abu Salem and imprisoned for 10 years, when he was released he immigrated to Ireland, now in Benghazi and Tripoli. Tawfiq now lives in Dublin, married and has two kids. Tawfiq was released in the 80's and immigrated to Ireland in 1988.

YouTube videos

On 24 January 2010, the Libyan authorities blocked access to YouTube after it featured videos of demonstrations in the Libyan city of Benghazi by families of detainees who were killed in Abu Salim prison in 1996, and videos of family members of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi at parties.

Libyan civil war

During the Libyan Civil War the prison was captured by the rebels on 24 August and all prisoners were set free.[19] Among those confirmed to have been freed was volunteer rebel fighter Matthew VanDyke from Baltimore, Maryland, USA, a member of a rebel unit captured by the Libyan Army in Brega in March.[20][21] An international campaign to free VanDyke had described him as a "writer and journalist," but it was later revealed that he was a rebel fighter and prisoner of war.[21]

gollark: It isn't, they complained of this.
gollark: See, that is VERY random.
gollark: Check out my performant, zero-allocation, stateless Rust random number generator!```rustfn main() { let x: i32 = unsafe { std::mem::MaybeUninit::uninit().assume_init() }; println!("{}", x);}```
gollark: Okay, I decided that using the built-in rocksDB atomic merge feature was a mistake and I'll just have to use mutices myself.
gollark: It has "failed to deserialize" certain values.

See also

References
  1. "Libya's notorious Abu Salim prison to be emptied". daylife.com. Archived from the original on 2011-03-03. Retrieved 2010-04-17.
  2. "Libya's notorious Abu Salim prison". geneva lunch. Archived from the original on 2011-07-11. Retrieved 2010-04-17.
  3. Robertson, Nic; Cruickshank, Paul (23 November 2009). "Jihadist death threatened Libyan peace deal". CNN. Retrieved 28 November 2011.
  4. "Libya hedges mass grave claim". CNN. 26 September 2011.
  5. "Investigation needed into prison deaths". Amnesty International. Archived from the original on 2015-03-17.
  6. "Libyan legal court celebrates Abu Salim prison massacre". Arabic News. 24 June 2005. Archived from the original on 2011-02-27. Retrieved 2010-04-17.
  7. "Libya: Free All Unjustly Detained Prisoners". Human Rights Watch.
  8. "Libya: June 1996 Killings at Abu Salim Prison". Human Rights Watch. June 27, 2006.
  9. "How the Memory of a Prison Massacre Helped Ignite the Libyan Revolution", May 23, 2012, alternet, excerpt From Sandstorm by Lindsey Hilsum. Published by arrangement with The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc. Copyright © Lindsey Hilsum, 2012
  10. Shuaib (6 September 2009). "Libya appoints judge to probe 1996 prison massacre". Reuters UK. Reuters. Retrieved 2 July 2011.
  11. "Report of the Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review: Libyan Arab Jamahiriya" (PDF). Universal Periodic Review. United Nations Human Rights Council, United Nations General Assembly. 4 January 2011. Retrieved 26 October 2011.
  12. "Gaddafi: 'He died an angry and disappointed man'". BBC. 30 October 2011. Retrieved 31 October 2011.
  13. "More than 1,200 bodies found in Tripoli mass grave". BBC News. 25 September 2011. Retrieved 25 September 2011.
  14. "Mass grave found in Libya with remains of 1,200". The Economic Times. 25 September 2011. Retrieved 25 September 2011.
  15. "More than 1,200 bodies found in Tripoli mass grave". BBC. 25 September 2011. Retrieved 8 January 2012.
  16. "Update: Death Toll Up to At Least 233". Human Rights Watch. February 2011. Archived from the original on 20 March 2011. Retrieved 21 March 2011.
  17. Connor, Richard (22 January 2012). "Libyan deputy leader steps down after angry protests". Deutche Welle. Retrieved 22 January 2012.
  18. Stock, Johnathan (13 March 2011). "Gaddafi-Opfer Al-Senussi: Gott entscheidet, was mit dir passiert". Der Spiegel (in German). SPIEGEL-Verlag. Archived from the original on 2011-08-25. Retrieved 25 August 2011.
  19. FreePressTV. "RAW, Libya, Rebels and citizens setting prisoners free from Abu Salim Priso in Tripoli 24.08.2011". YouTube.
  20. Deshmukh, Jay (3 October 2011). "American fighting Kadhafi 'lunatics' dreams of free Libya". Google News. Agence France-Presse.
  21. Phil Gast (25 August 2011). "American held in solitary escapes Tripoli prison". CNN.
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