NTC's atrocities in Libya grow

The Libyan rebels have been meting out brutal treatment to sub-Saharan Africans in Tripoli, suspecting that they are Gaddafi loyalists

While the deceased Gaddafi was the favorite target accused for brutality and cruelty it now seems that all this fits to the other side as well. Apart of his own death, - brutal abused and even sodomized – and his son’s summary execution, both breaching the International law and Geneva convention, new reports indicate the deliberate executions that took place in Sirte.

Sirte after two months of bombing by NATO forces, being cut off electricity and water, while a grave humanitarian crisis broke in the overloaded hospital, surrounded by tanks, heavy artillery, rebels who fired rocket propelled grenades, suffered the same afflictions that allegedly would happen to Benghazi if Gaddafi was allowed by the International Community to besiege it. While the number of the killed civilians remains unknown there are reports indicating massive executions of prisoners of war that took place after the city’s fall mounting the atrocities already reported.

CBS reports that nearly 300 bodies many of them with their hands tied behind their backs and shot in the head, have been collected from across Sirte and buried in a mass grave.




Human Rights Watch pointing to evidence of atrocities committed against 53 captured Gaddafi supporters who were found in the grounds of an abandoned hotel in Sirte, some bound and shot in the head. Aljazeera reports:



Ali Tarhouni, the oil minister vindicated this acts stating that "You have to bear in mind that these young man have seen their friends killed in front of them, who saw their cities burned, who saw their sisters raped. I am amazed at their self-restraint". Mustafa Abdul Jalil, the head of the NTC, still held to the initial explanation given that Gaddafi may have been killed in crossfire. NTC pushed by the International Community said that will start an investigation about Gaddafi’s death while buried his body to an undisclosed location at dawn on Tuesday in unsigned grave, fearing that it could be turned to a shrine or brutalized. The doctor that examined the body reported that the cause of death was a head shot and a sample of DNA was sent to the ICC. Naturally, a proper autopsy could reveal massive evidence about the abuses but for this to happen the body should be exhumed. On the other hand, if there is to be a cover up his body will soon disappear. It is clear that NTC as the new recognized government of Libya bare the whole responsibility for this or any other committed war crime as much as Gaddafi for his loyalists. But the investigations that NTC supposedly have conducted on Yunnis assassination led to nowhere and the incident will probably sink into the memory hole.

While the discover of the mass grave in Abu-Salim prison a month ago is now silenced - maybe as a consequence of CNN reporting a team that was brought to the muddy field with other news outlets found only what appeared to be animal bones and the Liberation’s report (1:33) that only camel bones were found –  it is quite clear that the war was not based on a real political ground as it was portrayed by the rebel’s government and the Western allies, but it was a cold, brutal, civil one.

The R2P application by the UN to Libya intensified the conflict, building a full scale war and subsequently maximized the victims, atrocities and destruction. If Libyans in the future will overcome the hatred and the divisions and finally become a happy democratic society remains to be seen.