Libyan militia accused of torturing to death ambassador to France
One of Libya's many new militias has been accused of detaining and apparently torturing to death a former ambassador to France, the latest allegation of brutality to mar the victorious revolutionaries' reputation since the fall of Col Muammar Gaddafi.
Human Rights Watch said that Omar Brebesh, a career diplomat who was cultural attache and then ambassador to France between 2004 to 2008, was brought in for routine questioning in Tripoli over his work for the former regime.
His body turned up at a hospital in Zintan, the town two hours' drive to the south-west that was a hub of last year's revolution, beaten, bruised and with some of its toenails removed.
The allegation will be particularly alarming because Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of the former dictator, is also being held in Zintan. Although the two international organisations allowed to visit him – Human Rights Watch and the International Committee of the Red Cross – both reported he was being well treated, the interim government has refused to disclose details of the process by which he will be put on trial.
The Zintan Brigade, one of the revolution's most powerful militias, has clashed with rivals in Tripoli. Most recently, members fought for control of the former beach compound of Saadi Gaddafi, another of the dictator's sons, with members of the Misurata Brigade, once seen as a Zintan ally in Libya's complex patchwork of regional rivalries.
It was a smaller Zintan-based outfit, called the Al-Shohada Ashura Militia, that demanded Mr Brebesh come in for questioning on January 19, his son, Ziad, told HRW. He was still working as a lawyer in the foreign ministry at the time.
The next day, his body was found by Ziad's brother Mohammed at a hospital in Zintan. Photographs of his body "revealed welts and extensive bruising on the abdomen, lacerations on both legs, and a large wound on the sole of the left foot," HRW said. "Some of his toenails appear to have been removed."
It said that, according to an official report, an unnamed suspect had confessed to the killing.
Mr Brebesh's is just the most high-profile documented case of the thousands of former regime associates and others allegedly detained and beaten by militias. The ICRC says it has evidence of at least 8,500 inmates, held by 60 separate militias.
The government has promised to bring the militias under control, but they have refused to hand in their weapons until there is a central security force that they say they can trust. The fact that the defence minister, Osama Jueili, is also head of the Zintan Brigade, suggests they are unlikely to be forced to do so any time soon.
The Misurata and Zintan Brigades were once seen as natural allies, as secular units based on cities near Tripoli hostile to its Islamist fighting forces. However, there are increasing signs of turf wars between them.
The battle between the two on Wednesday, which rumours said concerned anything from control of the beach to the fate of a girl kidnapped by the Misurata side, involved small arms and machine guns, but ended without anyone being killed, according to the authorities
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/9059989/Libyan-militia-accused-of-torturing-to-death-ambassador-to-France.html
