Photos Found in Libya Show Abuses Under Qaddafi
Moises Saman for The New York Times
Photographs at a police station in Zawiyah, Libya, depicted dead people and scenes of torture.
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and C. J. CHIVERS
Published: April 5, 2011
ZAWIYAH, Libya — In the second-floor office of a burned-out police station here, the photographs strewn across the floor spun out the stories of the unlucky prisoners who fell into the custody of the brutal government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
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Moises Saman for The New York Times
At a police station in Zawiyah, Libya, retaken by loyalist forces, workers cleared away the ashes of burned documents.
In a labyrinthine basement, workers were clearing out burned books and files. One room contained a two-liter bottle of gin. Gesturing into another room that was kept dark, a worker mimicked a gun with his hands and murmured “Qaddafi,” suggesting it was an execution chamber.
Journalists discovered the photographs and records on an official trip to this devastated city, where Qaddafi forces battled rebels for nearly a week to retake control. They were the latest reminder of the long record of arbitrary violence against civilians that now overshadows the government’s efforts to broker an end to the international airstrikes and domestic rebellion threatening Colonel Qaddafi’s four decades in power.
As Colonel Qaddafi’s son, Seif al-Islam, promised in a television interview to usher in a new era of constitutional democracy in which his father would be a mere figurehead “like the queen of England,” the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court escalated international pressure on the government by declaring that it had deliberately ordered the killing of civilians in a bid to hold back the democratic revolution sweeping the region.
“We have evidence that after the Tunisia and Egypt conflicts, people in the regime were planning how to control demonstrations in Libya,” the prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, told Reuters. “The shootings of civilians was a predetermined plan.”
In the rebel-held city of Misrata in western Libya and on the eastern front with the rebels around the oil town of Brega, Qaddafi forces continued to hammer rebels with rockets, artillery and mortars, as rebel leaders expressed exasperation at the limits of NATO’s support.
In Brussels, Brig. Gen. Mark van Uhm of NATO said Tuesday that Western airstrikes had destroyed about 30 percent of Colonel Qaddafi’s military power.
But Gen. Abdul Fattah Younes, the head of the rebel army, lashed out at his Western allies during a news conference in Benghazi, accusing NATO of tardiness and indecision. “What is NATO doing?” he asked. “Civilians are dying every day. They use the excuse of collateral damage.”
He charged that NATO was enforcing the United Nations-sanctioned no-fly zone too equally, barring the rebels from providing cover for their troops with the few warplanes he said they had repaired. “They said, ‘No, don’t use your planes,’ ” he said.
General Younes also charged that Qaddafi forces had attacked oil installations in southeastern Libya, “to deprive the Libyan people from their right of selling the oil.” He said the damage was “not significant.”
Nor was there was any sign Tuesday of the air power that two weeks ago sent the loyalist forces reeling toward the Qaddafi stronghold of Surt.
Instead, they hammered rebels once again along the coastal road around the strategic oil town of Brega, more than 100 miles to the east.
On Tuesday the Qaddafi forces reversed some minor rebel gains with rocket attacks and pushed vehicle patrols northeast from their positions. They forced the rebels to withdraw nearly to Ajdabiya, to be safely out of the superior range of the loyalist forces’ weapons.
Resting on dunes and knolls, soldiers peered down the road toward Brega nervously. They said that it appeared that the Qaddafi forces, less pressured now by airstrikes, had managed to resupply their forward troops, and were emboldened and dangerous.
The rebels had pulled back so quickly under fire that their casualties on Tuesday were light, said Dr. Habib Multadi, who was organizing the evacuation of wounded from the front. But as cargo trucks moved more ammunition forward at dusk, their force seemed stuck.
In the rebel capital, Benghazi, a military spokesman said he was not ashamed to admit that the rebel forces needed help.
“To your people I would like to say, ‘Don’t leave us,’ ” the spokesman, Col. Ahmed Omar Bani, said in an interview. “We need support. We need your support.”
In Misrata, the last major rebel-held city in western Libya, rebels said they were losing ground to a constricting siege by Qaddafi forces. “The Qaddafi forces are expanding their territorial gains every day,” said Mohamed, a rebel spokesman whose name was withheld to protect his family.
The Qaddafi forces had shelled the port so heavily, he said, that the local authorities closed and evacuated it, sending a ship from Benghazi back into deeper waters.
Rebels said the Qaddafi forces appeared to adopt new tactics in response to the Western airstrikes, using mortars far more than tanks, either to present smaller targets or because the tanks were wiped out. “They are changing the technique and they are shelling by mortar now everywhere so instead of no-fly zone we have no safe zone,” said Aiman, a doctor whose last name was withheld for similar reasons, in an Internet message.
Mahmud Hams/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Libyan loyalist forces' bombs exploded on rebels positions near Brega, on Tuesday.
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In an interview with the BBC that was broadcast on Tuesday, Colonel Qaddafi’s son Seif al-Islam dismissed the rebels as a relatively small number of people — “escaped criminals” and “terrorists” — who had somehow dominated or tricked the millions living in eastern Libya.
He argued that the West could never succeed in forcing his father from power, because of his father’s resistance and because “the Libyan people will never allow it.”
He said his father had nothing to fear from the International Criminal Court. “My father didn’t kill anybody,” he said. “He didn’t say, ‘Go and kill civilians.’ “
He insisted that the only critics of his father were a few politicians in foreign capitals. In Libya, he said, “Nobody is talking about my father.”
And, apparently elaborating on his reported proposals to end the conflict, Mr. Qaddafi suggested that if foreign interference ended, he and his father were ready to move the country toward democratic elections of a new government and prime minister under a new constitution, with his father in a figurehead role.
“We talked about it 10 years ago,” he said.
Asked why Libya had not taken any steps toward constitutional democracy yet, Mr. Qaddafi insisted: “It will happen. We are very serious about that.”
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