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Libya militias 'out of control'

February 16, 2012

Amnesty International has accused 'out of control' armed militias in Libya of committing widespread human rights abuses in a report released a year after the start of the revolt that toppled Moammar Gadhafi's regime.

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Libyan rebels celebrate on a captured tank in the outskirts of Benghazi, eastern Libya
Image: AP

Out of control armed militias now rule much of Libya, Amnesty International warned in a report on Thursday, committing widespread human rights abuses and obstructing efforts to rebuild the country.

The report, released a year after the revolt against former leader Moammar Gadhafi began, documents serious abuses committed by militias across the country. They include "war crimes against suspected Gadhafi loyalists, with cases of people being unlawfully detained and tortured - sometimes to death," it says.

Detainees were quoted as saying they had been "suspended in contorted positions; beaten for hours with whips, cables, plastic hoses, metal chains and bars, and wooden sticks and given electric shocks with live wires and taser-like electroshock weapons." Amnesty estimated that at least 12 people had died as a result of this abuse since September.

The report was based on findings from a research visit to Libya in January and February. Amnesty International delegates met detention administrators, hospital staff, doctors, lawyers, detainees, former detainees, relatives of people killed or abused in detention, as well as representatives of the authorities. Evidence of torture and abuse was found in all but one of the 11 detention centers visited.

NTC called upon to act

It comes as a fresh blow to Libya's interim government, the National Transitional Council (NTC) which has struggled to disarm former rebels who helped topple the Gadhafi regime.

"Militias in Libya are largely out of control and the blanket impunity they enjoy only encourages further abuses and perpetuates instability and insecurity," said Donatella Rovera, senior adviser at Amnesty International.

"The only way to break with the entrenched practices of decades of abuse under Colonel Gadhafi's authoritarian rule is to ensure that nobody is above the law and that investigations are carried out into such abuses."

The Libyan government is currently holding some 2,400 detainees, although thousands more prisoners are in the hands of militias Amnesty reported.

Rovera warned that a "lack of political will," from the NTC is fuelling the problem.

"They're not willing to recognize the scale of the problem. It is way, way beyond individual cases. It's an irresponsible attitude," she said.

ccp/ai (AFP, AP)