Fall of Gadhafi’s Dictatorship Reveals Human Rights Abuses
It’s been some 42 years of terror for the people of Libya under the dictatorship of Gadhafi. The people who have lived under what has recently been revealed as a reign of terror have successfully taken over Tripoli and the dark secrets and inner workings of this evil empire have been exposed. One of the first tasks of the Libyan rebels is to capture Moammar Gadhafi and his family and bring them to justice. The world hopes to bring the Gadhafi family to the court of human rights and justice, but the fear of revenge killings is a real concern when Gadhafi and his supporters are actually caught by the rebels.
Moammar Gadhafi proclaimed he lived the life of a simple Bedoin, often sleeping in a tent in the desert. We now know this is not true. He and his family lived a lavish lifestyle in a series of villas with spectacular view of the ocean on the coast of western Tripoli, drinking Johnnie Walker Blue Label Scotch and Laurent Perrier pink champagne, Cristal champagne and St. Emilion Bordeaux , surrounding by lavish décor, high tech electronics, Jacuzzi tubs and hot tubs, barbeques and a white baby grand piano. The lifestyle of the Gadhafi family was one of opulence, decadence and corruption. We’ve already seen the interior of Gadhafi’s personal jet, furnished like a jet belonging to the super rich.
Horrific is the tale that is now told by the nanny of Hannibal Gadhafi and his wife, Aline. Last night on television, Shweyga Mullah, the nanny of their children revealed how Aline Gadhafi tortured her for not beating Aline’s daughter when the little girl cried. Shweyga Mullah’s head, face and body are still scarred and not yet healed from the sadistic torture by Aline Gadhafi.
Shweyga Mullah, spoke of the torture she has endured at the hands of Aline Gadhafi. “She took me to a bathroom. She tied my hands behind my back, and tied my feet. She taped my mouth, and she started pouring the boiling water on my head like this.”
According to Shweya Mullah, this occurred twice during her employment with the Gadhafi family. She was denied medical treatment, food and water and was never paid for her work.
Other horrors have been exposed to Libyans and the world which cause one to weep. A warehouse in Salahuddin which stood behind the feared army building of the Khamis Brigade (led by Khamis Gadhafi) was found to hold the charred remains of prisoners. Fifty three civilians were massacred in the most brutal of methods last week. BBC TV showed a video of their findings. Civilians were in tears as they discovered the fates of their fathers, sons and brothers at the hands of Gadhafi’s Khamis Brigade. The charred bodies of 53 men, some skeletal, were found inside. One survivor, Fathallah Abdullah, told the press that the Khamis Brigade guards had promised the prisoners water but came back with guns and began firing on the men and then threw three grenades into the warehouse. They were then set on fire. Local residents, relatives, and rebels were visibly shaken and angered by this discovery.
The doors of Tripoli’s domestic intelligence headquarters were blasted opened by NATO allied bombing and eventually revealed the inner workings of Gadhafi’s police state. Gadhafi’s forces claimed at first that this was the NATO of a simple administrative building. However, security officers who worked there cleaned the place of computer hard drives and evidence that would reveal what happened in this building of offices and interrogation rooms. A Canadian diplomat, once arrested and beaten by Libyan police and falsely accused of espionage, believes he was brought to this building for interrogation during the 1980s. Countless others have suffered at the hands of the state security police of Gadhafi’s regime. The building is now in the hands of the rebels and they have documents, video tapes, audio cassettes and surveillance photos found in the collection of the domestic intelligence headquarters in Tripoli.
All the horrors of Muammar Gadhafi’s regime are beginning to come to light and there is, without a doubt, still more to come. The atrocities the people of Libya have discovered are leading human rights groups expressing concern over how fairly the rebels in the new Libya will handle the hired mercenaries of Gadhafi’s former army, the former employees and supporters of the Gadhafi family once they are found. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have issued reports on the atrocities of the Gadhafi regime in the last days of this crumbling empire. What is of concern now is the “street justice” or revenge killings that may overcome the people and the rebels as they seek justice. Already, members of Gadhafi have escaped to Algeria, the only country that would accept them. Gadhafi and his son Saif’s whereabouts are still unknown. When they are found, they should be brought before the courts to answer for their crimes against the Libyan people, as well as for their well-documented sponsorship of and participation in acts of terrorism.
This video from CNN reveals the horror the citizens of Tripoli discovered in warehouse in Salahuddin, Libya.
#77 Iraq is an oppressive greime, and Afghanistan is a narco state Perhaps so; but then again you’ve taken your eye off the ball. Both those things had also been the case, depuis longtemps, prior to the US incursions. The point of the whole interventionist exercise, seen from a bird’s-eye point of view, was never the integrity or improvement of those local systems (though that woulda been an optimal outcome had it been possible to achieve and I’d agree the effort has fallen far short of achieving them): the point was the defense of an entire world system under attack.Here’s what you forget: US territorial security/stability and global security/stability are deeply intertwined, seeing as how the US is, like it or not, the ultimate guarantor of a great deal of the latter. Upset one factor in a profound fashion and you upset the other, with unforeseeable consequences but they’re likely to be grave.1. US territory was attacked on 9/11/01, in an egregious act of war perpetrated moreover (and rather surprisingly) by a non-state actor;2. The egregiousness of the act, coupled with the bizarre novelty of its having been executed by an international non-state actor (consider that the USSR, a far deadlier enemy, never did such a thing), constituted a wholly new model of warfare and aggression. If this new model were allowed to gain purchase or be perceived as being successful, it would be repeated over and over in an open-source fashion, and the consequences for global security and order, under present organizing principles, could have been profoundly destabilizing. Now some leftist chuckleheads might of course cheer that development, but y’know after all, there’s always kids smokin’ in the boys room, and they seldom amount to much. Hey, ask me how I know.3. So realistically, matters had to be dealt with. Laxity was not really an option. Did you want to see San Diego blown up with a home-made bomb, and then a global nuclear war as a consequence? Them was your sort of options; sadly, Pete Seeger records were not exactly on the table. As Morrissey so bluntly put it, Unruly boys who will not grow up must be taken in hand. 4. As it happens though, we had the misfortune in this crisis of having fools like Bush and the neocons at the helm at the time, each with their bizarre and unhelpful side-agendas; and so, even though a strong response was in order, the responses which they happened to choose reeked of unwisdom.5. It does not follow from that unwisdom, that no response whatever was the correct reply.6. All of which is to say that, your proposition that Iraq and Afghanistan are not now presently fonts of justice and enlightenment, doesn’t signify much of anything with respect to the general global problems at hand. I’ll concede that it’s an outrage to the peoples of those countries that they have to put up with this shit, but that all goes to much bigger problems of which the present troubles are but a part. Nevertheless I agree that the whole thing should have been handled with much greater wisdom and a more subtle and skillful hand.7. All the same, there’s no QED residing in generalized anger, even if it’s justified, that those places aren’t in peace and good order. They weren’t before and they aren’t now, and it’s not clear what could have or can be done to make them so. But of course it was also the height of folly to intervene crudely and make them even worse.