إستمع للبرنامج
Victims' dismay at Libya's
rehabilitation
Shuaib Alabied says he was brutally
raped in
custody in Libya
Libya is back in business with
the West, able to exploit its oil and gas riches, after years of
isolation. But as Lucy Ash reports, some are disappointed there has been
little impact on the North African country's human rights record. Shuaib
Alabied cuddles his baby daughter but looks distracted. Clearly his mind
is elsewhere. The former car salesman from Tripoli is seeking asylum in
Britain after fleeing Libya with his pregnant wife last year. He is a
Berber, racially different from the Arabs who rule Libya and he once
belonged to the Amazighian Party which campaigns for cultural autonomy.
The party - like all political groupings in Libya - is banned by the
state. In September 2006, Shuaib was arrested at his garage, taken to
the police station and ordered to name other members of his party. "The
officer said to me: 'We have ways of making you talk'," says Shuaib.
"They told me someone called Washi was coming." Washi was a plain
clothes officer in the Ain Zara prison in the capital run by Libya's
security service. Shuaib describes him as a muscular, tall man with a
crew cut. He says he slapped him, dragged him into a cell and subjected
him to a brutal rape. Shuaib's claim is supported by evidence supplied
by the Medical Commission for Victims of Torture. He was kept in a dirty
cell for three and a half months. When he was eventually freed, he was
determined to get out of Libya. So he fled across the desert to Tunisia
and then via Turkey reached the UK with his wife.
Death penalty
When the authorities realised
Shuaib had escaped, they arrested his father. Mr Alebied is still in
prison but nobody knows where since no-one in the family has been able
to speak to him since the police took him away.
Hassan El Amin, a Libyan based
in London and the editor of an expatriate website, has heard many
similar stories. In the early hours of 17 February 2008, he received a
call from a man speaking from Libya called Jum'a Boufayed. Jum'a was
phoning from his home town of Gheryan to say that his brother Idriss - a
surgeon and a leading dissident - had been seized by state security
forces. "He sounded very panicky and told me that the police had
surrounded the house and then broken the door down," says Hassan. "He
said that he too could be arrested at any time." Idriss Boufayed had
been taken into custody along with 12 other people who planned to hold
what they described as a peaceful demonstration calling for democracy
and human rights in Libya. They are currently on trial in a State
Security Court, accused of plotting against the state and possessing
firearms - charges which carry the death penalty.
'Mysterious disappearances'
But what disturbs Hassan even
more is that another man connected to the demonstration, Abd al-Rahman
al-Qataiwi, a fourth-year medical student, mysteriously disappeared
following his arrest and has not been seen for 15 months. "My fear is
that something went wrong during the interrogation," says Hassan.
Jum'a, who was arrested at the
same time as Abd al-Rahman, and who also disappeared without trace, was
suddenly released this week.
Colonel Gaddafi
received a red carpet
welcome
in France last summer
The Gaddafi Foundation, a
non-governmental body run by the colonel's eldest son, Seif al Islam,
argues that such abuses are rare. The organisation has recently
negotiated the freedom of large numbers of detainees, including members
of the Muslim Brotherhood. But Fred Abrahams, who monitors Libya for
Human Rights Watch, says the record is at best mixed. "This country has
an extensive security structure and there is a definite atmosphere of
fear," he says. "People are afraid to talk and criticise the government
- and with good reason because you get locked up and put away without
due process."
According to the latest US
State Department report, Libyan security personnel routinely torture
prisoners during interrogations. Arbitrary arrest and incommunicado
detention remain problems, says the report, which also mentions a large
but unknown number of political prisoners. But despite this, American
petrol giants are pouring investment into the desert nation, which holds
the largest oil reserves in Africa.
Oil deals
"We are not
interesting anymore,
the government
has forgotten us"
Kristiana
Valcheva
Bulgarian medic freed from Libya
European companies have also
been clinching deals on energy resources, nuclear technology and arms.
Last summer, Colonel Gaddafi - the man Ronald Reagan branded a "mad dog"
- was given a red carpet welcome by France's President Sarkozy. The
state visit to Paris was largely seen as a reward, after the Libyan
leader agreed to release six foreign medics from prison last July. Back
in 1999, five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were convicted
of deliberating injecting children with the HIV virus. They had always
denied the charges, but were sentenced to death by a firing squad -
later commuted to life in prison - and spent eight and a half years
behind bars before eventually being freed. In the small church of St
Nicolas in the centre of Sofia, Kristiana Valcheva lights a candle and
says a prayer. The 49-year-old nurse tries to think about her future but
cannot help feeling bitter about suffering so much for a crime she did
not commit.
Dr Ashraf al
Jouj says he has been
warned not to
sue Libya
Broken promises
"When we first got our freedom
and flew back to Bulgaria, so many promises were made," says Kristiana.
"But now we are not interesting any more. The government has forgotten
us." Ashraf Alhajouj, the Palestinian doctor, remains grateful to France
and to the government in Sofia for granting him Bulgarian citizenship
while he was still in prison. But now he wants both countries, and the
rest of the European Union, to help him sue the Libyan government.
Determined to force Libya to admit that he and the nurses were wrongly
accused, Dr Alhajouj has filed a lawsuit against Colonel Muammar
Kaddafi's regime at the UN's Human Rights Committee in Geneva and in
Paris. But Axel Poniatowski, chairman of the French parliament's foreign
affairs committee, is not encouraging.
Pragmatic diplomacy
"I really think that up to this
point France has done its share," he says. "And we have to be pragmatic.
Not every country is made in our image". Dr Alhajouj says he has been
privately warned, by officials from Bulgaria and the European Union, not
to take legal action which could undermine the improvement in relations
between Libya and the West and might jeopardise other foreign health
workers still working in the North African nation. But these kinds of
arguments do not impress him. "Inside a Libyan prison, there are
hundreds, maybe thousands of people who suffered and are now suffering
like I did," he says. "The European Union must decide which is more
important in its relations with Libya - human rights or oil."
Source: BBC World Service
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