Mahmoudi is a physician. He also served as Deputy Prime Minister before becoming Prime Minister and General Secretary of the General People’s Congress of the Libyan Jamahiriya. He assumed that post in March 2006.

Mathaba explained that he wasn’t Gaddafi’s prime minister. He served as “legally elected head of the people’s power in Libya, the People’s Congresses, which Gaddafi as the leader of the revolution as an individual often held very different views from, but ultimately was the decision-maker for the people themselves.”

Mahmoudi also held other posts.

They included High Council for Oil & Gas and Libyan Investment Authority head, General People’s Committee for Production Affairs Secretary-General, Minister of Health and Social Security, Minister of Human Resources Affairs, and Minister for Infrastructure, Urban Planning and Environment Affairs.

As deputy Secretary-General of Libya’s General People’s Committee for Production Affairs, he oversaw two large infrastructure projects.

One was Libya’s Great Man-Made River. It was an extraordinary effort to develop the world’s largest fossil water system for all Libyans. It’s an ocean beneath Libya’s desert.

At 2007 consumption rates, it has enough water to last 1,000 years. Gaddafi called it the “Eighth Wonder of the World.”

He wanted it developed to provide all Libyans with free fresh water for human consumption, irrigation and other needs. When fully operational, he hoped to make the desert green as Libya’s flag.

Imagine what occupiers plan for it now. Gaddafi’s dream died with him. Mahmoudi’s now threatened.

In August 2011, he fled to Tunisia for his safety. In September, Tunisian border police arrested him. Charged with illegally entering the country, he was sentenced to six months in prison.

At the time, the judgment was overturned. However, Tunisian authorities held him pending Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC) extradition request.

On November 8, 2011, The New York Times headlined “Qaddafi’s Ex-Prime Minister Ordered Extradited to Libya,” saying:

A Tunisian appeals court approved extraditing him. A precise date wasn’t set. The ruling came despite human rights groups and other governments voicing concerns for his safety.

Amnesty International (AI) petitioned Tunisian authorities on his behalf. AI’s North African representative James Lynch feared he’d “face real risks, serious human rights violations, including torture, extrajudicial execution and unfair trial.”

On May 23, AI petitioned again. Its Secretary-General, Salil Shetty, wrote Tunisia’s President, Moncef Marzouki. He urged him to block sending him back, saying:

“Amnesty International takes note of the statement made on May 23 by the Presidency of the Republic’s spokesman that Baghdadi Mahmoudi will not be extradited to Libya if his life is in danger and that he will not be guaranteed a fair trial.”

“As you may be aware, Baghdadi Mahmoudi started a hunger strike three days ago to protest against his extradition, following statement by Tunisian Justice Minister Noureddine Bhiri asserting that the extradition of Mahmoudi may happen in a matter of days or weeks.”

He warned that “as a member of Colonel Mouammar Kadhafi’s government, Mahmoudi faces a real risk of serious human rights violation if forcibly returned to Libya, including arbitrary arrest, torture and other ill-treatment, unfair trial and extrajudicial execution.”

Under NTC authority, AI documented systematic torture, ill-treatment, and at least 20 deaths in custody.

“On the basis of this information and on the ongoing patterns of human rights abuses in Libya,” said Shetty, (AI) strongly believes that (Mahmoudi) should not be forcibly returned to Libya for the present time.”

In late May, Tunisia’s justice minister, Noureddine Bouheiri, said extradition could happen in “days or weeks. The government decided to hand over Mahmoudi and all that remains is the completion of some organizational issues.”

Part of the deal involves Libya extending Tunisia a large loan. In other words, at the behest of Washington, Marzouki was bribed to comply. The Obama administration wants all former Jamahiriya officials eliminated.

In NTC custody, Mahmoudi faces torture and death. Extraditing him makes Tunisia culpable.

Bechir Essid serves as President of the International Justice Committee for the Defense of Persecuted and Displaced Inside and Outside Libya. Representing Mahmoudi, he said:

“The Tunisian authorities show that they do not respect human rights and have done away with humanitarian principles.”

Mahmoudi began hunger striking for justice. Doing so risked his life. More on that below.

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Presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is pulling out the big guns in an effort to catch up with President Barack Obama’s fundraising.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that former Vice President Dick Cheney will host a July 12 fundraiser for the GOP hopeful in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

During his 2008 campaign, Romney spoke out in favor of the enhanced interrogation techniques supported by Cheney during President George W. Bush’s administration. In a 2007 Republican primary debate, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who now supports Romney, blasted the former Massachusetts governor for refusing to say that waterboarding was torture.

“I’m astonished you would think such a torture would be inflicted on anyone we held captive and anyone could believe that that’s not torture,” McCain told Romney. “It’s in violation of the Geneva Conventions, it’s in violation of existing law. And, governor, let me tell you, if we’re going to get the high ground in this world and we’re going to be the America we have cherished and loved for more than 200 years, we’re not going to torture people.”

“I do not say that I am in favor of torture,” Romney shot back. “I am not going to specify the specific means of what is and what is not torture so that the people that we capture know what things we are able to do and what things we are not able to do.”

Last year, Romney spokesperson Andrea Saul clarified that the candidate did not believe waterboarding was torture.

At an event in April after getting a new heart, Cheney encouraged Republicans to unite around Romney.

Last year, Romney said Cheney was “the kind of person I’d like to have” as vice president.

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Ok, that being said…

GOD HELP US ALL.

UNITED NATIONS — About 4,000 accused supporters of former dictator Moamer Kadhafi are still being held in Libyan militia detention centers, often in secret and many are tortured, a UN envoy said Thursday.

Ian Martin, head of the UN mission to Libya, said good progress was being made toward the country’s first democratic election, but militia prisons were one of a number of “serious obstacles” to establishing the rule of law.

“Cases of mistreatment and torture of detainees continue,” Martin told the UN Security Council. The UN has raised “deep concern” over the deaths in April of three people at a prison in Misrata which comes under government authority.

There was “credible information” that the deaths were caused by torture and that at least seven other people had been tortured at the same prison, said the head of the UN Support Mission in Libya, or UNSMIL.

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Since 2011, reports of arsonists and gunmen amongst Syria’s opposition have been included in reports regarding the unrest in Syria, albeit buried under sensational headlines of the Syrian government’s “brutality.” More recently, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has conceded that indeed the Syrian opposition “Free Syrian Army” is conducting widespread, systematic abuses including the kidnapping, torture, and murder of both security forces and civilians.

The HRW report titled, “Syria: Armed Opposition Groups Committing Abuses,” is broken into three parts; kidnapping, torture, and executions. And while the report attempts to focus mainly on atrocities carried out against security forces and government supporters, the mention of civilian victims is made as well. The report states:

“Abuses include kidnapping, detention, and torture of security force members, government supporters, and people identified as members of pro-government militias, called shabeeha. Human Rights Watch has also received reports of executions by armed opposition groups of security force members and civilians.”

Now, almost daily, the Syrian opposition is carrying out vicious attacks not only on security forces, but a terrorist bombing campaign across Syria that has already killed and maimed scores of civilians. While the Syrian opposition claims it lacks the ability to carry out such attacks, the opposition is exposed as very well armed, their fighters sheltered in NATO member Turkey, its leadership sheltered in Washington and London, and their fighters wielding not only an endless supply of small arms, but rocket propelled grenades, mortars, missiles, and even tanks.

Video: Hardly unarmed civilians, or “lightly armed freedom fighters,” meet Syria’s tank-driving, rocket-firing, Kalashnikov-waving foreign-funded rebels, many of whom are not even Syrian.

Additionally, listed terror organizations such as Al Qaeda’s Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), recently armed, supported, and literally handed control of Libya by NATO, has publicly met with leaders of the “Free Syrian Army” (FSA) and pledged arms, cash, and fighters. Just last week, a ship originating from Libya carrying weapons was interdicted by the Lebanese, en route to deliver its cargo to Syria’s rebels.

Now in the midst of an alleged “peace deal” being brokered by the UN’s Kofi Annan – a deal that is admittedly designed to buy time for rebels to regroup, rearm, and redeploy according to US corporate-financier policy think-tank the Brookings Institution, the rebels have openly rejected the plan and demonstratively continue on with a campaign of terroristic violence.

Image: Brookings Institution’s Middle East Memo #21 “Assessing Options for Regime Change (.pdf),” makes no secret that the humanitarian “responsibility to protect” is but a pretext for long-planned regime change.

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A Muslim American claims he was detained in the UAE last year and tortured by FBI agents. He says he was beaten, threatened with death and kept in solitary confinement for over three months before they let him go.

Naturalized US citizen Yonas Fikre, who is currently seeking asylum in Sweden, says he was interrogated in connection with a terror plot in Portland, Oregon

Fikre says he had attended the same mosque in Portland as a man who has been charged in connection with a plot to detonate a bomb in the city in 2010.

The man claims he was arrested last June while in the United Arab Emirates and taken to a prison in Abu Dhabi to be questioned about the activities of the Portland mosque.

According to Fikre, his interrogators became very upset when he presumed they were working for the FBI.

“They got very angry and they said ‘We don’t work with the Americans, we are an independent country,” he told a news conference on Wednesday. But later one of them acknowledged FBI involvement in the operation, Fikre says.

“He confirmed to me that the FBI were there. Also, when I was getting beaten, they did admit that the FBI knew exactly what was happening and they were working with the FBI,” he said.

He also told journalists he was warned to say he was being treated well in custody or “more torture would take place.”

The FBI has refused to comment so far. Beth Anne Steele, a spokeswoman for the FBI office in Portland, said she could not talk about the specifics of the case.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations has called upon the US Department of Justice to investigate whether Fikre was tortured at the behest of the FBI, AP reports.

Fikre is the third Muslim man from Portland to publicly say he was detained while traveling abroad and questioned about Portland’s Masjid-as-Sabr mosque.

The mosque has a notorious reputation within US secret services. Ten years ago seven Muslims with ties to the mosque were arrested after they tried to enter Afghanistan to fight US forces.

The Judge Rotenberg Educational Center is a facility that provides services for children and adults with “severe developmental disabilities and emotional or behavior disorders”. In the past decades, the Center garnered negative criticism due to its use of aversives such as electric shock, the withholding of food, spanking with a spatula, pinching of the feet and forced inhaling of ammonia.

The recent release of disturbing footage from the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center – featuring a restrained teenager who gets electroshocked 31 times – brought the controversy to a whole other level. While the Center claimed that the use of electroshock was a form of “therapy” to change behavior, the footage shows an all-out torture session under the watchful eyes and laughs of Center employees.

Here’s a news report on the recently released of the footage from 2002 (the administration of the Center somehow managed block the broadcasting of the tape in the past).

Graphic video of teen being restrained, shocked played in court

Video of a student restrained and shocked for hours at the Judge Rotenberg Center was played in court on Tuesday after a years-long battle by the center to keep it from the public eye.The video, which shows former resident Andre McCollins screaming, writhing in pain, and begging for help, was played at the start of McCollins’ trial against the Canton-based Judge Rotenberg Center.The Rotenberg Center convinced a judge eight years ago to seal the video, and the battle continued up until Tuesday morning when their attorneys asked Superior Court Judge Barbara Dortch-Okara to bar FOX Undercover’s camera from recording the video as it was played.

Dortch-Okara denied the center’s request, clearing the way to give the public the first look at how these controversial electric shocks are used. The video was taken by one of the center’s classroom cameras.

McCollins, then 18 years old, was shocked 31 times that day in 2002. Lawyers for the center and its clinicians say it was part of the treatment he needed to quell his aggressive behavior.

“These are dramatic tapes, there’s no question about that,” said attorney Edward Hinchey, who represents two of the Rotenberg Center’s clinicians. “But the treatment plan at the Rotenberg Center, the treatment plan that Andre had in place on October 25, was followed.”

It was an emotional day for McCollins’ mother, Cheryl, who was in court watching as the beginning of her son’s ordeal was played.

Andre is shown seated at a desk inside a classroom as a staff member asks him several times to remove his coat. He stays still, apparently not responding or removing his coat, until he is given a shock.

He screams and falls to the floor, yelling as he tries to hide under his desk. He was eventually restrained face-down, a helmet on his head, without breaks for food, water or the bathroom.

“I never signed up for him to be tortured, terrorized and abused,” Cheryl McCollins told the jury. “I had no idea, no idea, that they tortured the children in the school.”

She also testified what her son was like when she visited him three days later after the incident. She said she found him in a “catatonic” state.

“I couldn’t turn Andre’s head to the left or the right. He was just staring straight. I took my hands and went like this,” she said, waving them as if in front of his eyes. “He didn’t blink.”

McCollins did get Andre to Children’s Hospital that day, where he was diagnosed with acute stress response caused by the shocks. The jury also heard her testify about watching the video and hearing staff members laughing while her son was on the floor.

- Source: Fox News

Inspired by MK-Ultra?

“Going over the rainbow” is a code used in Mind Control to signify dissociation.

Kim Noble’s painting named “Too Much” depicts a horrifying scene of torture that is very similar to what was filmed at the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center.

One of the features of the Center is “Rewards Street”, a place that is meant to be a replica of the Yellow Brick Road in The Wizard of Oz. As seen in previous articles, the fairy tale is heavily used Mind Control programming by handlers to make their slaves “go over the rainbow”, a code for dissociation (incidentally, the Center’s logo features a rainbow). Here are some pictures of Rewards Street taken by photojournalist Rick Friedman.

Dr. Matthew Israel welcomes guests to Rewards Street or ”Yellow Brick Road”

Dr. Israel and “Dorothy” in the “Crystal Forest”

In 2011, Dr. Israel, was charged with misleading a grand jury over the school’s destruction of the tapes, as well as being an accessory after the fact. The Center was also banned banned from subjecting new admissions to severe behavioral interventions including electric shock, long-term restraint, or aversives that pose risk for psychological harm. Let’s hope the McCollins win their case against the dispensers of these sadistic treatments.

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The New Cheney, speaking yesterday (AP)

With his new heart pumping something akin to blood through his veins, former Vice President spoke for over an hour and fifteen minutes at an appearance in Cheyenne, Wyoming yesterday. “I was amazed he was able to say so much over the whole course of an hour,” audience member Helen Bishop said. Indeed, most surprising is that there is no mention in the AP report of Cheney noisily devouring baby geese or strangling a stagehand with his mind.

Cheney played all his greatest hits since leaving office, like “[Obama] has been an unmitigated disaster to the country,” and the timeless classic: repeated, state-sanctioned torture “produced a wealth of information. Don’t let anybody tell you the enhanced interrogation program didn’t work. It did.” He also debuted a new one, saying that Mitt Romney will do “a whale of a job.” Presumably the former vice president was referring to enslaving all of the world’s whales to power an oil derrick in the Marianas Trench, which has been his dream for years.

But Weston McCrary, who was eating breakfast with his family at the convention center where Cheney was giving his speech (a truck stop/golf/hotel called Little America) has perhaps the most incisive quote of the article. “I don’t know what he would have to say that I would find particularly encouraging.” Be careful, Weston. And don’t accept any hunting invitations.

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RT

An armed fighter of the Lord's Resistance Army (AFP Photo / Stuart Price)

The Invisible Children NGO, most famous for its Kony 2012 online video, helped the Ugandan government arrest a former child soldier and backed an operation that killed more civilians than militants, cables published by Wikileaks reveal.

­A memo written by a public affairs officer at the US embassy in Uganda documents Invisible Children’s collaboration with Ugandan intelligence services. It notes that the US-based NGO tipped the Ugandan government on the whereabouts of Patrick Komakech, a former child soldier for the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), who was wanted by security officials for extorting money from the government officials, NGO’s and local tribal leaders. Ugandan security organizations jumped the tip and immediately arrested Komakech.

As a result of the tip, the Ugandan military claimed it obtained the names of other suspects from Komakech. The military then conducted a sweep and arrested a number of people, many of whom declared their innocence, the Ugandan media reported. Human rights groups say torture of arrested suspects by Ugandan security forces is routine.

Invisible Children also actively supported Operation Lightning Thunder (OLT), a joint attack by Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the then-autonomous South Sudan against the LRA. The operation, which was also received US intelligence and logistical backing, killed more civilians than LRA militants.

In a confidential memo dating back to 2009, US ambassador to Uganda Steven Browning noted that the US-based NGO planned pro-OLT events under the theme “Kony Must Be Stopped. Rescue Our Children”.

Browning says local Invisible Children activists led the events. These events included visiting Washington to meet with lawmakers and conducting awareness campaigns in the US, the UK, Australia, Canada and Mexico.

But Norbert Mao, a Ugandan opposition politician who, Browning claimed, “honchoed” the 2009 events, disputes the veracity of the ambassador’s assessment.

“I did not support OLT,” Mao told The Black Star News “It was an operation to rain bombs in the areas where Kony was believed to be participating and would lead to indiscriminate killing of those the operation was intended to rescue. But even so, I believe there is no purely military solution to the LRA issue. Even after the release of Kony 2012 I stated clearly that the doors to peaceful solutions must never be closed”.

Kony 2012 has been viewed over 100 million times and Invisible Children is now planning to release a sequel to the video. It has been criticized for oversimplified the issue, in which religious fundamentalism and century-long intertribal conflicts intertwine. It has also been accused of providing financial aid for the Ugandan government and Sudan People’s Liberation Army, both of which have regularly been charged with human rights violations. Invisible Children denied this claim, however. It has also been blamed for being heavy on advocacy and weak on aid, with most of the money spent for staff salaries, travel and transport and film production.

The release of the video followed a decision by US President Barack Obama to deploy 100 US soldiers to the region to help “remove” Joseph Kony from the picture.

The conflict between the Ugandan government, led by Yoweri Musevini, and the Lord Resistance Army, led by Joseph Kony, has lasted for over two decades.

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Cahal Milmo , Nigel Morris

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Philip Zelikow (Image credit: Dickinson College)

Recently I reported on a study which showed that states who approve of institutionalized torture, also known as “enhanced interrogation” must accept that they are going to torture innocent people for telling the truth.

This was a disturbing revelation for some, although many of my readers clearly realized that this was the case and made comments to the effect that it was just stating the obvious.

Indeed, in my mind, no government which allows torture to be carried out is legitimate, and that includes the government of the United States of America in the modern day.

Philip Zelikow helped bring much of these disturbing practices to light as he was in an unusual position as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s policy representative to the National Security Council Deputies Committee on matters surrounding intelligence and terrorism.

It is my contention that since Zelikow’s tenure, our government has become increasingly tyrannical and expansive with the now almost unbelievably large Department of Homeland Security (DHS), increasing use of Big Brother technology, and the near-complete eradication of our First Amendment rights, not to mention our Fourth Amendment rights and our now non-existent guarantee of due process.

Now Zelikow’s memo which challenges the supposed legal justifications for these practices has been released, around seven years after it was originally written and contains some damning statements, including designating the “enhanced interrogation” practices as war crimes.

Zelikow first gained access to the Office of Legal Council (OLC) memos which outlined the supposed justification for torture shortly after they were issued in May of 2005, at which point he also became aware of the details of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) program.

At the time, Zelikow was among a chosen few at the State Department, where only Secretary Rice and John Bellinger, her Legal Adviser, were the only others who were made aware of the details of this program.

It is worth noting that Zelikow was the executive director of the 9/11 Commission and he believes that the captives allegedly involved in the tragic events of September 11, 2001 are indeed responsible.

In a 2009 article for Foreign Policy, Zelikow claims, “the evidence against most – if not all – of the high-value detainees remains damning.”

Despite this position, Zelikow questioned the practices these individuals were subjected to, saying, “the issue is not about who or what they are. It is about who or what we are.”

Zelikow aptly noted that waterboarding cannot be considered alone, as the cumulative effect of the CIA’s dehumanizing program is much more significant than just waterboarding alone.

He notes, “Before getting to water-boarding, the captive had already been stripped naked, shackled to ceiling chains keeping him standing so he cannot fall asleep for extended periods, hosed periodically with cold water, slapped around, jammed into boxes, etc. etc. Sleep deprivation is most important.”

He also does a phenomenal job of pointing out that this issue should not necessarily be one put directly before lawyers, as their job is to determine if an activity could be seen as legal, not right or moral.

He frames it by saying that lawyers address the question “What can we do?” while the question we should be asking is “What should we do?”

But most importantly, Zelikow and his now released memo which the Bush administration attempted to completely destroy and wipe from all records, point out that the supposed legal justifications used to legitimize these programs “have grave weaknesses.”

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The United States has issued charges against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, setting the stage for what has been dubbed the “trial of the century”.

Al-Qaeda operative Khalid Sheikh Mohammed shortly after his capture, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan Photo: EPA

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8 years later, abuse soldier Lynndie England tells of her anguish – but won’t apologize to ‘enemy’

By M.L. Nestel

FORT ASHBY, W.Va. — Eight years before an American soldier shot 16 civilians in Afghanistan, there was another case of tragic military misconduct that ruined lives and threatened to derail a war effort.

Today, the former soldier who became the callous, “thumbs-up” emblem of the Abu Ghraib scandal lives with her parents in rural West Virginia, raising the son of the man who perpetrated the worst of the torture at the Iraqi prison. Things are so rough for her, Lynndie England told The Daily in a wide-ranging interview, that she has trouble finding much reason to feel bad for the detainees she and her colleagues abused.

“Their lives are better. They got the better end of the deal,” England said. “They weren’t innocent. They’re trying to kill us, and you want me to apologize to them? It’s like saying sorry to the enemy.”

The latest atrocity, in which U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales is accused of massacring women and children in Afghanistan villages, is a reminder of the stain Abu Ghraib left on the American military effort in Iraq. England’s lawyer declined to comment on Bales and she didn’t respond to a phone message.

England was front and center in the explosive photographs that depicted physical, sexual and psychological abuse of Iraqi detainees at the prison near Baghdad. The scandal that erupted in 2004 was a disastrous blight on the Iraq war and the George W. Bush White House, leading to calls for then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to resign.

In one photo, England dangles a cigarette from her half-cocked smile as she gives what became popularized as “doing the Lynndie” — a thumbs-up with her right hand and gesture with her left like a gun toward a row of naked detainees with hoods covering their heads.

“All the prisoners that were there were on that tier of high-priority. They were there for a reason. They had killed coalition forces or they were planning to,” England told The Daily over a hamburger at a Mexican restaurant near her home in Fort Ashby. “They had information about where insurgents were hiding.”

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Steven G. Bradbury, the former head of the Justice Departments legal council during the Bush era and a direct architect of the American torture program, has called for the indefinite detention of any American that the government claims is a terrorist.

Bradbury, speaking during a Senate hearing after Obama issued new NDAA guidelines that supposedly limits the use of indefinite detention against Americans, claimed that indefinite detention would help the government deal with homegrown terrorists and is absolutely necessary.

This open criminal who was a primary architect of the disgusting Bush torture program was called as an expert witness in Congress when in reality he is nothing short of a war criminal.

Paul Joseph Watson, writing for Infowars.com, noted his ties to torture:

In his position as OLC head, Bradbury is widely acknowledged as one of the primary architects of the Bush torture program, having provided legal opinions that justified the kind of abuse that came to light in the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib scandal, which included torture by hanging, beating prisoners to death, raping women, and sodomizing detainees with batons and phosphorescent tubes.

An article published on Raw Story also details Stevens disgusting history and quotes the ACLU in regards to how ridiculous it is that this man was called as an “expert witness.” (anti American criminal)

“It’s nothing short of chilling that the Senate Judiciary Committee would have as a witness one of the architects of the torture program,” American Civil Liberties Union legislative counsel Chris Anders told Raw Story on Tuesday. “This is a person who wrote several memos that provide legal justification for the torture program during the Bush administration, and wrote memos on how to try to circumvent legal protections that Congress had put in place to block the use of torture and abuse of detainees.

“For Congress to be relying on someone who has shown so little disregard for the law that he would say that it’s legally okay to waterboard people and use other torture tactics against them is remarkable. It’s remarkable and it’s wrong.”

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NATO turned Libya into a charnel house.

by Stephen Lendman

Wherever NATO intervenes, massacres, mass destruction, and unspeakable horrors and human misery follow.

Once Africa’s most developed country, Libya today’s a ravaged, out-of-control charnel house. Tens of thousands died. Multiples more were injured, made homeless, and forcibly displaced.

Terror now stalks Libyans living in fear. Protracted conflict continues. Violence and instability rage. Expect no end for years. Washington’s-led NATO war is one of history’s great crimes. Colonization, occupation, plunder and exploitation were planned.

America got another bloodstained imperial trophy. Keeping it’s another matter. Green Resistance continues its liberating struggle.

Amnesty International’s (AI) New Report

Better late than never explaining NATO’s legacy. AI’s 2011 account misreported “ The Battle for Libya.” It pointed fingers the wrong way. It blamed Gaddafi for NATO aggression. It falsely accused him of “kill(ing) and injur(ing) scores of unarmed protesters.”

It added “serious violations of international humanitarian law (IHL), including war crimes, and gross human rights violation, which point to the commission of crimes against humanity.”

Before Western-backed killer gangs arrived, Libya had peace and calm. AI blamed Gaddafi for their crimes. Its new report paints an entirely different picture, but still falls way short of truth and full disclosure. Titled, “Militias Threaten Hopes for New Libya,” it discusses pervasive violent lawlessness.

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Amnesty finds widespread use of torture by Libyan militias

Guardian

Hundreds of armed militias operating independently of central authorities, according to report by human rights group

• Chris Stephen in Tripoli and Luke Harding
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  Amnesty finds widespread use of torture by Libyan militias

  Hundreds of armed militias operating independently of central authorities, according to report by human rights group

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  The report says that the ‘hundreds of armed militias’ that took part in the overthrow of Gaddafi’s regime continue to operate more or less independently of the central authorities. Photograph: Abdel Magid Al Fergany/AP

A damning report by Amnesty International says that a year after the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi, Libya‘s militias are “largely out of control”, with the use of torture ubiquitous and the country’s new rulers unable – or unwilling – to prevent abuses.

The report says that the “hundreds of armed militias” that took part in the overthrow of Gaddafi’s regime continue to operate more or less independently of the central authorities. Since the fall of Tripoli last August, the militias have failed to disband – and now pose a serious threat to a democratic Libya.

Libya’s ruling National Transitional Council (NTC) has “failed to get a grip” on the militia problem, Amnesty says. The NTC has taken no action against fighters from either side involved in human rights abuses, and has not brought to justice those involved in extrajudicial killings – including of Gaddafi and his son Mutassim, captured and executed last October.

Additionally, there is overwhelming evidence that Libya’s victorious militias use torture. Thousands of detainees are being held in various prisons across the country. In at least 12 cases since October, prisoners have been tortured to death, including Omar Brebesh, Libya’s former ambassador to France, who died in Tripoli last month.

Donatella Rovera, the author of the Amnesty report, said she witnessed violence against detainees first hand at one militia jail in Misrata. “I was leaving the place, three guys, two in military clothes, were beating the hell out of two detainees,” she told the Guardian. “When I said: ‘What are you doing?’ he [a captor] said: ‘These guys are not going to be released.’” She said she complained, and later returned to the jail, to find the detainees had been freed. But she said Amnesty’s call for the NTC to take action had fallen on deaf ears. “I have not seen one single case that is being investigated,” she said.

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Investigate Death of Former Envoy to France

(Tripoli) – A Libyan diplomat who served as ambassador to France died less than 24 hours after he was detained by a Tripoli-based militia from the town of Zintan, Human Rights Watch said today. Dr. Omar Brebesh, who was detained on January 19, 2012, appears to have died from torture.

A preliminary autopsy report viewed by Human Rights Watch said the cause of death included multiple bodily injuries and fractured ribs. Photos of Brebesh’s body, seen by Human Rights Watch, show welts, cuts, and the apparent removal of toenails, indicating that he was tortured prior to death. Human Rights Watch also read a report by the judicial police in Tripoli, which said that Brebesh had died from torture and that an unnamed suspect had confessed to killing him.

“The torture and killing of detainees is sadly an ongoing activity by some Libyan militias,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “These abusive militias will keep torturing people until they are held to account. Libya’s leaders should show the political will to prosecute people who commit serious crimes, regardless of their role in the uprising.”

Human Rights Watch welcomed reports that a Zintan prosecutor has opened an investigation into Brebesh’s death and said it should be prompt and independent. Anyone found responsible should be punished to the full extent of the law, Human Rights Watch said.

“The Libyan government should send a message that it will not tolerate torture and vigilante justice,” Whitson said. “The rule of law, and punishment for crimes, apply to all Libyans, including those who fought against Muammar Gaddafi.”

Brebesh, 62, served in the Libyan embassy to France from 2004 to 2008, first as cultural attaché, and then as acting ambassador for the last nine months of his tour. He continued work with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs under the Gaddafi government during the 2011 uprising. He was working as a lawyer at the ministry in Tripoli under the post-Gaddafi transitional government at the time of his death. An official at the ministry told Human Rights Watch that he saw Brebesh at work 10 days before his death, and he appeared to be in good health.

According to Brebesh’s son Ziad, on January 19, his father voluntarily submitted to an investigation by the Al-Shohada Ashura militia at their base in the Tripoli neighborhood of Crimea. Brebesh had been called there for questioning by Commander Khalid al-Blehzi.

Brebesh entered the base at 5:30 p.m., said Ziad, who escorted his father. Ziad said he stayed inside for tea before being told to wait outside for the interrogation. After about 45 minutes, militia members took Ziad away to retrieve one of the family cars and a firearm. He returned later that night but was prevented from entering the area where his father was being interrogated.

The next day, January 20, following a visit to the Al-Shohada Ashura base, the family heard that Brebesh’s body had appeared at a hospital in Zintan, about 100 km southwest of Tripoli. Ziad’s brother Muhammad went there in the evening and described what he saw:

I saw his face. There was blood on his nose and mouth. But I didn’t see the rest of his body or his face from the other side. There was a bump on his forehead. After that, I kissed him and that was it. Later, when we saw the other side of his face at the hospital in Tripoli, it looked like his jaw was broken, like his face was not in the right place.

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Hindustan Times

Libya’s regular army and array of militias have been torturing loyalists of slain dictator Muammar Gaddafi, several of whom have been killed in custody, human rights groups have charged. Amnesty International said that despite promises, Libya’s new rulers have made “no progress to stop