By Borzou Daragahi
Don’t worry,” Abdul Latif Elyazghi assured his youngest boy. “There will be Nintendo and Wii in heaven.”
The oil engineer and two of his sons, aged 11 and 18, had been stopped at a checkpoint by Muammer Gaddafi’s men in late August, the final days of the regime’s rule in the Libyan capital Tripoli. They were tossed into a prison cell. Every few minutes came gunfire. Bodies were piled up along the side of the room. The three were sure they would be killed soon.
Who goes there? A former fighter checks a taxi driver’s documents in Tripoli this week
But a miracle happened. One of the guards ushered them to a side door. “Run!” he commanded.
It took Mr Elyazghi days to begin to tell the harrowing story to friends, including those who had taken part in the uprising against Gaddafi and were now at the head of various neighbourhood councils and militia groups.
But it was their response that shocked him most. “They told me I should say to the authorities that I was captured on March 20 instead of August 20,” he recalls with disgust. “That way I would get a nice big payment from the transitional government.”
Gaddafi and his family may be gone. But the culture of corruption and abuse they engendered remains, threatening Libya’s future economic growth and political stability. Not only do many steal; some even engage in torture, which Amnesty International describes as widespread, in the very name of the revolution that started a year ago. Transitional authorities estimate that at least $2bn has been pilfered by people falsely claiming they were wounded, fought in the uprising or paid for weapons out of their own pocket.
“If corruption was 100 per cent then, it’s now 110 per cent,” says Abdul Hamid el-Jadi, a Libyan-Swiss banker and anti-corruption crusader. “The family was arrested and killed but the opportunists are still there.”
Twelve months from when its February 17 revolution began, the giddy joy of having thrown off the colonel’s tyrannical rule still animates the young. Commerce is flickering back to life, foreign business people are returning and oil production is ramping up to near-prewar levels. Ahead of June elections, dozens of political parties are coalescing and many more independent candidates are emerging, Hundreds of civil society groups and media outlets have flowered.
But Libya remains deeply unstable. It lacks a rigorous judicial system and a coherent police force, making the enforcement of justice and the rule of law all but impossible, especially after more than four decades of erratic leadership by one man. It is a state of affairs that is likely to be of particular alarm to the French, British and US governments, which led Nato air strikes on Gaddafi’s forces and have given strong backing to the transitional authorities.
The entreaties for Mr Elyazghi to begin milking the system began as soon as he recovered from his ordeal. Not only did some urge him to exaggerate his time in captivity, they told him he should claim a son had post-traumatic stress disorder and needed treatment abroad, even though he was fine.
National Transitional Council officials estimate that the country is bleeding at least $3m a day in such phoney medical payments, totalling $350m so far. “If someone gets a bullet wound, they get treated for a bullet wound and a nose job,” says one.
The military brigades that continue to operate around the country are perhaps the biggest source of corruption in the name of the revolution. The NTC estimates that it has already shelled out $1.5bn in payments to about 250,000 men falsely claiming to be fighters. In fact, probably about 25,000 men took part in the war.
Mr Elyazghi’s friends tried to convince him to join a brigade, get an identification card as a thwar, or revolutionary, and collect up to $500 a month. “The number of people claiming to be revolutionaries or injured is way more than we recognise,” one insider says. “There’s a perception that money is disappearing.”
The anarchy has already begun to affect the fortunes of some of the few multinationals in Libya. Employees of one energy company demanded pay for days they did not show up to work during the war, accusing those who had reported for duty of being counter-revolutionaries and collaborators. At one point they threatened the company – an Italian joint venture – with a shutdown unless it paid them for the period. According to an executive, that is what it did.
“At the moment there’s no trust, just expectations – ‘what can you do for me?’” says Peter Cole, Libya analyst for the International Crisis Group, a non-governmental organisation that works in conflict zones.
Those who made genuine sacrifices often find themselves disorientated by the turn of events. Abdullah Abu Shaiba, a high-school economics teacher, fled his pro-Gaddafi district on the outskirts of Tripoli on February 18, finding his way to the east of the country, where he fought in the battle over the oil-terminal city of Brega before making it by sea to Misurata and joining the battle for Sirte. Out of 600 men in his unit, nearly 40 died.
“I did this because I felt we had a corrupt system,” says Mr Shaiba, 33. “You couldn’t say what you think. But the price was so heavy. So many lives were lost.”
When he finally returned home, he found to his amazement that the same local bigwigs, whom he says drove him from his town and were supplying trucks for Gaddafi’s war effort, were wearing the official badges of the uprising, claiming to be revolutionaries and processing claims for compensation.
While Mr Abu Shaiba returned to civilian life, some of his fellow fighters continue to roam the land as self-described guardians of the revolution. They are out to make certain the old guard never returns to power. But their rule can be as vicious as that of the forces they ousted.
On January 19 one militia unit, called the Ten Martyrs Brigade, summoned a career diplomat named Omar Brebesh for a chat. By his family’s account, Mr Brebesh, 62, who served briefly as Libya’s envoy to France, was reluctant to go but figured he had nothing to hide. His son Mohammad drove him to the base and was told to collect him later that evening. When Mohammad returned, he was angrily told to come back the next morning. The family’s worries grew when they were told that day that Mr Brebesh had been taken overnight to the mountain city of Zintan, where the commander of the unit was from.
Mr Brebesh’s broken body was ultimately found at Zintan’s hospital, says Human Rights Watch, the New York-based NGO that first reported the case. The body had severe head trauma, bruises and fractured ribs. His nails had been pulled out.
The detention, torture and killing of the well-connected diplomat created an uproar. Under pressure from the authorities, other Zintan units arrested alleged perpetrators. But the authorities have since been playing down the killing and seeking to tarnish Mr Brebesh’s name. “We are not in paradise,” says Col Ahmad Bani, a spokesman for the official armed forces, which are struggling to incorporate the militias into a national unit. “Maybe he made a mistake in the past. Now he pays for that.”
Mr Brebesh’s case came to light only because his family knew enough to turn to international organisations when local media ignored them. But Libyans say many more are being abducted daily by the former revolutionaries. Elders of the Wurfulla tribe, Libya’s largest, estimate that three to five members of their clan are snatched in the capital a day. During a gathering of tribal elders in Bani Walid, south-east of the city, a distraught man stormed in. His brother and cousin had been kidnapped the night before in Tripoli, he explained.
If they are lucky, they did not end up in nearby Misurata, where human rights advocates say all but one of the impromptu prisons run by militias have turned into nightmarish torture chambers. “There’s no doubt that the rebels committed war crimes,” says Donatella Rovera of Amnesty, which in a scathing report on the eve of the anniversary chronicles widespread torture and abuse by militias. “People died under torture in at least a dozen cases we’ve had. There are people seen alive in videos and later seen dead. Pressure by guards on other guards to torture prisoners is particularly widespread in Misurata.”
Unlike in the hierarchical state structure of the previous regime, the abuse is perpetrated by different groups from various regions under no one’s control. Until the elections in June, no one in the transitional government will have the political authority or muscle to rein them in. “The truth of the matter – and the real problem – is that the government is afraid of the armed militias,” says Essam Mohamed Ezzobair, a journalist for the newspaper al-Arab.
Analysts say the gravest danger is that, despite all the sacrifices, Libyans will fail to establish a credible political authority before the country falls ever deeper into patterns of lawlessness and injustice.
That is a fear highlighted by a deadly incident this month at an old marine academy in the Tripoli suburb of Janzour, being used as housing for displaced residents of central Libya. It hosts people from Twerga driven out of their town of 50,000 by Misurata-based militias who accused them of taking part in Gaddafi’s months-long siege of their coastal city.
Not content to have made them leave their homes, on February 6 the Misurata militiamen appear to have descended on the Janzour camp, seeking to arrest two men. When the Twergans resisted, the militiamen opened fire, initially killing two people, according to the preliminary results of an investigation by Human Rights Watch. When the refugees began a street protest, the militiamen again shot at them, killing three more. A further two were fatally shot while fleeing.
The dead included three children and two women, the UN says. Although a young woman wounded in the attack says the fighters had Misurata written on their vehicles, the head of that city’s municipal council insists there is “no way” anyone under its command was involved in the attack. No one has yet been charged.
Few regret the passing of Gaddafi or long for the return of a regime like his. Yet there is growing hostility towards the sometimes violent and lawless groups that are replacing it. “Those people who were the real freedom fighters,” says a disillusioned Mr Elyazghi, “have already disappeared.”
Source: FT
This is exactly what happened after 1994 – “the gravy train”.
Meant to say in South Africa.
The NTC accusing it’s people of stealing because they seek illegal free healthcare ?
I don’t trust the NTC’s handling of the money from the start of the uprise. I expected corruption from the government.
Libya can afford to pay for healthcare for every citizen.
If the NTC handles billions and they can’t pay the healthcare bills for it’s people how do they expect the people to pay in a country that just experienced war ?
There is nothing wrong with Libyan people seeking free healthcare because that is their right. More so, after the Libyan postwar period.
Healthcare is not a luxury.
Back to the old ways ?
The money the NTC is handling belongs to the Libyan people. They are not foreigners seeking free healthcare from Libya and they are being treated like such.
And these poor journalists can’t see the truth. People have to survive. People need healthcare.
“Borzou Daragahi” The writer of this piece of deceitful excrement misrepresenting Libya- Guess who he works for? – The Financial Times and formerly for the LA Times He’s writing tailor made propaganda pieces for the MSM organs of the Western elites..
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What this reporter calls ‘corruption’ is revolutionary Democratic redistribution of fascist wealth and that happens by simply taking it and taking it from the NATO backed NTC is a good way to do it.
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And what he calls ‘war crimes” is revolutionary justice which can be obtained no other way.
Quote: It is a state of affairs that is likely to be of particular alarm to the French, British and US governments.
Q.E.D. Proof positive of the reporter’s’ agenda and the agenda of the interventionist oil gabbing intentions of the Wester powers.
Take your “alarm” and put it back in your interventionist agenda.
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I looked up his news reports for the last 6 months – he tries to dig up dirt on Libya and nothing in any of his reports indicates he spent 5 min on any Libyan street talking to ordinary people.
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What’s the matter American Power Elite? You are not getting a good enough oil deal out of Libya? Do you still want to put another dictator in place after Gaddafi. Do you stil want to fly in UN troops to Tripoli and take over the country?
Or is the the Islamic Fascist Faction that wants an excuse to take over?
America and American reporters and all people reporting for the Western media STFU and stay out of Libya and Libyan affairs!
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Why can’t we get any news from the ordinary Libyan people in Libya from Libyan reporters instead of nothing but Western propaganda?
James Miller, try reading this statement:
“In one sign of the lack of control, Finance Minister Hassan Zaklam admitted that millions of dollars from Gadhafi family assets returned to Libya by European countries — a potentially key source of revenue — have flowed right back out of Libya, stolen by corrupt officials and smuggled out in suitcases through the ports.
“The money comes for transit only,’’ Zaklam said in a Feb. 6 interview on Libya state TV. He threatened to resign if the government didn’t impose control over ports or stop unfreezing the assets. “I can’t be a clown,’’ he said.”
Source:
A year after uprising, militias hold sway in Libya
February 17, 2012, Maggie Michael, Associated Press.
http://articles.boston.com/2012-02-17/news/31072111_1_national-transitional-council-moammar-gadhafi-militias
When the Finance Minister says it’s bad tI guess it’s bad. I just wonder how big a cut of the money he takes?
The revolutionaries’ victory came at a very high price. Instead of honoring the memory of our martyrs, they have disgracefully tarnished what we once considered a glorious revolution. If you consider torturing and killing unarmed detainees without a fair trial a form of “revolutionary justice” then maybe you shouldn’t be speaking on behalf of all Libyans. The NTC itself is at the core of all the problems that Libya is facing today. Their lack of leadership and transparency has brought about all this anarchy. Let us not forget that gratitude is also due to the so-called altruistic revolutionaries of Misurata and Zintan who have set the tone for revenge, mistrust, greed and opportunism.
BS. Typical Western agenda-ridden propaganda.
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If you consider torturing and killing unarmed detainees without a fair trial a form of “revolutionary justice”
Like Clint said: They should have armed themselves.
As for torture that is just anti-Libyan propaganda, maybe one or two fell down the stairs, it’s only a problem for Anti-Libyan propagandists. The overwhelming majority of uselessly incarcerated prisoners (useless because most should have been executed by now) are getting Class A treatment – enough so they can sit around all day grousing how “innocent” they are.
As for “Trials” ha ha ha – You people have your mind so addled with a barrage of Western Propaganda you have no idea you are in another social reality here, totally outside your experience and understanding. The social process here is societal change – not criminals and police, not cowboys and indians but Total Societal Deconstruction and Reformation.
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The revolution was the “trial” Mr. Naive.
Just what do you Kansas Dorothys think a revolution is? Do we now line up the witnesses that are all buried , dismembered and burnt in crematoriums or allow the fascists to hire lawyers with money they have stolen from the people for 42 years?
They committed genocide against the Libyan people All are guilty of conspiracy in Genocide. Every single person that sided with Gaddafi was conspiratorial in Genocide. If they were caught on the battlefield, or working for Gaddafi or just in their homes supporting Gaddafi instead of the revolution they are guilty all must pay the price.
There is only one price to pay.
All fascists have committed themselves to the aggressive killing of the innocent. There is only one way to stop them. They are never stopped until they are dead. Their crime is not their deeds but what they have become – they have ‘crossed over’ the line between Good and Evil for which there is no return. Those that defend them are those that no doubt wish to cross or have crossed over themselves.
It’s over, they lost, that was their trial and the only thing left is to deliver their executions. . The only way they could have “won” their trial is they must have supported the revolution.
The only thing left is that they must pay the penalty. They are a waste of jail space. Those that have converted to fascism , have by definition abrogated all human rights.
You people living your cappuccino lives do not understand what has happened here. These are not individual crimes committed in a stable social order for which there is any law or legal process, it is a revolution. A revolution burns the tyrant’s law book, hangs the tyrants judges and then writes it’s own law AFTER the Tyrant class has been exterminated.
—> Mao Tse Tung
This is the process of all revolutions. For Mao , it was the Landlord class and the peasants , for Libya is was the ordinary people versus the Nobility ( the Tyrant class).
Leaving 50 corpses headless behind a hotel, or Mutassim and Gaddafi shot in custody is nowhere near going “too far”.
The psychological oppression of the former authority and physical power and wealth of the former class must be shaken off and it is an absolutely necessary process and only an absolute FOOL in Libya would try to interfere with this natural cleansing process.
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“Gaddafi died in a crossfire” It’s the NTC position – Everyone knows it’s not true. But everyone also knows it not only had to be done, it was the Vox Populi.
The Vox Populi of Revolution must have it’s say before there can be an new order.
And I call everyone’s attention to the simple fact that no authority in Libya dares to seriously stop this natural process – other than to say once in a while “Hey boys, tone it down a little , or OK how about tapering off…”
That is because anyone of any common sense in Realpolitik Life knows it is a natural process that will right itself, and to oppose it for anyone at all who wants a future in Libya would be social suicide because opposing it opposes the natural process of revolution.
What I meant by what I wrote was that some of us Libyans have been disillusioned by the post-revolutionary situation in Libya. As necessary as it may seem to you, no one person has the divine right to capture, judge, and execute when not on a battlefield. Who’s to say who is innocent among them? If we were to concede to the communist revolutionary policies of Maoism, then we would be reverting ourselves back into Ghaddafi’s era. Nevertheless, I am impressed by your argument.
Freddy, your mentality is exactly what is wrong with Libyans. Stop relying on hand outs from the government under the false premise of ” Libya can afford to pay.,.”. Yes healthcare is not a luxury but abusing the system so grotesquely, well, there is only one word for that: Corruption. Yes, I am talking to you too “James miller”. Get realistic people! Libya’s financial assets are for rebuilding the infrastructure and investing in the all too near future when the oil reserves dry up, not for cash hand outs and sending people abroad for treatment that could easily be made available locally.
Happy feb17th everyone!
Rada – your are parroting American Republican Elitist Propaganda. The Libyans just shot and executed their “government” so they don’t need handouts for the rich because they have taken control of the rich.
Now their society belongs to them – at least for a while and it’s time for them to get what belongs to them.
So go back to your rich elitist masters and tell them it didn’t work and instead of interfering with other countries maybe they should worry about which culvert they will hide in when their oppressed masses come after them.
Rada shame on you. Your’e ok so whatever happens to everyone else it’s their problem.
That is plain cold selfishness. The Libyan people are broke and ill for the most part and their country is very wealthy. What should these people do ?
Lol…why did I even bother responding to both of you, thankfully the people of Libya have a superior mentality and intellect. Long live free Libya.
You responded because you thought it would be easy to propagandize others as the elite has propagandized yourself.
You don’t realize that you truly have no thoughts of your own , you are merely a transmitter of other’s propaganda. And it was not easy for the elite to insert their thoughts in your head , they are at if 24/7 with hundreds of technologies and they have been working on you since birth.
To anyone who has woken up you will not at all be able to bring them back into sheeple thought.
I would suggest you stop being a transmitter of other’s people’s thoughts and propaganda and start thinking for yourself. Then you will have no need to try to distribute your master’s brainwashing.
Testing, testing…..1, 2, 3, 4………..1,2, 3, 4,…….
Eimaa Ya Web Master:
It has been difficult to make comments. It looks like your website is not able to decipher whether or not someone enters the pertinent registration, spitting an error message in return. Thanks!
Rada, It useless to reason with some people on some very particular topics. I agree w/you whole heartedly regarding the above post. But some people at times are hell bent on their views!
Stay well.
This article is true.
After 25 years I returned to Libya, because I had to flee back then.
From the first moments of passing the tunesian border I noticed everybody is only after the money, they don’t care about anything else.
Lazy people, they want alkohol, drive around shooting drunk. At night they detonate 1Kg Jilatinas (plastic) bombs for fun scaring whole neighboorhoods etc.
Nowadays it is normal to be greeted by people eating each other up, There was corruption 25 years ago but now all moral attitude is lost.
OK, people have to survive and suffered 42 years, but tell me what is this kind of behaviour going to bring???
Libya is the richest country in the whole continent, still Libyans can’t even get their own money from the bank – maybe they give you 100$ a month to survive with your family if you are lucky.
I couldn’t open a bank account, western union not working, I nearly got stuck there!
I mean oil is pumped out like never b4 and they tell you there is no money at the banks …
Garbage lies everywhere in the streets, food quality is sometimes hazardous. High on whatever drugs “revolutionaries” and security guards will sell you any kind of weapons and ammunition etc.
I’m not a pessimist but this country will need a big effort to stabilize, and I see no motivation at least from the people I met, only that shark mentality. And I traveled through the whole country from east to west.
People there are in a pittyfull state of mind, they need to wake up to themselves, everybody getting rich on their oil and they eat each other up and wave a flag with a pentagram on it …