The New York Times yesterday reported on a wave of execution-style murders of former Libyan government internal security personnel in Benghazi. The killings, the Times noted, “have raised the specter of a death squad stalking former Gadhafi officials in Benghazi, the opposition stronghold.”
The bodies of two men, Nasser al-Sirmany and Hussein Ghaith, were found within days of each other, in farmland on the outskirts of Benghazi, Libya’s second largest city and the centre of the so-called rebel leadership. Sirmany was discovered with his hands and feet bound. He had been shot twice in the head, after reportedly disappearing earlier in the day, after visiting a market. Ghaith was kidnapped from his home by masked and armed men during the night, and was later found dead with a single bullet to the forehead. Both men had reportedly worked as interrogators for Muammar Gaddafi’s brutal internal security agencies.
At least four similar attacks are now under investigation by authorities in Benghazi, while it is unclear how many more killings have gone unreported. The so-called Transitional National Council (TNC) has denied that its security forces are responsible—though the New York Times acknowledged that “rebel authorities have spent weeks trying to round up people suspected of being Gadhafi loyalists.”
This campaign points to the TNC’s responsibility for the death squads now active in Benghazi. The international media has been notably silent on how many people have been “rounded up” in eastern Libya, and how those accused of not supporting the “rebel” leadership are being treated in detention.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/may2011/liby-m12.shtml
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