Foreigners in Libya targeted in beatings, shootings, robberies

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Foreigners in Libya targeted in beatings, shootings, robberies

Guest workers from Egypt, Tunisia and other nations tell harrowing stories of being attacked by Libyan security forces, accused of being traitors and inciting the uprising against Moammar Kadafi.
Libya uprising

On the Tunisian side of the border with Libya, protesters wave a pre-Kadafi Libyan flag. Getting to the border has been a dangerous, costly journey leaving many stuck amid the chaotic violence in Tripoli and elsewhere. (Rick Loomis, Los Angeles Times / February 27, 2011)


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By Borzou Daragahi and Garrett Therolf, Los Angeles Times

February 27, 2011

Reporting from Ras Ajdir, Tunisia —
Paying $200 for a government-sponsored taxi ride to the Tunisian border sounded like a bad deal. But Tunisian laborer Amr Soltan had no idea just how bad until he and his friends were driven instead to a prison, locked up for five days, robbed of their cellphones by police and beaten by guards.

"It's a miracle that I am alive," he said after arriving in his own country as one of the thousands who have been brutalized by Libyan security forces during the ongoing uprising against Moammar Kadafi's 42-year rule. "They accused us of being traitors because our people revolted against dictators."

Unlike Arab leaders facing challenges in Morocco, Bahrain, Jordan, Algeria and Yemen, Kadafi and son Seif Islam have responded to their enemies not with substantive concessions and appeals to calm but with blood-curdling rhetoric.

Many Arab leaders cringed when Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was ousted, but Kadafi's actions may strengthen resolve across the Arab world to unseat him. Libya's membership in the Arab League has already been suspended, and many Arab countries have condemned the government.

"Kadafi is a dictator," said Egyptian guest worker Mohammad Mahmoud, 23, who like many crossing the Tunisian border was robbed by Libyan security forces of a cellphone that had cost him a month's salary. "But he's different from Mubarak. He's the worst of the worst."

Human rights advocates have sounded the alarm about Libyan security forces' assaults on migrant workers and waves of killings targeting protesters. In recent days, Libyans and foreigners inside the country have learned to distinguish army soldiers in green berets from more ruthless members of paramilitary groups with red berets.

In Sabratha, several witnesses said, the red-bereted militiamen opened fire randomly on entrances to homes in districts where there was unrest, just to keep people from joining protests.

After bloody clashes Friday between protesters and security forces, Adel ben Halim, a 48-year-old merchant, toured Tripoli and found people shell-shocked by the violence that engulfed them the night before. "Very few people want to demonstrate. There were so many people killed yesterday," Ben Halim said. "It was beyond a massacre."

The indiscriminate shootings were reported to him by friends at various points in the city, including one in an eastern neighborhood where nine people were killed in a single street by gunmen who arrived in an ambulance. "Eight mercenaries opened the back door and started shooting at the crowd. They used the ambulances for the element of surprise," he said.

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When the killing stopped, Ben Halim said, a scramble for the bodies played out, with government forces rushing to take them to unseen locations before they could be photographed and counted. "They are putting bodies on pickup trucks and sending them somewhere," he said.

Family members were rushing to gather the bodies so that they could be buried. "They are hiding the bodies in mosques," he said.

Information about the security forces' alleged transgressions remained difficult to verify amid a media clampdown that has barred all but a few journalists under escort into the country. Libyan officials say Western and Arab media have grossly exaggerated the extent of the unrest and presented a one-sided view of the security forces' actions.

But multiple, corroborated accounts by independent sources and witnesses unconnected to on another paint a picture of security forces run amok, waging a campaign of retribution against their own people and foreign nationals whose nations may have inspired Libyans to revolt.

Human Rights Watch, a New York-based advocacy group that has dispatched a two-member team to the Tunisian border to collect witness accounts, reported Saturday that security forces stormed into the homes of some migrant workers, accusing them of being responsible for the anti-government unrest sweeping across Libya.

But if Libyan authorities have made the lives of those inside the country a breathing hell, they've also made getting out a harrowing struggle.

Many of those finding refuge across the border recounted heart-rending tales of humiliation and abuse. Mohammad Ghani, a 60-year-old chef, tried to leave for Egypt via the airport. He fought to get onto a flight but was instead robbed of his life savings, nearly $9,000, which the authorities grabbed during a search.

"They took everything," he said, as he began to sob. He had lived and saved up in Libya for 30 years, he said.

Security forces stationed at the airport charged fees just to enter the crowded airport to check on flight availabilities and costs. Many said security forces wielding batons beat them savagely to keep them out of the terminal.

One man leaving a Tripoli suburb said he was stopped by police, who demanded that he come with them. His beard, they told him, was too long, suggesting Islamic pieties at which they scoffed. They took a pair of rusty scissors and laughed at him while they yanked at his beard to cut it. "Thank God we have our health, our lives and all our luggage," said Moustafa Said, who showed a passport photo of himself wearing a long beard favored by Islamic fundamentalists. "They had weapons, so I had no choice."

At checkpoints, Egyptians were accused of being traitors, led out of the car and accused of taking part in the protest movement now riling the country.

Once at the border crossing, many claimed they were closely searched by customs officials and told that they would have to pay a fee on money over $400.

"They took $200 from me," said Bakid Abdul Qani, a 30-year-old Egyptian house painter.

"Their aim was to just take my dignity," said Abdullah Mohammad, 24, a laborer who was shaken down for $50 as he crossed the border. "But they won't get it. The people will defeat Kadafi."

Fear is a powerful instrument of repression. Even in the safety of Tunisia, many fleeing Libya declined to talk. Those who did were sometimes interrupted by others who demanded they stop.

"Talk, talk, but we still have people in Zawiya," one Egyptian told another who was speaking to a reporter. "If you talk too much, they will have the problems."

Qani, the house painter, responded angrily. "Shut up! Shut up!" he said. "We have to say what is happening."

garrett.therolf@latimes.com

Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... 9996.story