April 11:
Killing of captives points to war crimes by Libyan government forcesAmnesty International has today revealed fresh evidence of extrajudicial executions apparently committed by Colonel Mu'ammar al-Gaddafi's forces near the town of Ajdabiya in recent days.
Amnesty International researchers in eastern Libya yesterday saw the bodies of two opposition fighters who had been shot in the back of the head after their hands had been bound behind their backs.
Today they saw a body of another man who had been shot dead while his hands and feet were bound.
“Based on what our delegates have seen in eastern Libya over the last six weeks, the circumstances of these killings strongly suggest that they were carried out by the forces loyal to Colonel al-Gaddafi," said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International’s director for the Middle East and North Africa.
“The deliberate killing of captured fighters is a war crime. All those responsible for such crimes - those who ordered or sanctioned them as well as those who carried them out - must be left in no doubt that they will be held fully accountable,” said Malcolm Smart.
Amnesty International delegates saw the bodies of the first two men at a Benghazi morgue on 10 April. Both still had their hands tied behind their backs with metal wire. They had been shot in the back of the head and in other parts of their bodies. They had travelled from east of Benghazi to join the fight against Colonel al-Gaddafi's forces.
Morgue staff told Amnesty International that the body of another man, whose hands had been similarly secured when he was killed, had already been collected by his family for burial.
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April 14:
Tales from a besieged city in Libya<...>
The trajectory of their protests however, took a very different turn compared to the events in Libya’s neighbouring states, and they found themselves in a city literally besieged by the armed forces of Colonel Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi, who has ruled Libya with an iron fist since 1969.
One man we met a few days ago was an 87-year-old. We found him lying in a hospital bed in Sfax receiving treatment for an injury to his stomach that he sustained about a month ago. On the day in question, he told Amnesty International, Colonel al-Gaddafi’s forces were approaching the outskirts of Misratah. He was in the passenger seat of a pick-up truck heading from his home towards his fields about seven kilometres south of Misratah when the vehicle was struck by two rounds fired from what appears to have been a 14.5mm calibre weapon – he thought it might have been an anti-aircraft machine gun – near the area of Gherian.
The driver escaped injury but the elderly man was wounded and required an operation and three days of treatment at the Mu’gama’ al-‘Iyadat hospital. He then returned to his home a few kilometres west of Misratah expecting to have a happy reunion with his relatives.
But when he got there, he found members of Colonel al-Gaddafi’s forces present. They entered his home and took away his son-in-law and his 26-year-old grandson. Since, then, he has had no news of them and he does not know their whereabouts.
The rest of his family, comprising women and children, fled from their home and are now hiding with five other families in a house further away from the centre of Misratah. He has no means of contacting them or finding out whether they are safe as telephone and internet networks have been cut in Misratah for several weeks.
In another hospital bed in Sfax, we met a 15-year-old boy who was recovering from an injury to his left leg. He said he had heard explosions at about noon on 1 April near his home on Mugamadat Street, which had been a bubbling commercial centre in Misratah before the unrest started.
He went outside, curious to see what was happening and was with five other youths, when he was hit by machine gun fire. His cousin who was with him at the hospital and who lives in the same part of Misratah, told how the area had come under attack that day by Colonel al-Gaddafi’s forces, who were targeting small factories and stores in the street used for storing sugar, pasta and flour supplies.
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They referred to reports of abductions and rapes by Colonel al-Gaddafi’s forces, and to civilians being hit with various types of projectiles, including artillery shells, rockets, and rocket propelled grenades. They said some families had been shot in their cars as they were trying to flee.
With communications between Misratah and the outside world virtually severed and while the city remains besieged from all sides but the sea, it is well nigh impossible to verify such allegations, at least for the present, but there can be little doubt that the situation in Misratah remains dire.
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