Abu Salim Prison Massacre with List of the victims names

Introduction:

Abu Salim prison is located in the suburb of Abu Salim, about 4 Km to the south west from the center of Tripoli. Construction of the prison was completed in 1984, to replace the “Black Horse” prison, a relic from the Italian occupation era.

The first group of political prisoners to be detained in Abu Salim prison was those who were arrested following the events of May 1984, known as the “Attack on Bab al-Aziziyah”[i]. September 1984, all political prisoners were moved to Abu Salim prison and the “Black Horse” prison was demolished.

The Prison:

The prison is located inside the barracks of the HQ of Military Police. It is composed of two identical blocks of prisons: The “Central Prison” & the “Military Prison”. The massacre took place in the “Central Prison”.

The Prisoners:

• On 2nd March 1988, there were around 530 political prisoners,
• On 3rd March 1988, 404 prisoners were released,
• On 8th March 1988, a further 22 prisoners were released, and
• Around 100 prisoners remained in the “Central Prison”, they were not included in the amnesty of 1988.

The increase in Prison Population:

After the amnesty of March 1988, the security forces of the regime carried out several waves of mass arrests from 1988 to 1996;

• During the period December 1988 to March 1989 hundreds of citizens were arrested, in waves of mass arrests. They were classified into 3 groups; “A”, “B” & “C”,
• October 1993, in the aftermath of a failed coup attempt, several hundreds of military personnel and civilians were arrested,
• Spring/Summer of 1994, the security forces arrested tens of civilians in what was named “the siege of Ajdabiya”,
• End of March 1995, 306 prisoners (from group “C”) were released, and
• From mid-May to August 1995, the security forces carried waves of mass arrests targeting hundreds of citizens[ii].

Prison Situation September 1995:

• Prison population increased steadily & conditions deteriorated gravely,
• At the “Central Prison” the situation was;
  • Wards 1 & 2 were for category C detainees,
  • Wards 3 through to 6 were for categories A & B detainees,
  • Wards 7 & 8 (solitary confinement cells) were for detainees of October 1993, and
  • All those whom were determined, in interrogations (in which detainees were subjected to torture and other forms of degrading & inhumane treatments), to be members of banned groups were transferred to the “Central Prison”.
• At the “Military Prison”:
  • Ward 1 was for the “100” detainees who remained in detention after the 1988 amnesty, and
  • Wards 3 though to 8 were for detainees who were still under interrogation.
• Interrogations were held in the compound’s main administration building.

Friday, 28th June 1996:

A group of detainees (Ward 4) attacked 3 guards who were distributing the evening meal. Shooting took place, unknown number of detainees were killed or injured, and one guard was killed. The detainees managed to open all cells in Block number 4, and blocks 3, 5 & 6. Solitary confinement blocks, 7 & 8, and blocks 1 & 2 where category “C” detainees were held, were not included in the unrest.

A high-level security delegation, led by Colonel Abdullah al-Sanousi, head of the Military Intelligence, arrived later on the scene. He, al-Sanousi, requested a group to represent the detainees. A detainee from each of the 4 blocks (3 through 6) started negotiations with al-Sanousi to end the unrest.

Demands of the detainees were:

1. Provision of medical treatment to the detainees,
2. Improve the conditions of the prison (medical care, food, hygiene, treatment of guards…),
3. Access to the court system (to end their in-limbo situation of indefinite detention), and
4. To allow their relatives to visit them (end to incommunicado detention).

Negotiations continued late into the night, after assurances from the security delegation, to meet the demands, the detainees returned to their cells around 2am of Saturday 29th June. Situation was resolved peacefully by negotiations.

Saturday, 29th June 1996:

Early morning several buses arrived, and around 150 detainees boarded them presumably to take them to hospitals for treatment, some of them were wounded in the previous night’s events & the others were gravely sick detainees because of chronic (like diabetes) or infectious diseases (tuberculosis).

Category C detainees (wards 1 & 2) were moved from the Central prison to the adjacent Military prison, and some detainees were moved from the Military to the Central.

Around 11am sounds of intense gun fire, in the “Central Prison” were heard, it lasted for about 2 hours

The Authorities’ handling of the Massacre:

Despite the wall of isolation and secrecy, which Libya was under due to the stifling security grip and the international sanctions imposed on Libya by the Security Council (related to the Lockerbie case, news of the massacre spread, and Amnesty International issued an Urgent Action[iii] on 19th July 1996. The Libyan authorities not only denied the massacre took place, it continued to deny having any political prisoners of prisoners of conscience in Libya.

The prison warden was changed September 2000, with the new warden[iv] the conditions in the prisons improved slightly, that combined with the change in the way the security apparatus of the regime handled security related cases. The reasons which brought these changes are not known, there was no public statement. They could have been related to revisions within the regime, or related to the emergence of Seif al-Islam Gaddafi on the political scene at the time. In 1998 he founded the “Gaddafi International Foundation for Charity and Development” & in 2003 he set up a human rights organization as part of the Foundation.

October 2000, the detainees were referred to the Prosecutor’s Office of the “People’s Court”, an extraordinary court which was dissolved by a decision of the General People ‘s Congress in March 2006.

The receding of isolation and admission of the massacre:

January 2003, Libya chaired the UN Human Rights Council, this put human rights practices in Libya under the spotlight. By the end of the year, the Gaddafi regime reached an agreement with the USA & its ally the UK to stop his program to develop “weapons of mass destruction”. This agreement led to a phase of improving relations with the West.

Since its founding in 2003, the Gaddafi Human Rights Organization spoke about the need to address human rights violations including deaths while in custody.

A team from Amnesty International arrived in Libya in February 2004, they were permitted to visit Abu Salim prison, speak to detainees, and the team met with relatives of victims of human rights violations. At the end of their field visit, the Amnesty team met with Colonel Gaddafi in Sirte. In the meeting, he discussed with them the “events of Abu Salim Prison”, and that was the first time the head of the regime admitted the killings took place. His narrative was, as expected, in complete contradiction with the facts of the massacre, but it was an admission to an international human rights organization that “a mutiny occurred in the prison, some prisoners escaped & some were killed”, which was a significant milestone. Next came the public admission of the massacre by the regime, which came after almost 8 years of denial.

In a televised speech, on 18^th April 2004, Gaddafi admitted the killings of Abu Salim prison. He affirmed “… the right of the families [of the victims of the massacre] to know what happened to their sons in the incidents that took place in Abu Salim Prison in 1996, and in which large number of prisoners were killed …”. Gaddafi was speaking before the Supreme Council of Judicial Institutions of Libya.

In a fact finding visit to Tripoli, May 2009, Human Rights Watch met with the Minister of Justice then, Mr. Mustapha Abdel Jaleel, and discussed with him the mass killings of detainees at Abu Salim prison in 1996. The Minister informed HRW team that they “have notified between 750 & 800 families of the death of their relative in Abu Salim Prison, and remained around 400 families to be contacted”. That was the first public record of the number of victims who perished in the massacre, by an official of the regime.

After the fall of the regime in 2011, Human Rights Solidarity obtained lists of victims of Abu Salim Prison Massacre. The lists were divided into two lists: a list of 587 victims whose families were notified by the regime, and a second list of 571 victims whose families were not, at the time lists were drawn, notified of their death. Hence, the total number of the victims, in the lists, is 1158.

On the 30th June 2016, when HRS published the lists for the first time, it was contacted by several families informing HRS that their relatives, who perished in the massacre, were not included in the published lists. HRS verified the names of 3 victims from one family, el-Sharrani. Therefore, the updated lists contain the names of 1’161 victims of Abu Salim Prison Massacre.

Coordination Committee of the Families of Victims of Abu Salim Prison:

In the summer of 2007, in its pursuit to know the fate of their missing relatives, a group of families of the victims of the Abu Salim Prison Massacre, 94 families, filed a law-suit, at the Benghazi North District Court, against the Libyan authorities to reveal the fate of their missing relatives. The court rejected the case, on basis of inadmissibility, on 24^th June 2007. The families took the case to the Benghazi Appeals Court, which ruled on 19^th April 2008 in favour of admissibility and ordered the lower court, Benghazi North, to rule consider the case. Benghazi North Court ruled on 8^th June 2008 “ordering the State to reveal the fate of the missing detainees”. This ruling encouraged more families, 80 families, to file a law suit.

These families gathered together and setup a coordinating committee to coordinate their activities before the court & their civil society activities like the weekly public vigils they organized in Benghazi. They could not setup a civil society organization because of the repressive laws of the regime which prohibited any forms of peaceful gathering. The Committee continued its work till the fall of the regime after the 17^th February Revolution in 2011. The incident which sparked the public demonstrations was the detention of the spokesman of the Committee and two of his colleagues on 15^th February 2011.

The UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva:

Human Rights Solidarity, in cooperation with the World Organization Against Torture OMCT based in Geneva, filed three cases of human rights violations against the Libyan regime before the UN Human Rights Committee. The HR Committee concluded[v], in the three separate cases, that the Libyan Authorities committed grave violations of the rights of the victims and that of their families, demanded from the Libyan authorities to reveal the fate of the victims and to compensate the families for the harm inflicted on them. All three victims were detainees who perished in the Abu Salim Prison Massacre.

In the Universal Periodical Review of Human Rights in Libya, before the Human Rights Council, First Cycle[vi], 9^th November 2010, the case of the Massacre of Abu Salim Prison was present with dominance, many delegations of the Council demanded from the Libyan authorities to carry out an independent investigation into the mass killings & hold those found complicit in the massacre accountable.

[i] The military compound which housed the offices & homes of Qaddafi. The attack was carried by a cell belonging to the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL), an opposition group to the regime then.

[ii] The mass arrests were in a response to a daring raid by a group of armed men on a hospital in Benghazi, they took off with a detainee brought into the hospital by the Internal Security Agency. He was in a state of a coma. From May 1995 to August 1998 the security situation in the East in general & in Benghazi in particular was always heightened, clashes between dissidents & security forces were frequent followed by arbitrary arrests.

[iii] Amnesty International: “Libya: Political prisoners in AbuSalim Prison, Tripoli – Fear for safety / Deliberate killings / Medical neglect, AI Index: MDE 19/05/96)”.

[iv] In 2008, the warden was imprisoned accused of being too lenient in managing the prison.

[v] UN OHCHR: “HR Committee 90^th Session, Communication No. 1295/2004”, 29^th August 2009; “HR Committee 91^st Session, Communication No. 1422/2005”, 13^th November 2009; “HR Committee 100^th Session, Communication No. 1776/2008”, 2^nd November 2010.

[vi] Human Rights Council: “Universal Periodic Review – Libya, First Cycle”, 9^th November 2010.