Tripoli Jails: Controlled by Militias and Where Prisoners are Locked up to Be Forgotten

Twenty-four years ago, a special forces unit raided the Abou Selim prison in the suburbs of the Libyan capital Tripoli, shooting dead 1,269 opponents of Moammar al-Gaddafi’s regime. The case was not closed until December 2019. This is but one of the horrific crimes that took place in Tripoli’s prisons during the rule of the Gaddafi regime and after its overthrow.

The United Nations has documented the imprisonment of thousands of men, women and children in centers that are officially under the control of the interior and defense ministries of the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord, headed by Fayez al-Sarraj, or his allied armed factions.

After Gaddafi’s ouster, the prisons now hold members of his former regime, who are held on charges of torture. People who have been detained in these jails have spoken of a “secret and scary world where detainees do not carry out a sentence, but rather are locked up away in the darkness, hoping that they would be forgotten, temporarily or permanently.”

Head of the Libyan Organization for Political Development, Jamal al-Fallah told Asharq Al-Awsat that the secret prisons or the ones held by the armed factions are not controlled by the state. Rather, they are controlled by the militias. Each militia has its own prison, some of which are secret and whose location are unknown.

Fallah, who hails from the eastern city of Benghazi, said that these groups act as judge and jailor, whereby they can arrest whoever they choose and release them whenever they want without any legal ground.

Ruwaymi prison
Prisons in western Libya are infamous for their varying degrees of notoriety. The Ruwaymi prison in the Ain Zara suburb is the most infamous. Rights groups have documented flagrant human rights violations there since the ouster of Gaddafi’s regime in 2011. The facility is run by militias even though, officially, it is affiliated with the GNA. The jail holds some 2,000 prisoners, who are detained on political or military charges.

Human Rights Watch has reported on the nine years of torture and arbitrary arrests at the prison. It famously spoke of riots in 2013 when prisoners rose up against the excessive violence against them. Rights activists and the relatives of the prisoners revealed that the guards violently suppressed the riot by opening live fire against them.

In March 2020, a rocket attack targeted Ruwaymi, prompting the GNA justice ministry to plead with the international community to intervene to end the assault. The attack left at least three workers wounded. The GNA held “hostile” forces responsible for the attack, a reference to the rival Libyan National Army, commanded by Khalifa Haftar.

Libyan rights organizations have reported on the appalling conditions in Ruwaymi, revealing that prisoners are being exposed to deadly infectious disease. Ten percent of inmates were at one point infected with tuberculosis. In a report on Libya in January 2020, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also spoke of the spread of infectious diseases, such as scabies, hepatitis and HIV among the inmates. The UN mission in Libya had cooperated with the justice ministry to improve conditions at the facility.

“During the reporting period, some 8,500 individuals, of whom an estimated 60 percent were in pretrial detention, were held in 28 official prisons under the authority of the Ministry of Justice. In total, 280 women, including 180 non-Libyans, and 109 children were held in prisons and/or in judicial police custody. Thousands of others were held in facilities nominally under the control of the Ministry of the Interior or the Ministry of Defense, as well as facilities directly operated by armed groups. Those detained had little opportunity to challenge the legality of their detention or seek redress for violations suffered,” he said.

Eliminating inmates
Head of Investigation Bureau of the Libyan Tripoli-based Attorney General's Office Al-Siddiq Al-Sour revealed that in June 2016, 12 prisoners held at Ruwaymi were “eliminated” shortly after a judicial order for their release was announced. Several Libyan rights groups accused militias of killing the inmates, who hailed from the Wadi al-Rabih region. Paying no heed to the accusations, the militias continued to detain more people in the facility.

Sour said the prisoners were being held for their involvement in violence that accompanied the 2011 revolution. When the judge ordered the release of 19 of the detainees, prison records showed that they had left the facility with their families, but in reality, 12 never made it out alive.

Judicial expert at the interim government in the east, Wissam al-Werfalli blamed the frequent violations at the prisons on the failure of successive governments in stemming them. He explained that after the revolution, several armed groups opposed to Gaddafi began to emerge on the ground and they gradually began to gain influence and started to arbitrarily arrest sympathizers of the former regime.

Another notorious prison was al-Hadaba, which was known for holding former regime members such as Baghdadi Mahmudi, the last of Gaddafi’s prime ministers, Abuzed Omar Dorda, former chief of external security, Abdullah Senussi, former military intelligence chief, and Al-Saadi Gaddafi, the late ruler’s son. The facility was raided in 2017 in wake of clashes between militias, forcing the GNA to eventually shut it down and transfer the prisoners to Ruwaymi.

Dorda and several former regime figures were released in 2019 after eight years of arrest. In his first televised appearance, Dorda announced his support for the LNA and warned against Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood’s plans in Libya and the region.

Opponents silenced
Tripoli has been notorious for the abduction and disappearance of politicians, journalists and citizens. The most prominent victim was former PM Ali Zeidan, who was kidnapped from a hotel in the capital in August 2017. The building was stormed by a militia that took the 67-year-old official to an unknown location. The GNA mediated his release after a ten-day ordeal.

The GNA claims that it controls all prisons, but rights activists state that jails in Tripoli are facilities where people are locked up to be forgotten because keeping them outside undermines the interests of militias.

An official at one of these militias acknowledged to Asharq Al-Awsat that some groups are “dedicated” to the abduction and extortion of citizens. Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said: “Those groups commit acts punishable by law, but we are the authority that applies the law.”

Violations behind bars
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) had previously blamed armed groups of the prolonged arbitrary and unlawful detention of thousands of people in Libya. In a report, it said: “Armed groups across Libya, including those affiliated with the State, hold thousands of men, women and children in prolonged arbitrary and unlawful detention, and subject them to torture and other human rights violations and abuses. Victims have little or no recourse to judicial remedy or reparations, while members of armed groups enjoy total impunity.”

“To date in 2019, an estimated 8,813 individuals have been held in 28 official prisons under the authority of the Ministry of Justice, of whom an estimated 60 percent were in pre-trial detention. We have continued to receive credible reports of arbitrary detention, torture, enforced disappearances, sexual and gender-based violence, and overcrowding in detention facilities under the control of the Ministry of the Interior. Conditions in unofficial places of detention, often run by armed groups, are even more difficult to monitor and are likely to be even worse.”

Systematic torture
Torture is also rampant at the prisons. Witness, medical reports and rights groups have all documented torture at facilities throughout Libya. Detainees are tortured during interrogation to drag “confessions” out of them and are also punished for committing alleged crimes.

Former detainees detailed how they would be beaten on the head with various implements, including metal bars and pipes and rifle butts. They would be hung up for long hours, electrocuted, burned with cigarettes or hot bars.

Fallah said that in many cases judicial orders for the release of prisoners are often left unheeded, which shows the influence these armed groups hold in managing prisons.

While world conflicts dominate headlines, Sudan’s deepening catastrophe is unfolding largely out of sight; a brutal war that has killed tens of thousands, displaced millions, and flattened entire cities and regions.

More than a year into the conflict, some observers question whether the international community has grown weary of Sudan’s seemingly endless cycles of violence. The country has endured nearly seven decades of civil war, and what is happening now is not an exception, but the latest chapter in a bloody history of rebellion and collapse.

The first of Sudan’s modern wars began even before the country gained independence from Britain. In 1955, army officer Joseph Lagu led the southern “Anyanya” rebellion, named after a venomous snake, launching a guerrilla war that would last until 1972.

A peace agreement brokered by the World Council of Churches and Ethiopia’s late Emperor Haile Selassie ended that conflict with the signing of the Addis Ababa Accord.

But peace proved short-lived. In 1983, then-president Jaafar Nimeiry reignited tensions by announcing the imposition of Islamic Sharia law, known as the “September Laws.” The move prompted the rise of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), led by John Garang, and a renewed southern insurgency that raged for more than two decades, outliving Nimeiry’s regime.

Under Omar al-Bashir, who seized power in a 1989 military coup, the war took on an Islamist tone. His government declared “jihad” and mobilized civilians in support of the fight, but failed to secure a decisive victory.

The conflict eventually gave way to the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, better known as the Naivasha Agreement, which was brokered in Kenya and granted South Sudan the right to self-determination.

In 2011, more than 95% of South Sudanese voted to break away from Sudan, giving birth to the world’s newest country, the Republic of South Sudan. The secession marked the culmination of decades of war, which began with demands for a federal system and ended in full-scale conflict. The cost: over 2 million lives lost, and a once-unified nation split in two.

But even before South Sudan’s independence became reality, another brutal conflict had erupted in Sudan’s western Darfur region in 2003. Armed rebel groups from the region took up arms against the central government, accusing it of marginalization and neglect. What followed was a ferocious counterinsurgency campaign that drew global condemnation and triggered a major humanitarian crisis.

As violence escalated, the United Nations deployed one of its largest-ever peacekeeping missions, the African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID), in a bid to stem the bloodshed.

Despite multiple peace deals, including the Juba Agreement signed in October 2020 following the ousting of long-time Islamist ruler, Bashir, fighting never truly ceased.

The Darfur war alone left more than 300,000 people dead and millions displaced. The International Criminal Court charged Bashir and several top officials, including Ahmed Haroun and Abdel Raheem Muhammad Hussein, with war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Alongside the southern conflict, yet another war erupted in 2011, this time in the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan and the Blue Nile region. The fighting was led by Abdelaziz al-Hilu, head of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement–North (SPLM–N), a group composed largely of northern fighters who had sided with the South during the earlier civil war under John Garang.

The conflict broke out following contested elections marred by allegations of fraud, and Khartoum’s refusal to implement key provisions of the 2005 Naivasha Agreement, particularly those related to “popular consultations” in the two regions. More than a decade later, war still grips both areas, with no lasting resolution in sight.

Then came April 15, 2023. A fresh war exploded, this time in the heart of the capital, Khartoum, pitting the Sudanese Armed Forces against the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Now entering its third year, the conflict shows no signs of abating.

According to international reports, the war has killed more than 150,000 people and displaced around 13 million, the largest internal displacement crisis on the planet. Over 3 million Sudanese have fled to neighboring countries.

Large swathes of the capital lie in ruins, and entire states have been devastated. With Khartoum no longer viable as a seat of power, the government and military leadership have relocated to the Red Sea city of Port Sudan.

Unlike previous wars, Sudan’s current conflict has no real audience. Global pressure on the warring factions has been minimal. Media coverage is sparse. And despite warnings from the United Nations describing the crisis as “the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe,” Sudan's descent into chaos remains largely ignored by the international community.

Tripoli Jails: Controlled by Militias and Where Prisoners are Locked up to Be Forgotten