Human rights violations during the Gaddafi regime

During Muammar Gaddafi's rule over Libya, multiple crimes against humanity were committed by government forces against the Libyan population.

During the Libyan Civil War in 2011, Gaddafi's forces killed allegedly unarmed protestors and indiscriminately bombed civilian areas, drawing condemnation from human rights organizations.

[1] On April 7, 1976, university students throughout Libya protested against human rights violations and authoritarian military control over all aspects of civilian lives.

On this day, the students were publicly executed by hanging in Benghazi with thousands of people in attendance and watching the event live on television.

This war was widely condemned by the Libyan population as they felt they had no right to invade another country that didn't belong to them.

Sadek was a Libyan student and aeronautical engineer that had returned from America where he had been studying, and participated in peaceful protests against the Gaddafi regime.

[13] He was then executed in a large basketball stadium with thousands of people watching him from the stands, mostly children who were forced to attend as a school trip.

The persecution was in the form of ethnic cleansing, which involved banning all Indigenous languages and the demolition of many Berber villages to replace them with Arabs.

Many Berber activists accused the regime of purposefully coordinating this attack, because he was followed by the Libyan intelligence on a number of occasions leading to the assassination attempt.

[24] In 2011, secret documents discovered in Tripoli in the office of Gaddafi's former intelligence chief Moussa Koussa by Human Rights Watch confirmed that the CIA and MI6 had sent terrorism suspects to Libya, where they were tortured.

Belhaj had been kidnapped in Bangkok in 2004 alongside his pregnant wife, Fatima Boudchar, and their four children, and claimed a tip-off from MI6 had led to their capture.

[38] Before the massacre, prisoners were forced to live in dire and unhealthy conditions, with many forced to eat rotten bug infested food and grass, urinate and drink out of the same cup, live in cells overrun by rats, and were tortured on a normal basis with boulders and batons by security guards.

[45] On August 23, 2011, detainees were held in a warehouse located in the Khalida Ferjan neighborhood in Salahaddin, south of Tripoli, adjacent to the Yarmuk Military Base.

[47][48] 53 skulls were later found in one location and other corpses were discovered in a nearby shallow grave but there was a deliberate attempt to destroy victims’ bodies.

[53][54] Abdulrahim recounted witnessing guards killing wounded detainees and identified one of the perpetrators as a soldier named Ibrahim from Tajura.

[50] When the Arab Spring had reached Libya, thousands of Libyans took to the streets in demand of justice and freedom, as well as free and fair elections to take place.

[56][57] Government troops alongside mercenaries cracked down violently against them, shooting hundreds of unarmed civilians and even crushing them to death using tanks.

Hundreds were killed, including many women and children, and thousands were injured in the eastern cities such as Benghazi, Al-Beida, Derna, and Tobruk.

[64] Gaddafi forces were also convicted of shelling towns with heavy weapons on almost every city, killing many civilians including women and children.

[67] In Yafran, Gaddafi forces had launched many attacks targeting civilian infrastructure using grad rockets, tanks, and fighter jets.

Cluster bombs, illegal under international law, were used[70] to destroy civilian infrastructure and hundreds of rockets were launched on various neighborhoods in the city.

[72] This constant shelling of civilian infrastructure and resource blockade lasted for months until Misrata was liberated by rebel forces.

I want to emphasize that the officers forced us to rape.Libyan psychologist Siham Sergewa conducted various interviews, showing visual proof of how sexual torture was used against Libyan women.

She conducted a mental health survey among refugees on the Libyan borders with Tunisia and Egypt, receiving 50,000 responses.