New Libya 'stained' by detainee abuse

Mutassim Gaddafi

Libya's new authorities must stamp out arbitrary detention and widespread abuse of detainees, particularly those who fought for Muammar Gaddafi, to avoid a "stained" rights record, Amnesty International said yesterday.
In a report published yesterday, Amnesty said it had uncovered a pattern of beatings and ill-treatment of captured Gaddafi soldiers, suspected loyalists and alleged mercenaries in western Libya after interviewing approximately 300 prisoners in August and September.
Meanwhile, the new National Transitional Council said they have arrested Mutassim Gaddafi, a son of Libya's former leader, from Sirte on Wednesday.
"Mutassim Gaddafi was captured at Sirte and was transferred to Benghazi" in the country's east, NTC advisor Abdelkarim Bizama told AFP.
Gaddafi opponents fired shots in the air in the capital Tripoli and Misrata on Wednesday evening, after news of Mutassim's arrest broke.
Mutassim Gaddafi had been considered a rival to his brother Seif al-Islam in the competition to succeed the Libyan leader.
Seif al-Islam is believed to be hiding in Bani Walid possibly with his father.
Forces of Libya's new regime said earlier Wednesday they were mopping up the last, increasingly weak and isolated pockets of resistance in Gaddafi's hometown, claiming its fall was imminent.
Amnesty said militias have detained as many as "2,500 people in Tripoli and Al-Zawiyah," the majority of them without an arrest warrant, since forces loyal to the National Transitional Council (NTC) seized the capital.
The report said detainees appear to suffer beatings and torture particularly at the start of their detention as a "welcome," and that two guards -- in separate detention facilities -- admitted to beating prisoners to extract "confessions" more quickly.
Particularly vulnerable to ill-treatment and arbitrary detentions, it said, were sub-Saharan Africans suspected of being mercenaries and black Libyans, especially from the Tawarga region, a key base for Gaddafi troops during the siege against the nearby city of Misrata.
Amnesty said children have been held together with adults, and women supervised by male guards.