Breaking: The Battle For Tripoli Has Begun. W/ Updates. "All Hell Has Broken Out in Tripoli."

Gunmen surround Libya Foreign Ministry

Libya's prime minister warned of a perilous security situation Sunday after armed men stormed the Interior Ministry and a state-owned television station after blocking access to the Foreign Ministry.

Two years after the country's civil war, Libya is struggling to maintain security, build a unified army and reign in militias, which include rebels who fought to oust longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.

About 200 armed men surrounded the Foreign Ministry building in Tripoli, demanding the ministry hire former fighters who helped overthrow Gadhafi. The men allege that many supporters of the old regime are still holding senior positions in the ministry and its missions abroad.

About 38 trucks, some with machine guns, surrounded the ministry all day. After sundown, gunmen were still blocking access to the building.

Some in Libya are calling for a political isolation law that would ban members of the former regime from political roles. Others counter that such a law would oust experienced technocrats, including the current prime minister, who served in government under Gadhafi years ago.

In another bold move Sunday, gunmen stormed the Interior Ministry, which oversees police, and forced employees out. The men charge that the ministry is not paying them their salaries, according to an official in the ministry who spoke anonymously for fear of reprisal.

Also, armed men stormed the main state-run al-Wataniya TV channel, forcing its employees out. Live shows were cancelled, and al-Wataniya was airing only archive video on Sunday. Similar to those outside the Foreign Ministry, the men were demanding the removal of Gadhafi-era officials from the station. The station was temporarily shut down recently when employees protested against militias providing security for the building instead of regular forces.

Continued at http://bigstory.ap.org/article/gunmen-surround-libya-foreign-ministry

Rein in. Unless they plan to use militias to reign.

Libya detains 4 US military personnel – State Dept | RT News

​The US State Department has confirmed that four US military personnel have been detained by the Libyan government.

"We can confirm that four US military personnel are currently being held in Libyan government custody," said Jen Psaki, State Department spokesperson. "We are seeking to further ascertain the facts and ensure their release. We are in touch with Libyan officials on this issue."

It is yet unknown why the American service members are being held, though it is believed that Libya’s Ministry of the Interior detained the four individuals, a senior US Defense Department official told CNN.

"We are seeking to further ascertain the facts and ensure their release," said the official. The service members were reportedly in Libya "augmenting security at the US Embassy in Tripoli," the official added.

Photos of two American passports and embassy ID cards were posted on Twitter, supposedly related to the detentions, The New York Times reported.

The original detainment occurred in a town southwest of the Roman ruins, at Sabratha, according to the Times.

The detentions follow an announcement by the United States in November that it would increase support for Libya’s security forces, which have been overwhelmed by violence and unrest since the death of Muammar Gaddafi.

Source: http://rt.com/news/libya-detains-us-military-903/

More: http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/27/world/africa/libya-americans-detained/

Gaddafi's son, 8 other former government officials sentenced to death by 'Libyan militia' | RT News

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the surviving son of Libya’s slain leader Muammar Gaddafi, has been sentenced to death in the country along with several other members of the former government.

He was sentenced in absentia on Tuesday along with other senior members of the former Libyan government, including Abdullah Senussi, Gaddafi’s former intelligence chief, and two former prime ministers, al-Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi and Abuzaid Dorda.

“I think that the world witnessed a legal farce, which showed that the judicial system in Libya is no more independent and impartial unfortunately,” Amal AlAkuri, wife of the sentenced Abuzaid Dorda told RT. “The trial took place in a military barrack controlled by militia with weapons pointed at the judges and lawyers.”

The trial was conducted in Tripoli by an unrecognized Islamist government that came to power after forcing a rival government out of the Libyan capital. The trial lasted just two days and can hardly be called fair, lawyer John Jones, who was involved in defending Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, told RT a day before the ruling.

“It was clearly a show trial in respect to all of the defendants,” Jones said. “It was basically a trial by militia.”

Earlier Tuesday, after the proceedings had just started, Jones said an atmosphere of intimidation hung over the entire proceedings.

“Lawyers were intimidated, the judges are intimidated, lawyers had had to leave the case,” he said.

Providing evidence of the alleged crime was not a priority either, he added.

“The prosecution is not calling any witnesses to be cross-examined. They are relying on interrogations, which are often tainted by torture. And the defense was only allowed two witnesses and no protection was given to them,” he said.

The UN human rights office said it was "deeply disturbed" by the death sentences.

"We had closely monitored the detention and trial and found that international fair trial standards had failed to be met," it said in a statement.

Human Rights Watch deputy Middle East and North Africa director, Joe Stork, agreed, saying the defendants were not given a fair and transparent trial they deserved.

“This trial has been plagued by persistent, credible allegations of fair trial breaches that warrant independent and impartial judicial review,” he said.

The Tripoli authorities moved forward with the trial of Gaddafi-era officials in a bid to build more legitimacy, both domestically and with foreign powers, said Catherine Shakdam from the Beirut Centre for Middle East Studies.

“The message is that the want to play government, that they are here to say and that they are trying to rule Libya. If not by legitimacy, then they would to it de facto anyway,” she told RT. “They are trying to establish a sense of normality by trying to conduct legal affairs and state affairs.”

The Libyan government-in-exile currently residing in the eastern city of Tobruk condemned the trial of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and the other statesmen.

The complete article is here:
http://www.rt.com/news/310929-son-gaddafi-death-sentence/

Never-before-seen video shows a bloodied Colonel Gaddafi begging for his life moments before he is executed by Libyan rebels

• Footage captured on mobile by a fighter who dragged dictator from drain
• Shows frenzied scenes as Gaddafi is mobbed by gunmen on truck bonnet
• He is heard pleading for his life moments before he is summarily executed
• Rebel said: 'He deserved it. The people got carried away in the stampede'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ging-life-moments-executed-Libyan-rebels.html

It would have been nice to have had a trial where justice could be seen to be served, the crimes he committed enumerated, and evidence publicly presented.
Unfortunately circumstances don't always allow for the safe capture and holding prisoner of a dictator during the fighting of a civil war.

Migrants from west Africa being ‘sold in Libyan slave markets’ | The Guardian

UN migration agency says selling of people is rife in African nation that has slid into violent chaos since overthrow of Gaddafi

Quote:

West African migrants are being bought and sold openly in modern-day slave markets in Libya, survivors have told a UN agency helping them return home.

Trafficked people passing through Libya have previously reported violence, extortion and slave labour. But the new testimony from the International Organization for Migration suggests that the trade in human beings has become so normalised that people are being traded in public.

“The latest reports of ‘slave markets’ for migrants can be added to a long list of outrages [in Libya],” said Mohammed Abdiker, IOM’s head of operation and emergencies. “The situation is dire. The more IOM engages inside Libya, the more we learn that it is a vale of tears for all too many migrants.”

The north African nation is a major exit point for refugees from Africa trying to take boats to Europe. But since the overthrow of autocratic leader Muammar Gaddafi, the vast, sparsely populated country has slid into violent chaos and migrants with little cash and usually no papers are particularly vulnerable.

One 34-year-old survivor from Senegal said he was taken to a dusty lot in the south Libyan city of Sabha after crossing the desert from Niger in a bus organised by people smugglers. The group had paid to be taken to the coast, where they planned to risk a boat trip to Europe, but their driver suddenly said middlemen had not passed on his fees and put his passengers up for sale.

“The men on the pick-up were brought to a square, or parking lot, where a kind of slave trade was happening. There were locals – he described them as Arabs – buying sub-Saharan migrants,” said Livia Manante, an IOM officer based in Niger who helps people wanting to return home.

She interviewed the survivor after he escaped from Libya earlier this month and said accounts of slave markets were confirmed by other migrants she spoke to in Niger and some who had been interviewed by colleagues in Europe.

“Several other migrants confirmed his story, independently describing kinds of slave markets as well as kinds of private prisons all over in Libya,” Manente said. “IOM Italy has confirmed that this story is similar to many stories reported by migrants and collected at landing points in southern Italy, including the slave market reports. This gives more evidence that the stories reported are true, as the stories of those who managed to cross-match those who are returning back to their countries.”

After his sale, the Senegalese migrant was taken to a makeshift prison of a kind that has been well documented in Libya. Those held inside are forced to work without pay, or on meagre rations, and their captors regularly call family at home demanding a ransom. His captors asked for 300,000 west African francs (about £380), then sold him on to a larger jail where the demand doubled without explanation.

Men who lingered there too long without the ransom being paid were taken away and killed, he said. Some wasted away on meagre rations in unsanitary conditions, dying of hunger and disease, but overall numbers never fell. “If the number of migrants goes down, because of death or someone is ransomed, the kidnappers just go to the market and buy one,” Manente said.

His terrified family began scraping together loans. As he spoke fluent English, French and some local languages, he translated for his jailers to win time for relatives to collect the money.

Many other migrants flee Libya with similar stories, said Giuseppe Loprete, chief of mission at IOM Niger. “Its very clear they see themselves as being treated as slaves,” he said.

Loprete’s office has arranged for the repatriation of 1,500 people in the first three months of this year – almost the same number as in the whole of 2015. He fears more horrors are likely to emerge.

“There are now more migrants coming back from Libya, so that’s also why all these stories are coming to the surface,” he said. “And conditions are worsening in Libya so I think we can also expect more in the coming months.”

Continued at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/10/libya-public-slave-auctions-un-migration

Hey I think we found the minimal government and government-free zones the libertarians have been telling us about!

Do fuck off

Do catch up. You are shitposting in a 3 mo old thread.