Mercenaries captured in Libya are facing an uncertain future, writes Nick Meo in Al-Bayda.
Foreign fighters captured by local Libyans and kept prisoner at a school near Al Bayda in eastern Libya. Photo: JULIAN SIMMONDS
Crowded into an empty classroom which was stinking of unwashed bodies and reeking of fear, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's defeated mercenary killers awaited their fate.
A week earlier the men – Libyan loyalists of the dictator and black African recruits – had been landed at airports throughout eastern Libya and sent out into the streets to shoot protesters in a murderous rampage. They killed dozens before they were overwhelmed by anti-Gaddafi militias.
The survivors were exhausted, filthy, far from home, and fearful of execution, even though they had been assured of good treatment. Fifty of them lay on mattresses on the floor in one classroom alone, with nearly 100 more in the same school building which was being used as a temporary prison. Most looked dazed. Some were virtually children.
"A man at the bus station in Sabha offered me a job and said I would get a free flight to Tripoli," said Mohammed, a boy of about 16 who said he had arrived looking for work in the southern Libyan town only two weeks ago from Chad, where he had earned a living as a shepherd.
Instead of Tripoli, he was flown to an airport near the scruffy seaside town of Al-Bayda and had a gun thrust into his hands on the plane.
Gaddafi's commanders told the ragbag army they had rounded up that rebels had taken over the eastern towns. The colonel would reward them if they killed protesters. If they refused, they would be shot themselves. The result was bloody mayhem.
About fifty people were killed in Al-Bayda city and twenty more in a village near the airport. Dozens of anti-Gaddafi militia were killed or wounded during a terrific firefight at the airport where 3000 local men gathered to attack mercenary reinforcements as they disembarked from a plane.
Hundreds more were killed in battles in Benghazi and almost every other town in eastern Libya.
Wrecked tanks and burnt-out police stations were testimony to the ferocity of the uprising and the battles when the mercenary counter-attack arrived, for miles along the coast road and in all the major towns west of the Egyptian border.
The departure lounge floor at Labrak airport was littered with smashed glass and cartridge cases, with blood smears across the white tiled floor from battle casualties. Giant rocks had been dragged across the runway to stop any more attempts to land mercenaries and a few jumpy-looking militia men were still around in case they tried again.
In halting Arabic, Mohammed, the young Chadian, tried to explain how he had ended up on the wrong side in somebody else's revolution.
Mohammed drifted into Libya looking for casual work, like many sub-Saharan Africans, perhaps with the hope of eventually finding people smugglers who would take him across the Mediterranean to Europe.
"I wanted a better life, not war and destruction," he said. He insisted that he had been treated well since his surrender, with regular meals, and said he hoped he would be allowed to return home soon.
"I didn't really know what was going on. They told me to do these things and I was really scared when the shooting started."
From his mumbled, incoherent account it was clear that he didn't really understand himself how it had happened.
He was a boy with a quiet, pleasing manner and dreamy eyes, who spoke slowly and tried to be helpful. He looked ridiculous, wearing a windcheater indoors with the hood up. He must have wanted nothing more than to get back to life with his goats in Chad. What horrors he had witnessed during his brief career as a militia thug could only be guessed at. The violence was horrific.
The Sunday Telegraph was shown video footage shot on mobile phone cameras of a young protester being shot in the head by a secret policeman during a demonstration, slumping lifeless to the ground with blood pouring from his head. Another showed a captured mercenary lynched from a street lamp after he had surrendered. A third film showed a black African hanging on a meathook, with angry young men crowding round to stare at his corpse.
The man most responsible for Mohammed's ordeal – excepting Colonel Gaddafi himself – was being held in an adjoining classroom, with the rest of the Libyan prisoners.
"I am sorry for what happened," said Othman Fadil Othman, a Gaddafi loyalist from the southern town of Sabha, just across the Chad border.
He was a small cog in a cruel machine of repression, although possibly a willing one. It was Mr Othman who had approached Mohammed at the bus station in Sabha as he rounded up recruits. Now Mr Othman was desperately trying to excuse himself.
"Gaddafi betrayed us all. We were told we were being sent east to stage demonstrations in favour of Colonel Gaddafi. I didn't know there was going to be an attack on the protesters."
It seemed more likely that Mr Othman was trying to save his skin than tell the truth. A beefy, confident man of 30, with three wives and several children back home – he told us with a smirk – he spent a career as a party organiser in Gaddafi's bizarre Soviet-style dictatorship, telling people what to do.
He worked for the youth wing headed by the dictator's son Saeef. Mr Othman still couldn't quite bring himself to condemn the colonel. It was painfully obvious that he was hopelessly unsuited for Gaddafi's attempt to terrorise his own people into submission.
Like nearly all the captives Mr Othman had no military training. Unleashing thugs and mercenaries like him had backfired disastrously.
Instead of being cowed, Libyans were appalled that their dictator was murdering his own people with foreign killers, and the could see that instead of a formidable security operation, Gaddafi's ragbag army ran away as soon as protesters fired back. Horrified and growing in courage at the same time, Libyans all over the east rallied to the protesters' cause.
Beaten and captive, Mr Othman was doing his best to do what political organisers everywhere try to do in a tight corner – talk their way out of trouble. He oozed unconvincing gratitude for his captors. "I thought they would shoot me when we were captured," he said. "But they have treated us so kindly."
The chances are he will be reunited fairly soon with his three wives.
"Some of them are completely innocent people who were duped, some of them were sent here by Gaddafi to make Libyans kill each other," said Abdullah Al-Mortdy, a lawyer who has become one of the captors of the mercenaries.
"Some of them who organised the attack will have to face a trial, but they will not be executed. We are a merciful people and they will be treated leniently," he said.
"Most of them are victims of Gaddafi's system. Gaddafi wants us to shoot them – that's one reason why he sent them here. He calculates that if we do that, their families will vow revenge and come here to fight us. He has controlled Libya for 42 years by dividing people against each other. But this is over now. We are united against him."
To demonstrate how merciful the revolution was, Mr Al-Mortdy ordered that one of the men who was beyond doubt a committed killer be brought out of his classroom-prison to answer questions
Amir Hamada, 25 and from Tripoli, was a sniper with the supposedly elite Khamis Brigade, named after one of Gaddafi's sons. Their fighters were the most highly-trained and best-armed force in Libya.
But instead of crushing the rebellion, in Al-Bayda they wreaked havoc on a suburb, breaking into homes and killing people, before the anti-Gaddafi militia caught up with them and quickly put them to flight. Many are probably still in hiding in the fields around the city, having stripped off their uniforms.
Mr Hamada gave himself up after he was surrounded, and was doubly lucky to survive capture; not only did he belong to the most hated unit in Gaddafi's forces, but he was a sniper who had almost certainly shot down unarmed protesters.
He shifted uncomfortably during a brief interview in the school corridor – it was judged too dangerous to go into the room where he was being held with other Khamis Brigade men.
"Gaddafi is a coward," he mumbled unconvincingly after being prompted, looking down at the floor. "I had to obey orders. You have to in the army."
Mr Al-Mortdy said even he would probably be freed fairly soon. "These young men are brainwashed into loyalty to Gaddafi. As soon as the dictator is dead or flees abroad his spell over them will be broken. They won't be a danger to the new Libya once Gaddafi is gone."
But they asked The Sunday Telegraph not to disclose exactly where the prisoners were being held, for fear they would be lynched by angry townspeople. The militiamen armed with machine-guns were there to protect the prisoners, rather than stop them escaping. One look inside the classroom-prisons showed that there was no fight left in the captured mercenaries.
Elsewhere there was other evidence of captives being treated with kindness. In Al-Bayda's main hospital a young man of about 18 was recovering after suffering a terrible head injury in the battle at the airport. He was in a coma and no one knew his name.
In the next ward was Wail Abdul Salam, 25, brought in from the same battle with a bullet wound to the stomach which had caused appalling internal injuries. He was a policeman who had joined the protesters.
Dr Suleiman Rafadi, who spent years in London at Guys Hospital before returning home, was delighted that he had saved the lives of both men. "They are both Libyans, and in their different ways both victims of Gaddafi," he said, beaming hugely.
He admitted that the terrible injuries he had seen had left him shaken and angry. "The world must understand that we are being attacked by this criminal ruler," he said. "Why is he doing this to his own people?"
About fifty people were killed in Al-Bayda city and twenty more in a village near the airport. Dozens of anti-Gaddafi militia were killed or wounded during a terrific firefight at the airport where 3000 local men gathered to attack mercenary reinforcements as they disembarked from a plane.
Hundreds more were killed in battles in Benghazi and almost every other town in eastern Libya.
Wrecked tanks and burnt-out police stations were testimony to the ferocity of the uprising and the battles when the mercenary counter-attack arrived, for miles along the coast road and in all the major towns west of the Egyptian border.
The departure lounge floor at Labrak airport was littered with smashed glass and cartridge cases, with blood smears across the white tiled floor from battle casualties. Giant rocks had been dragged across the runway to stop any more attempts to land mercenaries and a few jumpy-looking militia men were still around in case they tried again.
In halting Arabic, Mohammed, the young Chadian, tried to explain how he had ended up on the wrong side in somebody else's revolution.
Mohammed drifted into Libya looking for casual work, like many sub-Saharan Africans, perhaps with the hope of eventually finding people smugglers who would take him across the Mediterranean to Europe.
"I wanted a better life, not war and destruction," he said. He insisted that he had been treated well since his surrender, with regular meals, and said he hoped he would be allowed to return home soon.
"I didn't really know what was going on. They told me to do these things and I was really scared when the shooting started."
From his mumbled, incoherent account it was clear that he didn't really understand himself how it had happened.
He was a boy with a quiet, pleasing manner and dreamy eyes, who spoke slowly and tried to be helpful. He looked ridiculous, wearing a windcheater indoors with the hood up. He must have wanted nothing more than to get back to life with his goats in Chad. What horrors he had witnessed during his brief career as a militia thug could only be guessed at. The violence was horrific.
The Sunday Telegraph was shown video footage shot on mobile phone cameras of a young protester being shot in the head by a secret policeman during a demonstration, slumping lifeless to the ground with blood pouring from his head. Another showed a captured mercenary lynched from a street lamp after he had surrendered. A third film showed a black African hanging on a meathook, with angry young men crowding round to stare at his corpse.
The man most responsible for Mohammed's ordeal – excepting Colonel Gaddafi himself – was being held in an adjoining classroom, with the rest of the Libyan prisoners.
"I am sorry for what happened," said Othman Fadil Othman, a Gaddafi loyalist from the southern town of Sabha, just across the Chad border.
He was a small cog in a cruel machine of repression, although possibly a willing one. It was Mr Othman who had approached Mohammed at the bus station in Sabha as he rounded up recruits. Now Mr Othman was desperately trying to excuse himself.
"Gaddafi betrayed us all. We were told we were being sent east to stage demonstrations in favour of Colonel Gaddafi. I didn't know there was going to be an attack on the protesters."
It seemed more likely that Mr Othman was trying to save his skin than tell the truth. A beefy, confident man of 30, with three wives and several children back home – he told us with a smirk – he spent a career as a party organiser in Gaddafi's bizarre Soviet-style dictatorship, telling people what to do.
He worked for the youth wing headed by the dictator's son Saeef. Mr Othman still couldn't quite bring himself to condemn the colonel. It was painfully obvious that he was hopelessly unsuited for Gaddafi's attempt to terrorise his own people into submission.
Like nearly all the captives Mr Othman had no military training. Unleashing thugs and mercenaries like him had backfired disastrously.
Instead of being cowed, Libyans were appalled that their dictator was murdering his own people with foreign killers, and the could see that instead of a formidable security operation, Gaddafi's ragbag army ran away as soon as protesters fired back. Horrified and growing in courage at the same time, Libyans all over the east rallied to the protesters' cause.
Beaten and captive, Mr Othman was doing his best to do what political organisers everywhere try to do in a tight corner – talk their way out of trouble. He oozed unconvincing gratitude for his captors. "I thought they would shoot me when we were captured," he said. "But they have treated us so kindly."
The chances are he will be reunited fairly soon with his three wives.
"Some of them are completely innocent people who were duped, some of them were sent here by Gaddafi to make Libyans kill each other," said Abdullah Al-Mortdy, a lawyer who has become one of the captors of the mercenaries.
"Some of them who organised the attack will have to face a trial, but they will not be executed. We are a merciful people and they will be treated leniently," he said.
"Most of them are victims of Gaddafi's system. Gaddafi wants us to shoot them – that's one reason why he sent them here. He calculates that if we do that, their families will vow revenge and come here to fight us. He has controlled Libya for 42 years by dividing people against each other. But this is over now. We are united against him."
To demonstrate how merciful the revolution was, Mr Al-Mortdy ordered that one of the men who was beyond doubt a committed killer be brought out of his classroom-prison to answer questions
Amir Hamada, 25 and from Tripoli, was a sniper with the supposedly elite Khamis Brigade, named after one of Gaddafi's sons. Their fighters were the most highly-trained and best-armed force in Libya.
But instead of crushing the rebellion, in Al-Bayda they wreaked havoc on a suburb, breaking into homes and killing people, before the anti-Gaddafi militia caught up with them and quickly put them to flight. Many are probably still in hiding in the fields around the city, having stripped off their uniforms.
Mr Hamada gave himself up after he was surrounded, and was doubly lucky to survive capture; not only did he belong to the most hated unit in Gaddafi's forces, but he was a sniper who had almost certainly shot down unarmed protesters.
He shifted uncomfortably during a brief interview in the school corridor – it was judged too dangerous to go into the room where he was being held with other Khamis Brigade men.
"Gaddafi is a coward," he mumbled unconvincingly after being prompted, looking down at the floor. "I had to obey orders. You have to in the army."
Mr Al-Mortdy said even he would probably be freed fairly soon. "These young men are brainwashed into loyalty to Gaddafi. As soon as the dictator is dead or flees abroad his spell over them will be broken. They won't be a danger to the new Libya once Gaddafi is gone."
But they asked The Sunday Telegraph not to disclose exactly where the prisoners were being held, for fear they would be lynched by angry townspeople. The militiamen armed with machine-guns were there to protect the prisoners, rather than stop them escaping. One look inside the classroom-prisons showed that there was no fight left in the captured mercenaries.
Elsewhere there was other evidence of captives being treated with kindness. In Al-Bayda's main hospital a young man of about 18 was recovering after suffering a terrible head injury in the battle at the airport. He was in a coma and no one knew his name.
In the next ward was Wail Abdul Salam, 25, brought in from the same battle with a bullet wound to the stomach which had caused appalling internal injuries. He was a policeman who had joined the protesters.
Dr Suleiman Rafadi, who spent years in London at Guys Hospital before returning home, was delighted that he had saved the lives of both men. "They are both Libyans, and in their different ways both victims of Gaddafi," he said, beaming hugely.
He admitted that the terrible injuries he had seen had left him shaken and angry. "The world must understand that we are being attacked by this criminal ruler," he said. "Why is he doing this to his own people?"
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