By Libya Herald reporters.
Tripoli, 26 October 2015:
The director of Hadba prison has been suspended and arrest warrants issued for three guards . . .[restrict]following revelations in a video showing Saadi Qaddafi being abused, Human Rights Watch has revealed today,
HRW researchers went to the prison last month to see three Qaddafi-era figures condemned to death in July, Abdullah Senussi, Abdulzeid Dorda and Al-Baghdadi Al-Mahmoudi and well as Saadi, whose own trial is still under way.
HRW was told by Khalid al-Sharif, director of Hadba that the official in charge of the prison had been suspended.
When HRW visited Sadiq Al-Sour the chief investigator for general prosecutor Ibrahim Bashiya, he said that as a result of the torture video, arrest warrants had been issued for the three guards implicated but they had not yet been found. Two of them were still in Libya, he said, but one had gone abroad.
HRW explained that its researchers met each of the four high-level detainees for between 30 and 45 minutes, without guards.
Saadi had told them that he had been held in solitary confinement in a windowless cell, had had no communication with other prisoners and been denied private meetings with his lawyers during his pretrial detention in Hadba prison because of “ security concerns”. When HRW quizzed him about the nine-minute video that showed him being abused along with other detainees, he said that he had been “terrorised” and did not wish to go in to details.
Saadi revealed that he had been allowed a few calls to family members but only with a guard present. Past surgery had left him with back pain as well as breathlessness. He had received treatment in the hospital.
The human rights organisation learnt that Saadi’s trial was due to start its fourth session on 1 November.
Senussi, Dorda and Mahmoudi also, said HRW, alleged serious due process violations, including lack of private access to lawyers, the inability to call or question witnesses, the refusal of the judges to allow them to speak during their trials and the intimidation of their lawyers by “armed groups”. Mahmoudi also claimed that he had been mistreated during interrogation.
All three were among nine senior ex-regime figures sentenced to death in July, in the main for their actions in seeking to suppress the 17 February revolution. One of those facing a firing squad is Saif A-Islam who is held by the ZIntanis. HRW reported that Sour said he expected all nine to have submitted appeals by 28 September. The organisation said however that by law, the Supreme court automatically reviewed death sentences.
Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW’s MENA director warned: “The Supreme Court needs to address the many allegations of grave due process violations [made] by the defendants and their lawyers when it considers the appeals of the verdicts against the former officials”.
She added that the court now trying Saadi needed to ensure that he was granted his full rights.
HRW researchers also reported that in Tripoli they had met one of the defence lawyers who claimed that he had his colleagues had been threatened for taking up the cases. Besides not having private meetings with their clients, they had been denied access to some 30,000 pages of prosecution evidence. The 500 pages that they did receive arrived too late for them to study properly before their clients were called upon to plead.
The Libya Herald has been told but been unable to confirm that the suspended Habda prison chief is Mohamed Ghuwider. [/restrict]
