July 25, 2011
The following post will discuss a disturbing trend among Libya's rebel fighters, revealed in videos they themselves recorded and shared on social media sites, especially Youtube and Facebook. These have persisted despite a general ban on violent and gory images, perhaps for the posters' stated aims of supporting the rebel cause and freedom. Consider the inset screen capture from a video of at least four dead government soldiers being driven around Misrata, chased and insulted by the crowd.
For moths these have remained, some in several postings watched thousands of times each. But more and more people started noticing that these showed grossly inhumane atrocities, and said so. Consider these excerpts from an excellent article at "Pajamas Media."
While the International Criminal Court has announced that it is investigating charges of war crimes against Muammar al-Gaddafi and other members of the Libyan regime, harrowing video evidence has emerged that appears to show atrocities committed by anti-Gaddafi rebels. Among other things, the footage depicts summary executions, a prisoner being lynched, the desecration of corpses, and even a beheading. The targets of the most serious abuse are frequently black African prisoners. The ultimate source of the footage appears to be rebel forces or sympathizers themselves.
What is probably the most harrowing of the clips depicts a public beheading. A man with a long knife can be seen alternately sawing and hacking at the neck of a man who has been suspended upside-down. The victim’s inert body is soaked in blood. The beheading takes place in front of a burnt-out building in what appears to be a public square. The Dutch public broadcaster NOS has identified the location as the main square of the rebel capital of Benghazi.
A crowd numbering at least in the hundreds cheers on the assailants. At one point, a man begins chanting "Libya Hurra!": "Free Libya!" According to the NOS translation, someone can be heard saying, "He looks like an African." As the principal assailant begins to saw at the victim’s neck, members of the crowd yell "Allahu Akbar!" Dozens of members of the crowd can be seen filming the proceedings with digital cameras or cell phones. Video #3, as given there, is one I have covered in some detail as "the al Baida massacre." It shows nine government soldiers and/or suspected mercenaries, held captive by armed rebels. This article links to a (poorly) English-subtitled version I've now saved a copy of to bolster my previous analysis. That suggests the nine prisoners were accused of shooting at someone's car, but only, they swear, after being shot at. They are all clearly threatened with death, and as noted in the video, compiled for Al-Libya TV, at least one and probably all but two of these nine were among the 21 or 22 found the next morning executed. And those 22 were among 130 Gaddafi soldiers killed by the regime itself, according to the rebels and the West at large, despite this available video proof otherwise (see the link for details).
A longer list of eleven videos accompanied an e-mail sent to Business Insider and oddly re-published by them on April 18. This was re-posted on other sites as well in the following days, and I watched most of them. But I checked the links a week later, and it was sudden attrition - nearly all deleted for "terms of service violation" or terminated account. Documented below are simply the descriptions give for a few of the videos in that e-mail (no guarantee of correct characterizations or implications).
- the boy that the rebels beat up because he supported the gov...
- here is an old man beaten by the rebels
- here some girls from Benghazi who are not with the rebels where raped by the Rebels the peaceful with risk to bring the videos to the public... she is calling for the Libyan army to come to save them!!!
- they are doing it just like the americans.. humiliating sexually - that is a direct evidence of the rebel-CIA connection
- Libyan rebels behead,mutilate a soldier that surrenderd... where is the cnn? The last was still up, the "harrowing" video I cited above, and I saved a copy. (I've saved a lot of these, if anyone ever can't find any, I might have it). I had at first thought the sudden loss of videos showed an attack on them (spurring the saving spree). but it seems the above list was just too reliant on one or two sources. Other postings of most or all of these videos, plus many more, still abound. Here are a few I should have mentioned before but either didn't know of or think of them in time. I'll refrain from embedding them here, only giving optional links. Most people don't really need to see these things, just to know about them in general.
hesham shoshan.wmv
One famous video of a suspected mercenary (who denies it in Arabic but is called a liar), being beaten to death by a crowd in broad daylinght, left face-down on the blood-stained street with his pants pulled down, and later hanged upside-down by one leg. His name is given here as Hesham Shoshan, and elsewhere as Hisham Mansour, DOB: 22-2-1983. I'm not sure the date of this attack, but it was probably within a day or or two of his 28th birthday. 100% Libyan citizen. This video focusses on the family and fiance he left behind, speaking of him and/or his killers. Wish I knew what they were saying.
21-2-2011 Abuse soldiers Bawhita - التنكيل بالجنود بالبيضاء
Basically, a black man is threatened vigorously with death, by a small armed gang, for several minutes, until he's harangued into saying the right thing. The video cuts without a single death. Wish I knew what they were saying.
Another couple of vids with no visible gore but disproving the myth of "peaceful Protesters" slaughtered by the military. Here they filmed themselves taking the fight to a military base, and seem to be firing numerous weapons - one assault rifle is fired repeatedly into the barracks, trees inside are burning, and at another point (later) they fire in the air to celebrate an ambulance running out of the compound. Real nice. They reportedly stormed the place, probably after getting more guns, and then took more yet.
A famous video published on Feb 19 (still at right) shows the corpse of an "African Mercenary" killed and shown to a camera, described as seeming to be from Chad. But as has been noted, he seems to be wearing the uniform of Libya's internal security forces - and as far as anyone knows, they tend to hire only Libyans. They killed a cop, broke his fingertip off (extracting the merc confession?), possibly cut off his nose, and apparently shot him through the cheeks, as well as in the chest (which first?).
He was just sorta found that way, all over again it seems, in a video posted March 5, two weeks later, unburied in the desert. Does he look two-weeks dried up compared to the earlier video, or is it just video that's so old old? Isn't that considered an atrocity itself in Muslim society, where burial within 24 hours is mandated? Such niceties aren't for Afro-Merc dogs?
The "Chad mercenary" was, according to an online posting, from Az Zintan, south of Tripoli, and it seems others fled that deep desert town in the same days, and in late May, at least twelve bodies of black men were found in the desert to the south. In varying civilian clothes and frozen in their own final pathos, they were found half-mummified by prolonged exposure. I suspect they died there about two months prior, after being driven out there by an unwelcoming party. The sickening description on that (by a "Mr. Creosote" no less) says: "The survivors [sic] of a gang of Nigerian mercenary wretches [sic] who were forced to flee into the desert south of Az-Zintan are kept alive [??] by the heroes of free Libya. The gang fled into the desert without water, after coming under concerted attack." Why did the "mercenary wretches" cross the Sahara? To get to the other side? I don't think so.
On the survivor part, there is at the end of the video another scene of at least two living black men, shown being watered and cared for by someone. These tack-ons look emaciated, but clearly not "survivors" of the same doomed party as it was found and shown. Perhaps they were the ones who barely made it back to town after they were all dropped off for dead, but the rest seem a little close together to support much of a race. They may have been killed where they were, although none show any blood I noticed.
Then there's the "Libya's Western-backed revolution" series, posted by user Sonbakkah. With 25 parts so far, each covering a certain atrocity, it might be close to comprehensive. Some of them ... I've become jaded, but parts 2 and 13 in particular made the bottom drop from my stomach in horror and gave me serious pause. Some are not clear in their relevance - gory dead people with little clue who they are and how they died. Each is just the raw footage, or someone else's edit (Saif Gaddafi's al Libya TV, etc.), with the same text intro, no original audio (why not?), but the same very sad music that I quite like.
Part 1 - Misrata I believe, a scene others have written of - quite a crowd stands atop a burnt-out tank in a main square while they take turns displaying high for all to see charred pieces of something, in different sizes. I can't make any of them out, but one's said to be a man's heart, another part of his whole de-limbed torso. I don't see what else it would be that everyone wants to see. Sick people, if you ask me.
Part 2 - A lone man on a side-street trying to back away from and fake-fight a nasty gang of about eight pumped-up, possibly stoned young men, some in no shirts, dancing around, swinging clubs and small furniture at him. He might be black, seems skinny and possibly mentally deficient. They tear his white civilian shirt off, revealing a green undershirt, and it cuts before we see the end. Later, someone else I hope (lighter-skinned?) is shown, dead by then I hope, with slices from a heavy blade leaving guts, muscle, and bone visible, seeming to flex and breathe at one point as if alive. But then seeing the face I hoped not - sliced clean open, teeth, tongue, and nasal cavity are all right there. I can't go back and look again, sorry if I remembered wrong. I almost cried there... The story isn't clear. (update 7/18: The especially aggressive shirtless kid is wielding a sword, not a club, so this might well be the result ... at the start, it should be noted, a young boy tries to stop the swordsman but is ignored.)
Part 3 - The famous Benghazi beheading scene - didn't watch it, so it might be a variation.
Part 4 - Same thing by the still image, so unless two of the same were posted, we have at least two recordings from the sea of cameras filming that night.
Part 5 - Fascinating scene. It's nighttime, again in a main square somewhere, and a very large crowd surrounds a struggling black man attacked by some men who finally get a rope around his neck. A crane then yanks him up and leaves him dangling above the throng, which whack him with clubs like pinata. Mercifully, they shoot him a few times until dead after letting this drag on only a few seconds.
Part 6 - Another suspected mercenary, dead, hanging upside down from a fence of what seems a government facility. Stripped from the waist up, his shoulder is slashed open. It's daylight, and a pleased crowd is again taking pictures and video.
Part 7 - Two black men laying dead on debris-strewn ground, stripped from the waist up.
Part 8 - Again the "Al-Baida" massacre, 'dying soldier gets some water' version. I've counted 21 or 22 corpses in that courtyard (besides this likely actor), making this atrocity highly weighted relative to the rest, if not as bizarre and cruel as some. Like ...
Part 9 - A headless body, neck looking like stretched skin tucked behind - no visible blood. He's also suffered massive trauma to the legs, twisted, broken, swollen, almost unrecognizable, like a mutant with too many knees. One arm is also badly tweaked, with something hanging out of it. It looks like he was pulled through some kind of machine, or drawn and quartered. Possibly left in water and mud for a day or two? Again, the story's just not clear to me, no audio even for Arab speakers, but a document or letter is shown, perhaps barely readable.
Part 10 - A black man seated, tied up tight, surrounded by a small accusatory mob, scared, a pistol pressed tight against his head. One man in the back of the crowd is very eager to bring his large, shiny, sword into it, pointing it in, straining and cursing, but finally giving up. The gun is never moved for over 2 minutes but no direct violence is shown.
Part 11 - Very gory - a soldier in some junk-strewn warehouse, perhaps, with a lot of brain matter blown clear out of a vary large hole in his forehead, collapsing his otherwise intact face. He'd been shot from behind, while his head was over his right forearm, possibly while crawling. Spent casings lay in his blood. Something like seven or eight more dead soldiers in fatigues are panned across closely, piled against a far wall, partly covered in rubble. One has a head wrapped in bandages or cloth strips, none particularly gory. A few more are shown amid wreckage in the next room. Not really sure how much of an atrocity this was - soldiers die all the time in wars.
Part 12 - The same soldier (Hisham Mansour) covered above, and another shown being hanged, plus other Libyan soldiers killed in the massacres (no video available, sorry) have their paperwork and portrait photos in uniform shown. Apparently from al-Libya TV.
Part 13 - Seems to be a rooftop area. I don't know why, but there are body parts strewn about. They don't look like blown-up bodies, but torn up ones. In a recessed area with a rope net stretched across it, hang one dead body and two partial legs from different people (victims, 3). Then on the roof in the noonday sun, a human head, with a huge stretch of back skin attached. There's also an apparent bullet hole taking out his right eye and all surrounding tissue. It's pretty terrible stuff.
Part 14 - Several killed loyalists piled into the back of a jeep, some hanging over the sides. The bed is full of death and running with blood, an extra body stuffed in the passenger's seat, his slumped head pulled back for the camera.
Part 15 - The same soldier (Hesham Shoshan/Mansour) covered above, dead and bare-assed on the street, still being abused.
Part 16 - apparently missing. Must have been too horrible, the imagination supposes...
Part 17 - Dead soldiers or loyalists, two pickup truck beds full of them. The same video (which we opened with) is shown elsewhere as being from Misrata.
Part 18 - A man brings a torn-off leg into the hospital.
Part 19 - It looks like a man hanged in the green-painted gate of some official building, so one can't enter without bumping into it. His head is bent back, and someone standing up on the gate kicks it. A man in a jacket with "POLESI" (?) on the sleeve is pointing and directing others to do something, like clear the area. It's short, chaotic, and badly filmed.
Part 20 - Dead soldier, Arab in appearance, eyes frozen open, blood had come out his nose and mouth. The cameraman runs across a courtyard to where about six others are piled, hungrily zooming in on their bloodied faces and wounds. One has shirt and pants just soaked in blood, another, a nasty head shot.
Part 21 - the al-Baida massacre, behind the scenes as shown on al Libya, with longer interrogation footage than some versions.
Part 22 - A dead black man, naked, curled on the ground, partly covered with a blanket. He's got a bandage on his arm as if he'd had an IV installed earlier (snatched from a hospital? - I may have read an account of this racism-revealing incident where Arab government troops were spared). Another black soldier, I presume, lays on his back a few feet away, also dead, only half naked, nose bloodied.
Part 23 - Dead and reportedly burned soldiers beneath blankets. One looks like he was just badly sunburnt, others remain covered. Somewhere between nine and 12 bodies at least are present.
Part 24 - two dead soldiers in the bed of a pickup truck.
Part 25 - dead soldiers across the hood of a truck. Widely re-posted elsewhere.
That last was just posted June 16, and I suspect there are more coming. That'll do for me, however.
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Update June 29/July 5
I just found the site http://www.obamaslibya.com/, which then quickly disappeared - crashed or hacked, who knows. And I didn't know how to save any of them. Leave it to a spirited anti-Obama partisan to find the most horrible, disgusting-sounding videos I can't watch. I was able to view the first - a close-up knife beheading of a very frightened soldier truck driver (see below). Blessedly, the blade was sharp, but still, only a knife. A throat slitting is one thing, but it's another entirely when the butcher keeps on sawing when you know the victim is still alive and feeling his head come off. Are heavy swords or axes - or even mercy - that hard to come by in Libya? That left me shaking.
The second video I also saw, a re-post of one mentioned above - the extra bloody dead soldiers in a truck (see "part 14"). The third was just funny - an Islamist fighter declaring Jihad and then having his gun blow up in his hands. The others are few, unseen and now lost for the moment, and some I hope to God are mislabeled, exaggerated, something. Here are all the titles:
Libyan rebels behead Libyan Soldier
Libyan rebels Kill and steal weapons from Libyan Soldiers
CIA fighting rebels
Libyan Rebels sodimize Libyan Soldier with pistol
Libyan Protestors and Rebels hang and behead soldier
NATO bombs normal cars
Rebel forces Libyan Solider to cannibalize
Libyan Rebels Torture Small Child by Sticking a Pole Through His Body
:(
I Can't look any more, for two reasons at least. But if anyone's seen this last especially ... is it real? Do we know it was torture and not a horrible accident following an explosion, etc.? Even these monsters wouldn't film that, would they?
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Update July 18: Obama's Libya is back up - nothing new, just the same eight videos. I still can't find a way to save any of them. The sodomizing one is, again, killed soldier Hesham Mansour - I didn't notice before but the protesters stick what looks like a rifle barrel in his butt crack just before setting his boot on his butt. The "normal cars" NATO bombed are not a rebel atrocity and, according to a comment here, not even from this war, but from Iraq, a few years ago.
The child ... I watched that finally. It's from the Libya First website, as stamped, and he's a little trooper, making it less hard to watch. He's not really young, around 13 I'd say. He's awake, in pain, but staying calm in a hospital bed, as docotrs cut away his green shirt and prepare for surgery. It looks like a very bizarre accident or purposeful torture - the pole is thin, and does seem to run through his body, from his crotch area (it's shown, as modestly as possible, but I can't focus enough to see just where - it all looks strange) to his left shoulder, and sticking out of both ends. It seems just under the skin in spots, or just inside the rib cage in others, apparently piercing no major organs.
Does anyone more knowledgeable have anything to share regarding the story here? The text overlay gives this as happening in Misrata, where the government has alleged some other very heinous abuses... (see below)
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July 5/6, later: Libya S.O.S. adds more videos, via a comment below. One post to start with, showing six videos embedded, but without working Youtube links: http://libyasos.blogspot.com/2011/06/bloody-scandal.html
top video: see "part 13" - re-post.
middle: See "part 19", this is an addition - the dead soldier (?) first being hoisted up - on a meat-hook under his chin (I may have read of this in an article recently).
Third and fifth, re-posts (al Baida massacre).
Fourth, new to me - dead soldiers in the street, heavily shot up - one's head is just a pile of mush. No particular cruelty shown - war is hell, and the rebels started it.
Sixth: I've seen it and even saved a copy, but didn't link here yet - no guts but lots of blood surround two dead, black, soldiers on the cobblestones near their truck, abused and insulted by the victors as they dig in their pockets, maybe for proof the were Chadian mercenaries. He also mocks a stomp of disdain on one of them.
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July 18: Select others from Libya S.O.S., many available under the same titles at their Youtube channel:
(V) A family been raped by the Rebels
[with their clothes on? I don't know about this one - lots of blood, an attractive lady and possibly pre-teen daughter, laying face down, dead, fully clothed (though in skirts), in a living room, in huge pools of blood. One still image at 1:05, long slow text additions before and after. The image I've seen elsewhere, given as Misrata, and had the mother's blood centered at chest level, possibly tying in with the Misrata rebel rape-and-breast-removal stories I'm skeptical of.]
(V) Rape in Libya
[Speak of the devil - the story elaborated on Libyan TV, confessed by a former rebel. I didn't watch the interview, but read the transcript, provided.]
(V) Martyr blood of Varffala in Libya (+18)
[A backup posting of the knife beheading mentioned above - with added details in the text beneath:
"In the video, a man lost his life at the hands of "peaceful rebels".( March 20.2011.) Western-backed Al Qaeda rebels aka 'democracy seekers' beheaded Mr. Hamza al-Gheit Fughi , a truck driver from the Varfalla tribe. They beheaded him because he was pro-Gadaffi. and let that be a lesson to the others, huh?]
(V) Cutting BABY's fingers, legs and hands (+18)
[two small children, a baby, and a heavyset adult dead (apparently for some days) in a muddy room that was blown open by shelling or something. One child is missing half a leg, the baby part of an arm, the adult maybe parts of legs, and part of a hand is also shown. It doesn't look intentional, and it's not clear whose weapons did this.]
(V) BURNED SOLDIER (+18)
[Soldier shot in the street, dead, much blood, is then set on fire by sick people and gasoline for a moment. It doesn't work, the lens steams up (?), and they start to drag him away.]
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