International Criminal Court Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo yesterday asked that court judges issue arrest warrants for Col. Muammar Gaddafi, his son Saif Al Islam Gaddafi, and the head of intelligence, Abdullah Al Sanousi, for crimes against humanity committed against Libyan citizens since February.
Here are some scary excerpts from Moreno-Ocampo’s request:
The Revolutionary Committees have prepared lists with names of these purported dissidents; Security Forces have subsequently arrested and sent some to prisons in Tripoli where they have been kept naked in small cells and tortured.
26. Security Forces have also monitored internet and telephone communications to identify and arrest perceived dissidents. Those detained were forced to appear on State television to say that they were terrorists and had been drugged to participate in the demonstrations. Victims’ relatives were permitted to retrieve bodies of civilians killed in demonstrations only if they signed a paper stating that the victims were “rats” – the very same term used by GADDAFI in his speech of 22 February.
27. The arrests and detentions have been accompanied by cases of torture and/ or inhuman acts. Methods used to torture alleged dissidents have included tying electric wires around victims’ genitals and shocking them with electricity and whipping victims with an electric wire after tying them upside down with a rope connected to a stick (a method of torture known as Fallga). These methods have both been used in the current events.