Libya Rebels Dumping Hundreds of Bodies in ‘Pro-Gadhafi’ Cemetery

Makeshift Prisons Fill Up With Dissidents, But Many More Are Missing

The Libyan rebel movement’s primary embarrassment at the moment is that their claims of “50,000” civilians slain by Moammar Gadhafi looks by early bodycounts to be about 49,000 too many. Bodies are turning up, however, and not the ones the rebels were hoping for.

Instead, reports have the rebel forces dumping hundreds of bodies in a “pro-Gadhafi” cemetary with no identification, slain by the rebels for some unexplained reason. Just one cemetery reported some 800 unidentified corpses.

It is unclear if these are slain members of the regime’s military, or simply dissidents. The rebels are also said to be converting a number of buildings into additional prison space, apparently out of concern that the prison-happy Gadhafi regime simply didn’t have enough room for the enormous numbers of people the new pro-NATO regime is detaining.

In Misrata, the rebels have filled a former school with detainees. None were charged with crimes but were said to have “committed crimes against Misrata” and that the local rebels would decide what to do with them. Reports have them looking for a bigger building, since the school is now packed with detainees.

The exact extent of the Libyan rebel crimes will likely remain unclear for some time, as the unexplained depopulation of entire towns and the Misrata militia’s penchant for attacking the refugee camps they ordered black people into has left massive numbers of people missing without a trace.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.