Bodies of 53 apparent Gadhafi loyalists found in hotel

The bodies of 53 people, believed to be supporters of ousted Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, have been found in a hotel that was under the control of anti-Gadhafi fighters, Human Rights Watch said Monday.

The rights group said it found the bodies clustered together at Hotel Mahari in Sirte on Sunday. About 20 residents were putting the bodies in body bags to prepare them for burial when Human Rights Watch found them.

"We found 53 decomposing bodies, apparently (Gadhafi) supporters, at an abandoned hotel in Sirte, and some had their hands bound behind their backs when they were shot," said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director of Human Rights Watch.

"This requires the immediate attention of the Libyan authorities to investigate what happened and hold accountable those responsible."
Residents told Human Rights Watch investigators they found the bodies last week after the fighting in Sirte stopped and they returned home.

They identified some of the deceased as Sirte residents and Gadhafi supporters.

Officials with the National Transitional Council, Libya's new leadership, were not immediately available for comment.

A NATO official noted that Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has repeatedly applauded the Libyan council for saying it is committed to human rights, the rule of law and reconciliation.

"What's important for us is to see that they're doing their utmost to get this message out about restraint and pulling the country together," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the official is not authorized to speak by name on the record. NATO has "no way of verifying" the Human Rights Watch report and will not comment on it specifically, the official said.

The human rights group's report comes amid growing concerns about extrajudicial killings under Libya's new leadership.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told CNN Sunday that the United States supports calls by the United Nations and by Libya's National Transitional Council for an independent investigation into the death of Gadhafi. He was killed last week by a gunshot wound to the head.

Mahmoud Jibril, executive chairman of the National Transitional Council's executive board, has said Gadhafi's right arm was wounded when a gunbattle erupted between the fighters and Gadhafi loyalists as his captors attempted to load him into a vehicle.

More shooting erupted as the vehicle drove away, and Gadhafi was shot in the head, dying moments before arriving at a hospital in Misrata, Jibril said, citing the city's coroner.

Human Rights Watch, in its statement Monday, complained of the "still unexplained deaths" of Gadhafi and his son Mutassim while in the custody of fighters.

"At the site where Moammar Gadhafi was captured, Human Rights Watch found the remains of at least 95 people who had apparently died that day. The vast majority had apparently died in the fighting and NATO strikes prior to Gadhafi's capture, but between six and ten of the dead appear to have been executed at the site with gunshot wounds to the head and body," the group said.

A senior NATO official said Gadhafi's death came after he survived a NATO airstrike on a convoy in the Sirte area.

Mustafa Abdul Jalil, chairman of the NTC, said Monday in Benghazi that the council has established a committee to deal with Gadhafi's body. "The procedure will follow a fatwa made by the Islamic fatwa society," he said.

Lt. Gen. Charles Bouchard, commander of the NATO military operation, said at a news conference Monday, "We saw a convoy, and in fact we had no idea that Gadhafi was on board." It was a surprise that Gadhafi was in the area, Bouchard said. The convoy was carrying weaponry, and seemed to present "a clear threat to the population," he said.

Human Rights Watch, in its statement Monday, also reported other instances of bodies found recently in Sirte.

At a separate site in the city, "Human Rights Watch saw the badly decomposed bodies of 10 people who had apparently also been executed," the group said. "The bodies had been dumped in a water reservoir in District 2 of the city. The identity of the victims was unknown, and it was not possible to establish whether Gadhafi forces or anti-Gadhafi fighters were responsible."

Sirte, Gadhafi's hometown, was one of the last cities to fall before the National Transitional Council declared the country liberated Sunday following his 42-year rule.

However, anti-Gadhafi fighters from Misrata had controlled the area of Sirte where the hotel is located since early October, Human Rights Watch said, citing witnesses.

On the entrance and walls of the hotel, the group said, it saw the names of several brigades from Misrata.

Based on the condition of the bodies, the group's investigators determined the 53 had been killed between October 14 and 19.

"The evidence suggests that some of the victims were shot while being held as prisoners, when that part of Sirte was controlled by anti-Gadhafi brigades who appear to act outside the control of the National Transitional Council," Bouckaert said.

"If the NTC fails to investigate this crime it will signal that those who fought against Gadhafi can do anything without fear of prosecution."

In addition, medical officials in Sirte told the group that pro-Gadhafi forces had carried out killings in the city and that they had found 23 bound bodies between October 15 and 20.

Historic elections in Tunisia

Tunisia was the first Arab country this year to overthrow its long-ruling dictator. And it now is the first country of the Arab Spring to hold an election, one that international observers are calling remarkably free and fair.

"Yesterday they showed an Arab country can administer an election that's well run, that gives people an opportunity to choose their own destiny," Ambassador Richard Williamson, an election monitor from the International Republican Institute, said Monday. "It was an enormous victory for the Tunisian people."

Millions of Tunisians turned out Sunday to elect representatives to a new 217-seat assembly that will be charged with writing a new constitution. The National Constituent Assembly also is likely to lay down the framework for a future system of government in this North African country.

Tunisia's main election commission said final results for the vote would not be published until Tuesday afternoon. However, at least one of the major parties competing in the vote has conceded defeat.

Mahmoud Smaoui, media coordinator for Tunisia's secular PDP party, told CNN his party was projected to have come in fourth in Sunday's election. He said the PDP was soundly beaten by the moderate Islamist Ennahada party, which he believed captured first place.

During the pre-election campaign, PDP leaders staked out a fiercely secularist position while also routinely accusing Ennahada of threatening to subvert Tunisia's secular system of government. Ennahada officials responded by calling this a campaign of "fear mongering."

"We salute the beginning of the democratic process in Tunisia. We wish good luck to the majority, which is constituted mostly of the Islamist party and other allied parties," Smaoui said in a phone call with CNN. "We will not participate in the (future) government, no matter what the proposal is."

In a democracy, he said, "there is a majority in power and then a minority in opposition. ... We in the opposition will have the chance to reinforce our party."

Meanwhile, officials from Ennahada told CNN they are pleased with preliminary results.

"I think results are very good for us," said Moadh Kheriji, chief of staff to Rachid Ghanouchi, the head of Ennahada. Kheriji said he believes there is the possibility his party captured more than 35% of the vote, though he added that he was waiting for official results.

Officials from both Ennahada and the PDP told CNN they believe two other secular parties appeared to be poised to capture second and third place, Mustafa Ben Jaafar's Ettakatol and Moncef Marzouki's Congress for the Republic [CPR].

CNN could not independently confirm these conclusions. But they appeared to match the estimates of international election monitoring groups.

"It doesn't look like any party is going to be over about 35 to 40%," said the International Republican Institute's Williamson. "Coalitions will be necessary."

Politicians from all four parties -- Ennahada, Ettakatol, CPR and PDP, -- were persecuted and either exiled or banned from participating in politics under the regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Unlike the PDP, however, Ettakatol and CPR appear to have friendly ties with Ennahada.

"We're happy that the second and third party are serious parties that never resorted to scare tactics," said Ennahada's Kheriji.

Ambassador Williamson of IRI predicted Tunisia's emerging political parties will have to overcome long legacies of opposition politics.

"No one's going to have a majority of this new constituent assembly," he said. "So they're going to have to learn collaboration and cooperation and compromise. And in Tunisia for 43 years ... none of these things existed. So its going to be a difficult and challenging period. But to be successful they've got to develop those political skills."

Mohamed Kamez Jendoubi, the head of the country's election commission, said Monday that more than 80% of the North African nation's registered voters cast ballots the previous day. Some waited three hours, in lines looping around polling stations, to have their say in what is Tunisia's first national elections since it became independent in 1956.

"It's fabulous," said Jendoubi. "There were lines (at the polling stations) in the north, south, east and west. People were well disciplined. Normally Tunisians don't wait in line."

The vote was historic not only in Tunisia, which, until January for had been ruled for 23 years by Ben Ali, but also in the region in the world. Since Ali was ousted in January -- a month after 26-year-old street vendor Muhammad Al Bouazizi set himself afire after a police officer seized his goods -- residents in several other Arab nations have similarly rallied for democratic reforms and against their leaders, many of whom have been in power for decades and allowed little dissent.

Sunday's election was a stark contrast, with voters able to choose from members of more than 60 political parties.

Jane Harman, a former U.S. congresswoman from California who now heads the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said Tunisia deserves praise. She said she hopes its open, democratic election, like its decision to pressure its authoritarian ruler, is followed by others in the region.

"Tunisia has set a marker here, a marker for what you do from a standing start -- they had nothing going on here except two decades of autocratic, corrupt rule (until) nine months ago," Harman said Monday. "This is how you do a fair election, this is how people participate, and this is how you open it to the world to see it."

Tunisia Afrique Pressesaid 4,100,812 people registered to vote prior to the election in a country of more than 10 million. But Jendoubi said many unregistered voters -- "mostly youth and women" -- showed up Sunday for last-minute registration.

leader says: Sudan's rebels prepared to attack

The leader of Sudan's best-armed rebel group says an offensive against Khartoum could come soon if the Sudanese government rejects renegotiating the Darfur peace agreement.

London-based Gibril Ibrahim, foreign secretary of the Justice and Equality Movement, or JEM, said in e-mails with CNN that the movement would prefer to achieve peace by putting pressure on President Omar al-Bashir's regime to sit down at the negotiating table again.

But Ibrahim said that although JEM has been engaging in negotiations with Khartoum since before the armed struggle in Darfur began in 2003, the government has failed to convince rebels that it is a genuine peace partner.

"Unless we take the war to the seat of the throne of the regime in Khartoum, the regime will never care to rectify the situation or faithfully seek peaceful settlements," Ibrahim said.

He added that the JEM's leader, Khalil Ibrahim, who had recently returned to Darfur from his year-long exile in Libya, is reorganizing the civil and military organs of the movement and working to create a coalition bringing various armed movements and the political opposition together.

That would include the two factions of Darfur's other main rebel group, the Sudan Liberation Movement or SLM, Gibril Ibrahim said.

Sudanese State Minister Amin Hassan Omar discredited the threats in a phone interview with CNN.

"We don't believe that they have this capacity or the force" to topple the government, Omar said. "That would be like committing suicide. ... They would be considered terrorists."

While the JEM and other movements confirmed they will join in a peace workshop slated for October 27-28 in Washington, the government has declined to participate.

The peace agreement -- signed in July by only one Darfuri rebel group, the Liberation and Justice Movement, or LJM -- was "the document of the people of Darfur, not just some sort of negotiation between the government and the LJM," Omar said in explaining the government's rejection of new talks.

He added that resistance movements have been invited to join the Doha agreement in the three months since it was signed but instead choose to threaten with force.

"We are not intimidated by their talk," Omar said. "Our alliance is with the people of Darfur."

This year alone, some 70,000 people from Darfur, a province in western Sudan the size of Spain, have become displaced by aerial bombardments, according to a June 2011 Human Rights Watch report.

Omar refused to comment on accounts of at least 100 aerial bombardments this year, saying the allegations were made by Darfuri rebels and that United Nations-African Union and other international observers have a presence in the area.

Ibrahim said the military tactics Khartoum had used during the civil war in southern Sudan -- which became an independent country on July 9 --and those used in Darfur were very similar to those the government applied in the current conflicts in Sudan's two flashpoint border states, South Kordofan and Blue Nile.

"It is no secret that JEM forces in South Kordofan are fighting the forces of the regime by the side of the SPLA-N," the JEM leader said, referring to the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army-North. That group is the northern faction of South Sudan's main political party, which has been engaged in war against Khartoum in South Kordofan since June.

Since summer, more than 250,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in South Kordofan and Blue Nile, the United Nations says.

An estimated 300,000 people have died in the Darfur conflict and well over 2 million have been displaced since 2003. Al-Bashir and two other officials are wanted for crimes against humanity and genocide in Darfur by the International Criminal Court.

Clinton say thanks to Malta for help with Libya

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited the Mediterranean island nation of Malta Tuesday and thanked authorities there for their help during the war in Libya.
Clinton met with Maltese Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi in the capital city of Valletta, the State Department said.


"The Prime Minister and I discussed the importance of supporting the democratic aspirations of the Libyan people. They are beginning to build a new future for their country and they have a long road ahead," Clinton said in a State Department statement.
Earlier this year, American citizens and embassy staff were evacuated from Libya to the nearby island, Clinton said.
"Malta's unique geography, history, and expertise will make it a valued partner in this work," Clinton said.

Nationalities of 8 dead identified in plane crash in Botswana

A plane that crashed in Botswana killed a British pilot and seven European passengers, an official said Tuesday.
The pilot and passengers -- three French, three Swiss and one Briton -- died when the Cessna 208 went down Friday shortly after taking off from Xakanaka Airfield near the country's northern Okavango Delta region, according to a Civil Aviation Authority spokesman.


The plane was headed for the island of Pom Pom, a tourist and safari destination.
Four others aboard the Moremi Air flight survived the crash, including two French passengers and two Botswanans.
Authorities said rescue and investigation teams were dispatched to the scene of accident.

Libya's dinars disappear and funding a revolution

When Libya's National Transitional Council set up shop in the capital, Tripoli, it found the cupboard was bare.
"We only had $13.5 million in the Central Bank of Libya," according to Ali Tarhouni, the oil and economy Minister and one of the first senior officials of the NTC to arrive in the capital.
Moammar Gadhafi was on the run, but an acute shortage of Libyan dinar -- the national currency -- threatened to stop the revolution in its tracks.
"I was willing to do anything to get the urgent needs to the Libyans," Tarhouni said last week. "We used parallel markets in the exchange of the money."


"Parallel markets" meant wealthy currency dealers in Benghazi, who apparently had many more dinar at their disposal than Gadhafi's Central Bank in Tripoli or the rebels' own Central Bank in Benghazi. With names like Golden Dinar and Sahara International, they became the financial lubricant of anti-Gadhafi forces.
The NTC's financial arm, the Temporary Financing Mechanism, had by then already tapped into this informal network of foreign exchange dealers, but not without some controversy.
Early in August, according to one source familiar with the TFM's dealings, it exchanged $10 million at a rate of 1.45 dinar to the dollar. The source said that was less than the prevailing market rate of 1.55 dinar, suggesting that the dealer involved did exceptionally well.


Another transaction later in August also appeared to be at less than the market rate.
"On what basis did they choose those dealers and those exchange rates?" the source asked.
One currency dealer in Benghazi, Ibrahim Salaby, said the TFM's dealings smacked of favoritism..
The TFM says all its dealings have been transparent. It says it had to use the "parallel" market and was sanctioned to do so by the rebels' "Central Bank," which was established in Benghazi soon after Gadhafi's forces were ejected from the city.
TFM officials said the central bank simply did not have the available funds to exchange large sums of cash, so it designated exchange dealers to be used.
E-mails obtained by CNN suggest that those dealers drove a hard bargain with the TFM. One wrote in August that he was withdrawing an offer to exchange at a rate of 1.45 dinar to the dollar because "no transfer was made, with situation changing in Libya. ... Therefore we had to change the ex-rate to be 1.3LD/US."


In the chaos of the uprising, there was plenty of cash floating -- and flying -- around Libya. Much of it came from the Gulf and went to groups and fighters beyond the NTC's control.
On one occasion, according to the TFM's director, Mazin Ramadan, a currency trader arrived at Benghazi airport short of 20,000 dinar. The money was due to leave on a flight to aid civilians in the western mountains who hadn't received salaries and pensions. Time was short, and a TFM official who had previously spent his own cash on a project was told to take an equivalent sum from a stockpile of cash held on board the plane. A guard thought he was stealing and reported the incident.


"It was a bad judgment call on his part," says Ramadan of the official, "and I paid for it through the gossip channels."
"It was a big mistake not communicating every step of our work. We were too busy getting things done," Ramadan says.


But he insists the TFM has had plenty of oversight. "We have a steering board which includes a representative from the governments of Qatar and France. We have an independent financial managing agent....They have to approve every transaction, every exchange and every project we do," he told CNN in an e-mail.
As for the shortage of Libyan dinar, that has eased, in part thanks to the Royal Air Force. At the end of August it flew banknotes worth 280 million dinar to Benghazi, part of a stock of 1.86 billion dinar that had been frozen in the United Kingdom with the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1970.

Somali militants threaten to enter Kenya

Islamic militants in Somalia have threatened to "come into Kenya" if Kenyan forces do not leave Somalia, according to an online message posted on a jihadist website.
"Kenyan troops have entered 100 kilometers into Somalia, and their planes are bombarding and killing residents," said Sheikh Ali Mahmud Ragi, spokesman for Al-Shabaab, an Islamic extremist group considered a terrorist organization by the United States, in the posting. "We shall come into Kenya if you do not go back."


Kenyan forces crossed into Somalia to pursue Al-Shabaab fighters after the recent abductions of tourists and aid workers in Kenya heightened tensions in East Africa. Kenya invoked the United Nations charter allowing military action in self-defense against its largely lawless neighbor.
"If you are attacked by an enemy, you have to pursue that enemy through hot pursuit and to try (to) hit wherever that enemy is," said Kenyan Defense Minister Yusuf Haji in a news conference aired on CNN affiliate NTV on Sunday.
Al-Shabaab, which is linked to al Qaeda, has been fighting to impose its own interpretation of Islamic law, or sharia, on Somalia.
On September 11, armed bandits broke into a beachfront cottage where Britons Judith and David Tebbutt, both in their 50s, were staying. David Tebbutt was shot dead while trying to resist the attack. His wife was grabbed and spirited away onboard a speedboat, and is believed to have been taken into Somalia.


On October 1, pirates made another cross-border raid, this time snatching a French woman in her 60s from a holiday home on Manda Island where she lived part of the year.
Earlier this month, gunmen abducted two Spanish workers from the medical charity Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) from the Dadaab refugee complex, about 80 kilometers from the Somali border.
Kenya announced its new tactics days after African Union forces claimed victory against Al-Shabaab in the Somali capital of Mogadishu. The military said last week it had taken the remaining Al-Shabaab strongholds in the far northeast of the city.


"The challenge is now to protect civilians from the sort of terror attack we saw last week, as they attempt to rebuild their lives," African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) spokesman Lt. Col. Paddy Ankunda said. He was referring to a suicide truck bombing in Mogadishu earlier this month that left dozens dead. Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility. Other Al-Shabaab attacks that week led to the deaths of at least 10 civilians.


Federal and African Union forces have battled Al-Shabaab in the impoverished and chaotic nation for years. Many analysts believe the AMISOM military push has severely affected Al-Shabaab, along with targeted strikes against organization members and the weakening of al Qaeda.
Al-Shabaab said in August it was withdrawing from Mogadishu, and Somalia's Transitional Federal Government, backed by African Union peacekeepers, now controls most districts of the capital city, the United Nations office has said.
However, the group still poses a threat, Ankunda has previously said.

Liberia election 'was not free and fair'

Opposition parties are protesting Liberia's election results, claiming irregularities in the voting process, but are ready to participate in a runoff next month, a spokesman for one party said Sunday.
President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a newly-named Nobel Peace laureate, received 44.6% of votes in 3,567 of 4,457 polling places, according to preliminary results released by the National Elections Commission.
But, "we don't trust NEC," said Samuel Tweah, spokesman for the Congress of Democratic Change, the main opposition party. The parties are "protesting the condition the election was reported by NEC due to irregularities."


"We are definitely going for a second round (of voting), but had to take a strong position," Tweah said. "... The election was not free and fair and irregularities marred the process."
According to the results, Johnson Sirleaf led diplomat Winston Tubman, who garnered 22.8% of votes, and former rebel leader Prince Yormie Johnson, who had 3%.
The winner must receive 50% of the tally to win. Final results of Tuesday's election must be reported by October 26.
The U.S.-based Carter Center said Thursday that the balloting was "was peaceful, orderly, and remarkably transparent." The center's election observation mission has been in Liberia since September 1, at the invitation of the NEC.


However, Tweah cited reports of ballot stuffing and discrepancies in the numbers.
"We are warning the international community to be more involved for a transparent election in the tally and reporting of results," he said. "But we are not staying away from the process."
The runoff is set for November 8.
After a 14-year civil war that devastated Liberia and left an estimated 250,000 people dead, voters are hoping for more peaceful and prosperous days ahead.
Johnson Sirleaf said she wants to preserve the peace.
"We've put in the fundamentals, the foundation -- the possibility to reach our accelerated growth and development, fix our infrastructure, the potential, and chances are so high," she said before the election.


Liberia faces many challenges: up to 80% of Liberians are unemployed and a majority live without basic necessities such as water and electricity.
The Congress for Democratic Change drew big crowds with its popular vice-presidential candidate: Liberia's most famous international football star, George Weah, Tubman's running mate.

3 women charged in series of sex attacks on men in Zimbabwe

Police in Zimbabwe on Friday charged three women found in possession of 33 condoms containing semen with 17 counts of aggravated indecent assault in a case that may be a break in a string of sex attacks over the past two years by women targeting male hitchhikers.
Prosecutor Michael Reza told a court in Harare that the counts were for each of the 17 men who had positively identified the women as having sexually assaulted them in 2010 or 2011.
The women, all of them in their mid-20s, were arrested Sunday in Gweru, about 300 kilometers (186 miles) south of Harare, when their car was involved in an accident. Police found the condoms in the women's car. Police appealed to any other victims to inform police.
The three were taken Wednesday by police to Harare.

"Since Monday, 17 men came and positively identified the women as having raped them," said a police official in Harare who refused to be identified. "Most of the men said the women would offer a drink either laced with something to tranquilize them or were forced at gunpoint."
Watch Ruparanganda, a professor of sociology at the University of Zimbabwe said : "Some sections of the society use these sperm for ritual purposes. The thinking is that it can be used for regeneration of life since they are source of life (biologically). Some people think that they can have their bad luck gone by using semen. I am sure that explains all this we have been witnessing (men being forced)."


The prosecution identified the suspects as Rosemary Chakwizira, 24, Sophie Nhokwara, 26, and her sister, Netsai Nhokwara, 24.
They were to be held in custody until their next appearance, set for October 28, when more charges may be filed.
"We might have had more victims come identify these women," said the police source.

Libyan leaders control new areas in Bani Walid

Libya's new government said it has control of new areas in Bani Walid as the battle rages on for one of the last cities loyal to the ousted ruler.

The city center and the northern part of the city are now under government control, said Ali Daeki, a member of the executive crisis committee.

Government forces have surrounded the city from all sides, and arrested more than 20 loyalists of former ruler, he said Saturday.

Troops loyal to Moammar Gadhafi are now in Dahra, a residential area in the southern part of the city, according to Daeki.

National Transitional Council fighters also battling for control in Gadhafi's hometown of Sirte, and will boost Bani Walid troops as soon as that battle is over, said Abdurahman Bousin, a council spokesman.

As the battle for control continues, the U.N. human rights office expressed concern on the number of prisoners in Libya and their treatment.

"It could be up to 7,000," said Mona Rishmawi, a senior official with the group in Geneva, Switzerland. "At this stage, there is no police infrastructure, there is no prison authorities. ... Right now, the Justice Ministry is not fully functional."

"There is allegations and evidence of torture" in the prisons, she said, citing lawyers, clients and human rights groups.

The Government forces take over Gadhafi stronghold

More symbols of Moammar Gadhafi's rule over Libya began to crumble Monday as forces of the country's new government took over one of the last cities loyal to him while others bulldozed the walls of his Libya compound.
Forces took over the city of Bani Walid on Monday, National Transitional Council military spokesman Abdelrahman Busin said.
Meanwhile, in Tripoli, fighters began bulldozing the outer walls of Gadhafi's Bab al Aziziya compound. Seizure of the compound by then-rebel forces in August marked the end of the regime.


Fighters participating in the effort said they may begin as soon as Tuesday to bulldoze a structure in the compound that Gadhafi called the House of Resistance, his former residence bombed by the United States in 1986 and frequently used as a site for speeches.
The fall of Bani Walid leaves Gadhafi's hometown of Sirte as the focus of military action by Libya's new government.
National Transitional Council forces will bolster their number in Bani Walid as soon as the battle for Sirte is over, Busin said.


As the battle for control of the last Gadhafi outposts continues, the U.N. human rights office expressed concern about the number of prisoners in Libya and their treatment.
"It could be up to 7,000," said Mona Rishmawi, a senior official with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland. "At this stage, there is no police infrastructure, there is no prison authorities. ... Right now, the Justice Ministry is not fully functional."


"There is allegations and evidence of torture" in the prisons, she said, citing lawyers, clients and human rights groups.
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland also expressed concern Monday for treatment of prisoners who are "being detained apparently on their skin color and an assumption that they have supported Gadhafi."
"We urge the (National Transitional Council) to honor its stated commitment to the rule of law and respect for the universal human rights of all people in Libya," Nuland said.