Human Rights Overview: Libya

Libya was reopened to international human rights monitors, including Amnesty International with an AI mission to Libya in February of 2004. However, little or no progress has been made in improving the human rights situation in the country. No significant steps were taken to shed light on other past human rights violations, including “disappearances.”

Legislation continues to prohibit the formation of associations or political parties outside the existing political system.

Unfair trials still deny dueprocess to defendants.

Political activist Fathi el-Jahmi has been detained without trial since March 2004, when he was arrested after he criticized the Leader of the Revolution, Colonel Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi, and called for political reform in international media interviews. He is currently held at an undisclosed location understood to be a special facility of the Internal Security Agency on the outskirts of Tripoli, and there are serious concerns about the conditions and his treatment in detention. In February 2005, he was ill, suffering from diabetes and other ailments, but receiving inadequate medical treatment. Since June 2005, he has reportedly been denied any family visits or access to receive mail or reading materials. He is believed now to be awaiting trial under Articles 166 and 167 of the Penal Code, charged with seeking to overthrow the government, slandering the Leader of the Revolution and contacting foreign authorities. However, Amnesty International considers him a prisoner of conscience and is calling for his immediate and unconditional release.

In 1999, six health professionals – five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor – were sentenced to death by firing squad. They were accused of deliberately infecting 426 children with the HIV virus while working in al-Fateh Children’s Hospital in Benghazi. A sixth Bulgarian defendant was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. Nine Libyan defendants were acquitted. The defendants had told AI delegates in February that their confessions, which they later retracted, had been extracted under torture, which included electric shocks, beatings and suspension by the arms. Independent international medical authorities have looked into the facts of the case and have stated that inadequate sanitation procedures at the hospital were the cause of the HIV, not the health workers. The appeals still are going on and international pressure is strong to release the defendants.

While Colonel Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi has stated that he would like to see the death penalty in Libya abolished, it is still in effect and the health professionals, among others, are still under death sentence.

There are continuing reports of migrants and asylum-seekers being denied access to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Many possible asylum-seekers are being forcibly returned to countries where they could be in danger of human rights abuse.

The Libyan authorities continue to fail to address human rights violations committed in previous years, including long-standing cases of political imprisonment, “disappearances” and deaths in custody. The fate of many prisoners who were killed or “disappeared” in Abu Salim Prison in Tripoli in 1996 remained unknown. In February 2004 Colonel Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi told AI that there had been armed clashes between prisoners and guards – the first official recognition known to AI that any incident had taken place in the prison. In April Colonel Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi affirmed the right of families to know what happened to their relatives during the incidents. However, by the end of the year no thorough, independent and impartial investigations were known to have been opened into deaths in custody in the past, including those that allegedly took place in Abu Salim Prison in 1996.

In May of 2006 the United States removed Libya from its list of terrorist-sponsoring states and granted full diplomatic recognition. Amnesty is hopeful that this new-found recognition will encourage Libya to fully respect all Human Rights as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.