Local Benghazi residents turn on army unit accused of kidnap and torture

By Ayman Amzain.

Benghazi, 29 April 2013:

Local residents in the Benghazi’s East Selmani district last night decided to take the law into . . .[restrict]their own hands and kicked out members of an army brigade on their housing estate, whom they accused of criminal activity, destroying the building they were using.

The building, originally a local police station, had been taken over during the revolution and used by the brigade. It was integrated into the Libyan military following the killing last September of US Ambassador Chris Stevens, when there was a backlash against independent militias. However, according to locals, it remained a law unto itself, using the building as a jail for those it seized in its private morality clean-up campaign – drug and alcohol dealers, women accused of being prostitutes and others – and allegedly, tortured.

Ironically, members of the same unit were last month accused of raping a British woman involved in an aid convoy to Gaza. [/restrict]