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By Aimen Eljali and Ashraf Abdul-Wahab.
Tripoli, 26 August 2013:
An attempt by a group of armed men posing as protestors who tried . . .[restrict]to break into the Ruwaimi prison in Tripoli’s Ain Zara suburb and free inmates this afternoon has left almost a dozen people wounded.
According to a prison guard, who did not wish to be named, a group of protestors who arrived at the prison in the mid-afternoon started firing at guards and tried to force their way in through the main gate. At the same time, in what appears to have been a coordinated move, a number of prisoners started to break down doors inside the jail in a bid to escape. Some succeeded in gaining access to other parts of the prison before guards started shooting. The armed protestors outside were also fired on.
Other security forces were then rushed to the prison and roads in the area closed.
None of the prisoners managed to escape, the guard told the Libya Herald and, contrary to reports on social media, none of the prisoners had managed to get hold of guns, no one had been killed and none of his colleagues had been injured.
Earlier reports that that weapons had been smuggled into the prison the night before was also untrue, he said.
The wounded prisoners and protestors were taken to Tripoli Medical Centre, he added.
It has not yet been possible to confirm his version of events. The Libyan news agency LANA reports that eight people were injured, four of them prison guards. It also stated in an earlier report that the riot was ended “peacefully” through the use of peacefully through loudspeakers, smoke bombs, water cannons and tear gas, without a shot being fired.
One of the social media reports, also unverified, claims that the guards, angered by what had happened, beat a number of inmates, accusing them of being Qaddafi fanatics.
Many of the 500 prisoners are former Qaddafi officials as well as fighters for the former regime, a significant number of whom are said to be facing murder charges.
Earlier this month, 18 prisoners managed to escape when when a judicial police vehicle taking them back to Ruwaimi and another prison was ambushed by masked gunmen. The prison chief, Wissam Ismail Smeida, was murdered ten days earlier.
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