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By Seraj Essul.
Tripoli, 2 July 2015:
Mohamed Al-Harizi, the head of the Justice and Construction Party’s Committees’ Council, who was released last . . .[restrict]night, says his kidnappers threatened to execute him next Monday and that one of them burned him with a lit cigarette.
The onetime spokesman for the National Transitional Council was seized on Sunday night and released late yesterday.
Giving details of his two-day abduction at a press conference this afternoon with his wife by his side, Harizi said that he genuinely expected to be killed, as threatened, on 7 July.
He explained that on Saturday, he had been aware of a car following him to his home in the capital’s Ben Ashour distict. The next day after leaving the Gharghour mosque where he had attended the late night Taraweeh prayers, “there was a Honda car with two armed men who got out and threatened me with guns”.
They forced him into the vehicle, blindfolded him and then drove for about half an hour.
Looking none the worse for his ordeal today, Harizi said that he had been taken to an unknown location, put in a room and his blindfold removed. After that, a man whose face was covered started to interrogate him.
“When I asked him who he was and why he was doing this, the man replied ‘you will see’,” Harizi said.
There were no specific demands such as a ransom, he explained. The abduction was, he said, simply because of his views about General Khalifa Hafter’s Operation Dignity.
It was at this point that he was told he would be executed on 7 July. The interrogator then took the cigarette that he was smoking and burned Hazizi on the lip, he claimed.
Asked by the media who he thought his abductors were, Harizi said that did not know, but that there were young men there in their 20s. It was clear, however, that they were supporters of Operation Dignity, he said.
Later the next day he heard shooting. People came into where he was being held, he said, took him away and left him below the elevated section of the Airport Road (locally known as the Iron Bridge). From there he managed to get to a police station and after that he was taken home.
“I did not expect to be released,” he stated, “especially after I was told I would be killed on 7 July”.
Thanking all those who were responsible for his freedom, he said that he was well known but others who had been seized and were being held prisoner were not. Libya should focus on them. “And there are many,” he said.
He described his abduction as an attempt to frighten him into silence. He would not be intimidated he said. “I will continue to speak out.” [/restrict]
