The Syrian Strategy- Idlib Province, Syria

Mohamed from Benghazi

TRIPOLI- This is Mohamed from Benghazi.

The last time I saw him was in Al Jdaida prison on May 10 or so.

He was the first guy I met in Jdiaida. We were shuffled into the same crowded cell on the same day. We always seemed to be on the same prison bus to the courthouse because of this timing. He taught me to time my steps up the court house stairs in leg chains.

One time some young guys who looked like soccer frans also wearing wrist and ankle chains, yelled "fuck you" at me, probably trying to ingratiate themselves with the guards. Mohamed just nodded. He knew how to take abuse.

He was pretty unflappable unless he didn't get enough cigarettes or food. Both of which he was sure he and I had while we shared the cell with 8 other guys.

Once when we were lined up outside for the court bus, one of the prison managers known for wearing a big picture of Muammar around his neck told Muhamed to say "Muammar Libya or Bes!" pointing to the picture. Mohamed seemed puzzled. He kept saying "huh?"

Mohamed said he was shot in the leg trying to open the cells of his fellow prisoners in Jdaida. He had been organizing the men to break while he was on prison food delivery. He managed to get out and with a kalashnikov go back in to free more.

Now he is married, and considerably slimmer. He lost his younger brother in Ajdabiya; and is living in a small container house on the outskirts of Tripoli.

War crimes alleged in loyalist town Bani Walid

 BANI WALID- This tribal city of approximately 100,000 captured the world's attention in September 2011 when it was reported that loyalists here were harboring Saif Islam Gaddafi, who fled to the mountainous region after the fall of Tripoli.

Thousands of rebel groups from western Libya descended in heavily armed trucks to smash the loyalist hold outs and capture Saif. They didn't get him.

Bani Walid sits on a series of hills that provide excellent cover for snipers and range for rocket launchers. Hundreds of rebels were killed and wounded in attempts to assault the city head on. Bani Walid only surrendered after rebels gained controlled over most of its center and destroyed hundreds of buildings on October 17.

At the end of January, armed men in Bani Walid struck back, clashing with and pushing out a rebel militia who they blamed for abuses, kidnappings and looting. Now the town council said they will only accept the presence of "national" military and police. Although hard to define, the local council's independence demands probably amounts to a lot of self-policing for now to prevent future bloodshed.

(See video) Citizens of Bani Walid complained of rebels looting and burning their houses during and after the siege. "80 percent were thieves," one local said.

We were led to two civilian houses that had been completely burned inside. Their owners pointed out holes in the yard where they said rebels were looking for cash and gold that the people might have buried to prevent getting robbed.

We were also shown a house that appeared flattened by heavy bombs. The locals said this was a NATO strike that killed a family of seven living there. It seems possible that NATO bombs which destroyed a warehouse-looking area across the road may have also overshot the target and hit the civilian house. Such warehouses were reportedly being used as supply dumps and weapons factories.

If the family was killed, it was a horrible mistake and should be added to the growing list of civilians killed by errant NATO bombs. (A NYT investigation reported between 40-70 civilians killed in NATO air strikes during the Libyan revolution.)

When we asked people in Bani Walid why they harbored Saif Islam, one dean of a polytechnic college explained that it was Islamic tradition to harbor anyone seeking safety at your house. Another man said he saw Saif Islam in Bani Walid during the siege, but he was just "talking... but nobody listened to him because Tripoli finished". The people certainly suffered for harboring him.

Bani Walid is angry. Its people resent NATO and look at the rebel "Thawar" as thieves and worse. Just today we were told a story of a group of rebels from Tripoli's Souk Jouma who captured two brothers originally from Bani Walid inside a family shop in Tripoli. Their family is pleading for the brothers lives, but the rebels have yet to turn them over. Most likely the capture was a reprisal based solely on where the family was from and also a target of opportunity. The family of the brothers reported $70,000 missing from the shop.

February 17 in Tripoli: paper lanterns over gunfire

February 17th, anniversary of the start of the Libyan revolution. The square where Gaddafi once held massive rallies was filled with tricolored flags and fireworks. Instead of the usual celebratory gunfire thousands of paper lanterns filled the night sky.

"They were souvenirs for my kids"

We crossed from Tunsia into Libya in two battered mini vans, cases of potable water, cans of tuna and a few gallons of gasoline in back. It was a little over three months since I’d been released from Tripoli captivity. Now I was headed back in with six other journalists for the capital that had fallen days before.

We got our passports stamped with a new Libyan visa inside a container on the sand dune outskirts of Zintan. I watched the sun rise. Clare, Manu and I all vowed we’d come back. I didn’t want people to think I was crazy, and I waited months to make sure that I wasn’t. But I would have paid to return a few days earlier to see the battle of Bab Al-Aziziyah, instead of watching it from GlobalPost offices in Boston.

(photo: An African prisoner held in Tripoli in late Aug.)

Instead, I witnessed the Corinitha— Tripoli’s five-star hotel, gripped by intermittent electricity, no running water and overflowing with journalists, even camping on couches in the lobby. I met the American prisoner, Matthew Van Dyke the first night in the cavernous lobby, still in his black prison clothes and looking as gaunt and traumatized as one of the articles described him when he was freed and found wandering around Tripoli.  Matthew held in solitary for six months in cells so small you couldn’t take four paces in. He was still in a fog but I was fascinated to talk to him.

During the day I scrambled in Tripoli, trying to follow the story of black Africans who had been imprisoned following the regime’s collapse. The rebels seemed to be locking up mere illegal immigrants, Nigerians, Chadians who'd crossed into Libya without papers. 

I stumbled upon the prison where Clare, Manu and I had first been held. A rebel guard told me that Richard Peters, the voice who had prayed with us through the electrical socket, had escaped days before and was still in the neighborhood. Amazed, I asked the new guard to guide me to Richard.

When I first laid eyes on Richard, he was kind of how I had imagined him— big, outgoing, sporting a Fu Manchu, with the muscles of a SEAL warrior even in his sixties. This time he told more stories than scripture; and we talked schemes. Richard wanted to get his contracting business restarted in Tripoli. I wanted to go to Bani Walid. We broke out his Bible after lunch.

In the last months he was reduced to eating dates and fending off rats coming out of the prison drain. When he wasn’t playing an old man in front of the guards, he was doing hundreds of push ups and shadow boxing. When all the guards fled in late August, he escaped by drop kicking his cell door some 30 times. I wouldn’t have believed it unless I saw the concrete encrusted door laid Lazarus-like beside the cell.

(photo: Richard poises next to his Tripoli cell door that he broke out after six months of captivity.)

In prison Richard told us that he’d been trying to leave Libya by driving from Tripoli to Egypt, but it never made sense. The regime clearly suspected Richard of heading east to help train the rebels.

Richard even had the name of an air force defector in his belongings when he was arrested trying to leave Tripoli, but managed to crumple the slip of paper and throw it in the dirt.

When Richard busted out of the cell, with a knife fashioned out of a toilet seat, he held himself up in a room in an adjacent building. The neighborhood rebels broke the door down with guns. Richard held up the knife. They saw Gaddafi posters in his possession. Richard immediately ripped one up. “Gaddafi bad,” he proclaimed. The rebels nodded. “They were souvenirs for my kids,” he said to me.

Sirte: the final battle of the Libyan revolution

Battle for Sirte from Sept. -Oct. 2011

Occupy Wall Street protests Nov. 17

The following Occupy Wall Street events occurred in chronological order on Nov. 17 in New York City.