As Col Muammar Gaddafi's regime was collapsing, I met Salah al-Marghani in the newly liberated Abu Salim prison.
He was a quiet, very determined human rights
lawyer who was supervising a group of sweating, dusty, younger men -
lawyers like him - who were salvaging the prison records. They were
piling files, photographs, video and audio tapes into fruit boxes, and
loading them on to a lorry.
They were working fast because supporters of Col
Gaddafi had already been into the prison and torched some of the record
store rooms. The ash was still smouldering, potential evidence for
future criminal prosecutions gone forever.
Salah and his colleagues did not want that to happen to the paperwork and recordings that were left.
Salah al-Marghani is now Libya's justice minister.
When he talks about how hard it had been to try to change Libya for the
better he gets visibly emotional.
When he spoke out against the illegal - and often
brutal - detention of prisoners by armed militias, gunmen occupied his
ministry and kicked him out.
His big fear, which is shared by many people who
were full of hope after the overthrow of Col Gaddafi, is that the old
leader's ways have not been eradicated from the country, and are alive
and well in some of the militias.
"I still have hope," he told me. "I think we
failed the Libyan people on realising how difficult it would be to deal
with the fallout from the revolution that has caused thousands of
killings, injuries, missing people, rape cases. My concern is that maybe
we are not addressing the real issues courageously."
Power still comes from the barrels of the guns of rival militias. Libya still has no effective central government.
Armed militias are the real power in the land.
They range from former revolutionaries to criminals to al-Qaeda
affiliates. Some have taken over key Libyan oilfields. Others are
providing muscle to those who want to set up a breakaway autonomous
entity in the east of the country.
In the past 10 days Tripoli has suffered its worst
violence since the fall of Col Gaddafi. Militias shot at each other,
and then at civilians when they protested. Many people have been killed.
The Libya Prime Minister Ali Zeidan called for
international help to disarm the militias if they did not voluntarily
give up their weapons.
He said that if Libyans wanted to establish a civil state, they would have to ask those who carried arms to hand them in.
Living under the gun
The trouble is that the militias do not respond to
polite requests. A variety of schemes to absorb militiamen into the new
Libyan armed forces have either failed or had limited success. A few
weeks ago Mr Zeidan was kidnapped by a militia. He was released after a
few hours. Other people, without influence, are not so lucky.
A man, who did not want to give his name because he was scared of reprisals, talked about the abduction of his son by a militia.
"The problems we've got now weren't there in
Gaddafi's time. The militias, the spread of weapons, the lack of
respect. We live under the gun now.
"You walk around scared. You leave the house scared, and you come home scared. You're not safe on the streets.
"There aren't any courts, instead there's the rule
of the militias. They implement their own laws - they are the judge and
jury and everything."
Frequent reports of bombings, abductions and
assassinations come from Libya's second city, Benghazi. Tripoli is
quieter, most of the time, but it's a brittle kind of calm.
What's happening to Libya alarms Ali Alekermi, who
spent 30 years as political prisoner. He showed me the cell in Abu
Salim where he spent 11 years. He said rats came from the lavatory
pipes; it was bakingly hot in summer and freezing in winter and every
day they feared they could be killed.
Even though he lost what he calls the best years
of his life in prison (he was locked up at 22 and released three decades
later) Mr Alekermi is calling for national reconciliation.
He is the chairman of the Libyan Association of
Prisoners of Opinion and says many of old cellmates feel the same. They
want justice but fear that a thirst for revenge is destroying Libya's
chances of building a state of laws.
Mr Alekermi said he was very badly tortured.
"I am the victim. I should be the first one to
take revenge from those who tortured us. But torture will engender
torture, revenge will engender revenge."
His eyes filled with tears.
"Of course," he said, "it's because I'm thinking
about my sons, my daughters. They have to live in a state of rule, they
have to live peacefully."
No example
But many Libyans do want revenge.
Perhaps if Col Gaddafi had been captured and put
on trial instead of being stabbed, beaten and shot dead on a dusty road,
the last two years would have been different. Libyans would have had an
example of how the rule of law can deliver justice.
Some of the Western countries that helped overthrow the colonel are training Libya's new armed forces.
At a passing out parade for new trained recruits
there were energetic displays of martial arts, of extreme gymnastics, of
abseiling and other military skills. The question, though, is whether
this brave attempt to create a cohesive armed force is going to survive
its first contact with the confusion that can flare up very fast outside
the walls of this barracks.
If the new army ends up as just one weak player in
a country full of competing armed groups, Libya's unhappy, unstable,
violent present will be its future too.
Justice Minister Marghani put it like this: "The
economy depends on security, education depends on security, justice
depends on security."
All Libyans feel insecure about the future.
Reconciliation after revolutions and civil war can take generations.
Without security for all, lives will go on being blighted. Libya still
can't escape Gaddafi's poisonous legacy.
SOURCE: BBC.
