Libya's Quest for Justice The Thin Line Between Guilt and Innocence

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http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-new-libya-searches-for-justice-a-852377.html


The search for justice in the new Libya is raising difficult questions about who is to blame for the atrocities of the Gadhafi era. this picture shows a mural at Abu Salim prison, scene of an infamous 1996 massacre.

Mohammed Gwaidar could chain the man to the wall, hang him up, send electroshocks through his body and beat the soles of his feet until they swell up like balloons. In some ways, it would be fair, because these are precisely the things that the man in cell 6 at the Hadba prison in the Libyan capital Tripoli did to him. Gwaidar, 48, was himself locked up for 11 years because of his religious convictions and for attempting to overthrow the government. The prison now holds a former prime minister, 14 colonels in the intelligence service, dozens of prison guards and thugs -- and Hamsa, his former tormentor.

But Gwaidar doesn't want to torture the man. Instead, he wants to talk to him. He is seeking the answer to a question that has dogged him all these years: Why did more than 1,200 people have to die in the Abu Salim prison massacre in 1996? Why did so many more have to suffer? Why was there so much hatred?
They spoke for the first time in February, the torturer and his victim, who is now the director of the Hadba prison. Hamsa was picked up by Gwaidar's men while hiding with his family in western Libya, too poor to flee abroad.

Their first conversation is short. "Do you remember?" Gwaidar asks. Hamsa shakes his head. Gwaidar shows the prisoner his hands, but Hamsa stares at the floor. Gwaidar goes down on his knees, bends forward, holds his hands behind his back and then stands on tiptoe. "This is what you did to me. This is how I was hanging for 10 days," he says loudly. Now Hamsa is looking at Gwaidar's wrists, which are encircled by a straight line, as if someone had tried to cut off his hands. "I knew that you would come to get me one day," he says. And then he starts to cry.