• Libyan parliament bans ex-Gaddafi officials from office

    By Jessica Donati and Ghaith Shennib, Reuters

    TRIPOLI — Libya's parliament voted on Sunday to ban anyone who held a senior position during Muammar Gaddafi's 42-year rule from government, a move which could unseat the prime minister and other top officials regardless of their part in toppling the dictator.


    Politicians debated the draft law for months, but the issue came to a head this week when heavily armed groups took control of two ministries and stormed other institutions including the state broadcaster.

    The decision to hold the vote under duress could embolden the armed groups to use force again to assert their will over parliament.

    Prime Minister Ali Zeidan, a diplomat under Gaddafi who defected to the exiled opposition in 1980, could be among those barred from office, although this remained unclear and a parliament spokesman said it would be decided by a committee charged with implementing the law.

    "Being unjust to a few is better than defeating the whole objective of the law," said one of the hundreds who filled Tripoli's main square to celebrating the passage of the law, many of them shooting guns into the air.

    Nearly two years after Gaddafi was overthrown, the gunmen who fought to end his 42-year dictatorship are refusing to lay down their arms and go back to civilian life - militiamen are more visible than Libyan state forces in the capital.

    The cabinet and Libya's official armed forces are so weak that swathes of the oil-producing desert country remain outside central government control.

    A spokesman for parliament admitted it was unclear whether the vote would be enough to dislodge the gunmen from their positions outside the government buildings.

    "We hope the siege of the ministries will stop now, but it is not in our hands," General National Congress (GNC) spokesman Omar Hmaiden told a news conference after the vote.

    More than a dozen vehicles mounted with anti-aircraft weapons and machine guns remained parked outside the Justice Ministry and the Foreign Ministry has been similarly encircled for a week.

    One of the men stationed by a machine gun in front of the Justice Ministry, said the group came from different areas close to the capital Tripoli and ahead of the vote vowed they would stay until the prime minister had been forced from office.

    "We have been asking them to deal with Gaddafi's friends for a year," he said.

    Although the law passed with an overwhelming majority of 164 votes in favor and just four against, many congress members were upset.

    "It's a very unfair and extreme law, but we need to put national interests first in order to solve the crisis," said Tawfiq Breik, spokesman for the liberal National Forces Alliance (NFA) bloc, Libya's largest parliamentary coalition.

    Diplomats in Tripoli complained that holding the vote under duress had undermined its legitimacy, while a human rights group called on parliament to reject the draft.

    "The GNC should not allow itself to be railroaded into making very bad laws because groups of armed men are demanding it," said Sarah Leah Whitson, a Human Rights Watch director in the region, in a statement.

    "Libya's long-term prospects for peace and security will be seriously diminished if the congress agrees to nod through this law."

    Much will depend on how high up in Gaddafi's administration an official has to have been in order to be excluded from politics, one analyst said.

    "If the bar is too low, the law could result in most government administrations being gutted, without having sufficient staff or institutional memory to ensure their proper functioning," said Geoff Porter of North Africa Risk Consulting.

    "However, if the bar is too high then we are likely to see repeats of the blockades in front of government ministries that we saw this week."

    Congress members say the law could be applied to around 40 others in the 200-member parliament, including the president of the assembly Mohammed Magarief who became an exiled leader of Libya's oldest opposition movement in the 1980s after serving as an ambassador under Gaddafi.

    The law does not make provisions for those, like him, who spent decades in exile and were instrumental in toppling Gaddafi.

    The law prohibits former officials from holding any position in government or even belonging to a political party. It will also ban them from leadership roles in the country's state firms, like the National Oil Corporation, its universities and judicial bodies.

    Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

  • Rights group: US waterboarded Gadhafi opponents, sent them to Libya

    Nasser Nasser / AP, file

    Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi meets with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, left in Tripoli, Libya, in Sept. 2008. Human Rights Watch on Thursday released a report painting a more complete picture of Washington's close cooperation with the regime of Libya's former dictator in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

    By NBC News wire services

    A human rights organization says it has collected evidence of two previously unreported cases in which U.S. agents used waterboarding or a similar harsh interrogation technique on Libyan militants held by American forces in Afghanistan. 

    The 154-page report by Human Rights Watch also paints a more complete picture of Washington's close cooperation with the regime of Libya's former dictator Moammar Gadhafi in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The U.S. handed over to Libya the Islamist opponents of Gadhafi that it detained abroad with only thin "diplomatic assurances" that they would not be mistreated, and several of them were subsequently tortured in prison, Human Rights Watch said. 

    The report features interviews by the New York-based group with 14 Libyan dissident exiles. They describe systematic abuses while they were held in U.S.-led detention centers in Afghanistan -- some for as long as two years -- or in U.S.-led interrogations in Pakistan, Morocco, Thailand, Sudan and elsewhere before the Americans handed them over to Libya.


    "Not only did the U.S. deliver his (Gadhafi's) enemies on a silver platter, but it seems the CIA tortured many of them first," said Laura Pitter, counterterrorism adviser at Human Rights Watch and author of the report. 

    "The scope of Bush administration abuse appears far broader than previously acknowledged and underscores the importance of opening up a full-scale inquiry into what happened," she added. 

    UK spies to face criminal inquiry over Libya

    The documents, which were found in once-secret archives that became public during the Libyan revolution, included classified correspondence between top Libyan officials and officials from the CIA and Britain's spy agencies MI5 and MI6. 

    Former Vice President Dick Cheney discusses his memoir, "In My Time," with TODAY's Matt Lauer. In the exclusive interview, Cheney defends the Iraq war, says waterboarding "worked" and tells Lauer the greatest achievement of the Bush administration was preventing further attacks on U.S. soil after 9/11.

    They illustrate how, between late 2003 when Gadhafi agreed to give up his weapons of mass destruction programs, and the 2011 Libyan revolution, Gadhafi and Western intelligence agencies quietly cooperated in battling Islamic militants. 

    Waterboarding is a form of simulated drowning that President Barack Obama and human rights activists have condemned as torture. 

    Britain, U.S. defend actions
    U.S. and British officials defended their governments' actions. 

    "It can't come as a surprise that the Central Intelligence Agency works with foreign governments to help protect our country from terrorism and other deadly threats. That is exactly what we are expected to do," said Jennifer Youngblood, a CIA spokeswoman. 

    The former Libyan Foreign Minister - now being debriefed in Britain - will not be given immunity from prosecution, according to the Government. Scottish lawyers have asked to interview Musa Kusa in connection with the Lockerbie bombing. As a senior member of Colonel Gadhafi's regime he could provide important information for the coalition. ITV's Tom Bradby reports.

    "The context here is worth revisiting. For example, by 2004, the U.S. government had convinced Gadhafi to renounce Libya's WMD programs and to help stop those terrorists who were actively targeting Americans," Youngblood said. 

    A spokesman for Britain's Foreign Office said: "The government has been clear that it stands firmly against torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment. We do not condone it, nor do we ask others to do it on our behalf. 

    "In addition, we have published the Consolidated Guidance which provides clear directions for intelligence officers and service personnel dealing with foreign liaison services regarding detainees held overseas," the spokesman said. 

    Slideshow: Moammar Gadhafi through the years 

    Some of the other nations that Human Rights Watch alleged to be U.S. collaborators in these operations are the Netherlands, Pakistan, China, Malaysia, Morocco and Sudan. 

    The most dramatic, and potentially controversial, of the report's 14 case studies relates to alleged waterboarding. 

    Senator John McCain, R-Ariz, says enhanced interrogation measures, such as waterboarding, were not a factor in tracking down 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden.

    Human Rights Watch said that testimony from former detainee Mohammed Shoroeiya about how he was allegedly waterboarded repeatedly by U.S. interrogators was "detailed and credible."

    Shoroeiya claimed he had been waterboarded while in U.S. custody in Afghanistan, and that a doctor was present during the interrogation sessions, the group said. 

    It said that a second former Libyan detainee, Khalid al-Sharif, described how he was subjected to a "similar type of treatment," though this did not involve being strapped to a board. 

    Libyan rebels find album filled with photos of his 'darling' Condoleezza Rice

    Human Rights Watch said both detainees claimed that they were hooded and had ice water poured over their noses and mouths until they felt like they were suffocating -- the sensation associated with waterboarding. 

    Claims contradict Bush, CIA
    The accounts by the Libyan detainees, one-time members of a militant faction called the Libyan Islamist Fighting Group, contradict claims by former President George W. Bush, former CIA director Michael Hayden and other U.S. officials that waterboarding was only used on three militants in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks -- none of them Libyan. 

    U.S. officials expressed skepticism about the waterboarding allegations. And there are apparent differences in how the Libyans describe their treatment and the waterboarding procedures used in three cases that U.S. authorities have confirmed -- those of alleged al-Qaida militants Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. 

    In those cases, official investigations reported, the interrogation subjects were doused repeatedly, but in short bursts, with bottled water. 

    Slideshow: Life goes on in Guantanamo

    "The agency has been on the record that there are three substantiated cases in which detainees were subjected to the waterboarding technique," the CIA's Youngblood said. 

    "Although we cannot comment on these specific allegations, the Department of Justice has exhaustively reviewed the treatment of more than 100 detainees in the post-9/11 period -- including allegations involving unauthorized interrogation techniques — and it declined prosecution in every case," she added. 

    Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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  • Gadhafi fighters seize control of Libyan town

    By msnbc.com news services

    TRIPOLI - Supporters of ousted Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi seized control of the town of Bani Walid on Monday after clashes with a militia loyal to the new government in which four people were killed, witnesses told Reuters.

    The violence was bad enough that authorities in Tripoli felt forced to dispatch dozens of revolutionary fighters to Bani Walid, the Guardian reported, quoting brigade commander Saddam Abdel-Zein.

    A resident of Bani Walid, about 120 miles south-east of Tripoli, said the sides fought using heavy weaponry, including 106 mm anti-tank weapons, and that 20 people were wounded.

    Another witness told Reuters the fighting had now stopped but that Gadhafi loyalists were in control of the town center, where they were flying green flags, a symbol of allegiance to the ousted administration.

    "They control the town now. They are roaming the town," said the witness, a fighter with the 28th May militia which was fighting the Gadhafi loyalists.

    Bani Walid, base of the powerful Warfallah tribe, was one of the last towns in Libya to surrender to the anti-Gadhafi rebellion last year. Many people there oppose the country's new leadership.

    The uprising in Bani Walid could not come at a worse time for the ruling National Transitional Council (NTC). It is already reeling from violent protests in the eastern city of Benghazi and the resignation of its second most senior official.

    An air force official told Reuters that jets were being mobilized to fly to Bani Walid. In Tripoli, there were signs of security being tightened, Reuters reporters in the city said.  

    Fighters "massacred"
    The violence in Bani Walid was sparked when members of the May 28 militia arrested some Gadhafi loyalists.

    That prompted other supporters of the former leader, who was captured and killed in October, to attack the militia's garrison in the town, said the resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

    "They massacred men at the doors of the militia headquarters," said the resident.

    Libya's interim leaders declare independence from 42 years of rule by Moammar Gadhafi, whose cause of death remains under investigation. NBC's Adrienne Mong reports.

    During Libya's nine-month civil war, anti-Gadhafi rebels fought for months to take Bani Walid.

    Local tribal elders eventually agreed to let NTC fighters enter the town, but relations have been uneasy since and there have been occasional flare-ups of violence.

    In November last year, several people were killed in Bani Walid when a militia group from Tripoli's Souq al-Juma district arrived in the town to try to arrest some local men.

    Taking back control of the town will be challenging because it has natural defenses. Anyone approaching from the north has to descend into a deep valley and then climb up the other side, giving defenders an advantage.

    It was this landscape, in part, that prevented anti-Gadhafi militias from taking the town during the civil war, despite the fact they were heavily armed and had superior numbers.

    Reuters and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.

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