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NEW YORK ? Armed militias now rule much of Libya, Amnesty International said Wednesday, accusing them of torturing detainees deemed loyal to the ousted regime of Moammar Gadhafi and driving entire neighborhoods and towns into exile.
Amnesty International quoted detainees as saying “They had been suspended in contorted positions; beaten for hours with whips, cables, plastic hoses, metal chains and bars, and wooden sticks and given electric shocks with live wires and taser-like electroshock weapons.”
At least 12 detainees had died since September after torture, Amnesty said. “Their bodies were covered in bruises, wounds and cuts and some had had nails pulled off,” the group said.
The report is a fresh blow to Libya’s new government, the National Transitional Council, which helped lead the anti-Gadhafi uprising that broke out one year ago this week and spiraled into a brutal, eight-month civil war.
Since the war’s end with the capture and killing of Gadhafi last October, the NTC has struggled to extend its control over the vast desert nation. It has largely failed to rein in the hundreds of brigades that fought in the war, many of which now run their own detention centers for those accused of links to Gadhafi’s regime.
Amnesty said it visited 11 detention camps in central and western Libya in January and February, and found evidence of torture and abuse at all but one.
“Nobody is holding these militias responsible,” Donatella Rovera, senior crisis response adviser at Amnesty International, told The Associated Press by telephone from Jordan on Wednesday, a day after she left Libya.
The U.N.’s top human rights official, and Amnesty International, have urged Libya’s government to take control of all makeshift prisons to prevent further atrocities against detainees.
“There’s torture, extrajudicial executions, rape of both men and women,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said on Jan. 27.
Some 2,400 detainees remain held in centers controlled by the new Libyan government, but the militias are holding uncounted thousands more prisoners, Amnesty said. Most are in and around Tripoli and Misrata, the coastal city that saw some of the war’s most brutal fighting, it said.
The International Committee of the Red Cross reported that from March to December 2011 it had visited over 8,500 detainees in some 60 detention centers.
Amnesty International’s delegation witnessed detainees being beaten and threatened with death at a detention center in Misrata.
In a Tripoli detention center, they found severely tortured detainees who interrogators tried to conceal, the group reported. It spoke to detainees held in and around Tripoli, Gharyan, Misrata, Sirte and Zawiya.
The humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders suspended its work in prisons in Misrata in late January because it said torture was so rampant that some detainees were brought for care only to make them fit for further interrogation and abuse.
Rovera accused the Tripoli-based national government of “a lack of political will. They’re not willing to recognize the scale of the problem. It is way, way beyond individual cases. It’s an irresponsible attitude,” she said.
The militias were one of the keys to the rebellion that toppled Gadhafi’s 42-year rule last year, but they are maintaining their independence from the National Transitional Council.
Hundreds of Libyan militias commemorated the anniversary of the anti-Gadhafi uprising this week by allying into a new unified military council.
Thousands of fighters from across western Libya held a mass parade in Tripoli on Tuesday, showing off heavy machine guns and rocket launchers and firing rifles in the air, an outburst that appeared intended as a warning to anyone who might stage attacks during the anniversary.
Some of the militia reprisals are against dark-skinned Libyans and African contract workers who the Gadhafis had brought in for jobs ranging from construction to security and riot control, leading to attacks on so-called “mercenaries” during the uprising.
“African migrants and refugees are also being targeted and revenge attacks are being carried out,” Amnesty said. “Entire communities have been forcibly displaced and authorities have done nothing to investigate the abuses and hold those responsible to account.”
The violence took on an ethnic twist. “It’s hunting down ‘the other,’” Rovera told the AP. “They’re wreaking havoc in the community.”
Amnesty said that militias from Misrata “drove out the entire population of Tawargha, some 30,000 people, and looted and burned down their homes in revenge for crimes some Tawargha are accused of having committed during the conflict.”
“Thousands of members of the Mashashya tribe were similarly forced out of their village by militias from Zintan, in the Nafusa Mountains. These and other communities remain displaced in makeshift camps around the country,” Amnesty said.
Amnesty called for Western pressure on the Libyan government and militias.
Rovera said that from the United States to Europe, “There are a lot of countries and governments seeking contracts in Libya, so there’s no shortage of contacts” that the West can use.
Europe, the U.S. and NATO “should tell them things as they are ? the time for ‘wait and see’ has run out,” Rovera told the AP.
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Online:
www.amnestyusa.org
http://www.amnestyusa.org/research/reports/militias-threaten-hope-for-new-libya
Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120216/ap_on_re_us/us_libya_militias
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DUBAI (Reuters) ? Some of the over-large cash component of Libya’s $65-billion sovereign wealth fund will be put to work financing post-Gaddafi reconstruction, leaving time for a full review of its less liquid investments.
“I expect an immediate shrinkage of the size of the fund,” Rafik Nayed, acting chief executive of the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA), told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.
“My feeling is that there will be large investments required in the near future and international reserves will be used to do that, especially as the oil production has not fully recovered.”
He gave no details of how much of the fund would be used for infrastructure, education, health and rehabilitation projects. To access the cash — about $29.5 billion of the fund — Libya will need sanctions on its total foreign assets of $170 billion to be lifted.
“Cash and equities and fixed income products…make up about 77 percent of the total assets under management,” said the 43-year-old Nayed, who is leading a team of Libyan financial experts tasked by the ruling National Transitional Council (NTC) with a review of the fund’s investments made under the Gaddafi regime.
“As at the end of June 2011, (the fund) was $64.9 billion,” he said. “We will come up with recommendations after our work with the World Bank and the IMF on the most ideal size for a Libyan sovereign wealth fund.”
According to end of June unaudited figures shown to Reuters by Nayed and his team, 45.5 percent of the fund is in cash.
The fund also includes, according to a document obtained by Reuters, $10.8 billion in equities, $9.7 billion in bonds, $8.3 billion in strategic shareholdings, $4 billion in hedge funds, structured products and derivatives, and the remainder in other investments.
This is the first time the LIA released detailed figures on its investments, in what Nayed described as a transparency drive by the new Libyan leaders to handle public funds.
Nayed said since the fund was created in 2006 to manage the country’s oil revenues, it has received $62.9 billion from the government.
“It is hard to imagine how you could make much more with half of your portfolio in cash, generating the lowest type of returns,” he said.
No investment decisions are expected to be made before a new management takes over. The fund’s board of directors and chairman would be appointed by the new cabinet, which has yet to be named.
Among LIA’s assets are stakes in Italian bank Unicredit, British publisher Pearson and Juventus Football Club in Italy.
AFRICA PORTFOLIO
There has been speculation that Libya will sell off its assets in the rest of Africa to help fund reconstruction but Nayed said no decision on divestment would be made until his team has finished their valuation exercise.
Nayed said that of $8.3 billion invested in strategic shareholdings, $5 billion sit in a fund known as Libyan African Investment Portfolio (LAP).
LAP Green Network, a telecom company operating in six African countries, is the fund’s weakest link, he said. Hit by UN sanctions, the nearly $1 billion investment is in default with some creditors and its assets are frozen by some countries, including Zambia.
“This one company is right now the top priority in terms of concern,” he said. “We do expect a haircut on it and we hope it can be minimized…I expect a loss here of at least 20 percent.”
Other Africa investments are doing better.
Nayed expected the Libya Africa Investment Company (LAFICO), which owns hotels in North Africa and Europe, to gain at least 50 percent of its $2 billion book value.
Another company in the fund he said was in good shape is Libya Oil, an African fuel retail company operating in 23 African countries.
“In totality, I expect this number ($8.3 billion) to remain pretty much the same,” he said.
ALTERNATIVES, EQUITIES
Almost 45 percent of the fund’s alternative investments are in structured products, 36 percent in hedge funds, 12 percent in private equity and 7 percent in derivatives, documents show.
“Between hedge funds and private equity it looks fine,” Nayed said. “But the structured products and the derivatives I believe are mostly not appropriate for a sovereign wealth fund with a long term horizon.”
Nayed said the fund’s equities holdings — around 20 percent in the energy sector — should be more diversified.
“The future management will probably rebalance the equities portfolio away from energy and away from Libya for diversification purposes.”
About 18 percent of equities are currently invested in the financial sector, and 15 percent in the industrial sector.
Nayed said he was working with the IMF and World Bank to ensure the fund is run in a transparent way.
(Editing by Sitaraman Shankar)
Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/africa/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111110/wl_nm/us_libya_swf
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THE HAGUE (Reuters) ? The International Criminal Court prosecutor said Wednesday he was considering more charges against Muammar Gaddafi’s spy chief, Abdullah al-Senussi, and others suspected of involvement in hundreds of rapes in Libya during this year’s conflict.
The Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) has already indicted Senussi on charges of crimes against humanity and other war crimes.
ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said he was close to completing an investigation on the use of rape by Gaddafi’s forces to persecute their enemies as they battled an eight-month insurgency.
“I am finishing the rapes investigation, we will see if there are new charges for the same people, or for new people,” he told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference in The Hague.
Earlier this month, Moreno-Ocampo told the U.N. Security Council that he was investigating whether the former Libyan leader and his spy chief ordered mass rapes.
Gaddafi, also indicted by the ICC, died on October 20 shortly after his capture by the former rebels, now the government forces.
“We have indications that Senussi was involved in organizing the rapes, but not Saif,” Moreno-Ocampo told Reuters, referring to Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam, who has also been charged with crimes against humanity and is on the run.
“I am confident we will get Saif,” to face charges in The Hague, Moreno-Ocampo said. “At the end of the day, all of them will face justice.”
Libya’s interim leadership, the National Transitional Council (NTC), has said it would like to try Saif al-Islam and Senussi in Libya. Moreno-Ocampo said he planned to meet the NTC in January.
(Reporting By Sara Webb; Editing by Rosalind Russell)
Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111109/wl_nm/us_libya_icc
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