CAIRO - Libyan revolutionary forces are holding more than 2,500 detainees in makeshift prisons where they're subjected to beatings and languish without charges, the human rights advocacy group Amnesty International said Wednesday.
Despite pledges of speedy prosecutions, the National Transitional Council, Libya's provisional authority since the ouster of Moammar Gadhafi, has yet to try any detainees, Amnesty said.
In at least two cases, Amnesty said, officials in charge of detention centers ignored orders that detainees be released.
The failure of Libya's revolutionaries to respect the rights of some of their detainees has been the frequent subject of news stories in the nearly two months since rebel forces seized control of Tripoli, but Amnesty's report, based on visits to 11 revolutionary jails, is the most systematic examination to date of the former rebels' murky and haphazard detention operation.
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Amnesty said the revolutionaries were holding detainees in former prisons, converted schools, football clubs and apartments and noted that there was little, if any, official supervision of the facilities.
The group said its visiting researchers sometimes heard screams and, in one prison, found tools commonly used for torture: a wooden stick, rope and a rubber hose.
"At least two guards in two different detention facilities admitted to Amnesty International that they beat detainees in order to extract 'confessions' more quickly," the report said.
The delay in starting legal proceedings for the detainees appears to be a problem throughout the country. Amnesty said trials of pro-Gadhafi suspects had yet to begin when its team was in Libya last month, even in the country's east, which has been outside Gadhafi's rule since February.
"Investigations into alleged crimes and decisions to detain or release individuals continue to largely fall under the remit of various committees and individuals - some with little or no expertise or knowledge of human rights law and standards," the report said.
Up to half the 2,500 detainees are sub-Saharan Africans whom the revolutionaries suspect of serving as mercenaries for Gadhafi's final fights, the report said. Detainees include nationals of Chad, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Sudan, according to the report.
But how many of those really are mercenaries has yet to be determined. The regime's use of African mercenaries is documented but also exaggerated, leaving many black workers in Libya at risk for reprisal attacks and arbitrary arrest with no legal recourse.
