On Road to Reconciliation, Libya Meets Trail of Anguish

By ADAM NOSSITER

Published: November 3, 2011

TRIPOLI, Libya — The present and future are daunting enough for the wobbly authorities here, but then there is the tormented past to consider as well: four decades of state crimes whose wounds demand attention.

MA section of the Abu Salim prison in Tripoli, Libya, once held political detainees. Libya must now balance the need to heal and calls for retribution. auricio Lima for The New York Times

Timeline: Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi

With mass murders, disappearances and public executions, the victims of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s People’s Court, Internal Security Agency and State Security Court number in the tens of thousands, human rights advocates here and abroad say. How will Libyans come to terms with their past?

Already, the provisional leaders are pondering options for exposing the long catalog of killings and torture, looking to models from South Africa, Europe and Latin America. They are motivated by a conviction, they say, that a new nation cannot be built unless light is shed on the dark corners of the old.

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