Welcome to Ain Zara: Life inside one of Libya’s most notorious prisons

By George Grant.
Tripoli, 20 June:

Ain Zara is one of Libya’s most notorious prisons

Sitting under umbrellas coloured in Libya’s revolutionary flag, small groups of visitors can be found chatting to their relatives on what must qualify as the country’s greenest lawn.

Nearby, a sizeable new doctor’s clinic is under construction, with the marble floors and surfaces being put in place. There is a kitchen here also, impressively clean, and well stocked with baked goods, drinks and frozen food.

Ain Zara prison is certainly a place that confounds expectations. Under Qaddafi, this facility on the outskirts of Tripoli was home to thousands of political prisoners, many of whom were tortured and murdered within its high walls. Since Qaddafi’s overthrow last October, the prison’s reputation for detainee mistreatment hasn’t gone away.

Last month, allegations of ongoing prisoner abuse appeared in a number of Libyan news outlets, including the Libya Herald. It was claimed that a number of inmates had been beaten with metal rods, thrown in sewage water and forced to strip off their clothes. The allegations were made by some family members of the detainees, with the incident subsequently being investigated by Amnesty International.

Amnesty concluded that the incident, which took place on 14 May, involved 20 prisoners who were beaten extensively by prison guards to the point that some lost consciousness. Their report said that the prison authorities had condemned the severity of the beatings, but claimed they were a reaction to the discovery of illegal drugs and knives in the cells, as well as the detainees’ violent behaviour towards the guards.

Such occurances inevitably make headlines, and rightly so, but they also tend to ignore the day-to-day realities of life in what remains one of Libya’s most notorious prisons. Having been granted access to the facility by the Ministry of Justice, the Libya Herald found Ain Zara to be an altogether more complicated and intriguing place.

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