Libyan army beat men to death: Calgary witness
Updated: Mar 5, 2011 - 9:10AM
CBC
A Calgary man who escaped from Libya says he witnessed horrific acts of brutality carried out by Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi's army.
Arif Pervez was working for the Libyan-based Waha Oil company in a desert village about 600 kilometres south of Benghazi when protests broke out.
He says a Libyan military plane landed at the local airstrip a few days into the fighting and soldiers rounded up oil workers and villagers.
The soldiers randomly selected two men from the crowd before they beat them to death in front of everyone, he told CBC News.
"Four men were there to torture him," said Pervez, recalling how one of the victims died.
"One was holding his hand. One was holding his feet, and they started beating him with a piece of wood, and he was shouting, screaming and crying."
Pervez said they poured a flammable liquid over the man and set him on fire.
"He started shouting a lot, so they continued beating him until he died," he said.
Pervez said the soldiers left immediately after the killings.
The villagers took it upon themselves to protect Pervez with their AK-47s from looters and gangs until he managed to escape to Tripoli last week, he said.
Pervez and co-worker Rick Souther of Taber, Alta., flew from the Libyan capital to Malta after confronting the chaos of the Tripoli airport. A Romanian consular official helped them get onto a plane that went from Malta to Bucharest.
Souther told the Lethbridge Herald there had to be 30,000 or 40,000 people in the airport and outside. He saw piles of clothes, human feces and household goods. He said he also saw at least two bodies.
After a stopover in Bucharest, the pair flew to Munich, then Frankfurt, before arriving in Calgary on Thursday.
Copyright: (C) Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, http://www.cbc.ca/aboutcbc/discover/termsofuse.html
Arif Pervez was working for the Libyan-based Waha Oil company in a desert village about 600 kilometres south of Benghazi when protests broke out.
He says a Libyan military plane landed at the local airstrip a few days into the fighting and soldiers rounded up oil workers and villagers.
The soldiers randomly selected two men from the crowd before they beat them to death in front of everyone, he told CBC News.
"Four men were there to torture him," said Pervez, recalling how one of the victims died.
"One was holding his hand. One was holding his feet, and they started beating him with a piece of wood, and he was shouting, screaming and crying."
Pervez said they poured a flammable liquid over the man and set him on fire.
"He started shouting a lot, so they continued beating him until he died," he said.
Pervez said the soldiers left immediately after the killings.
The villagers took it upon themselves to protect Pervez with their AK-47s from looters and gangs until he managed to escape to Tripoli last week, he said.
Pervez and co-worker Rick Souther of Taber, Alta., flew from the Libyan capital to Malta after confronting the chaos of the Tripoli airport. A Romanian consular official helped them get onto a plane that went from Malta to Bucharest.
Souther told the Lethbridge Herald there had to be 30,000 or 40,000 people in the airport and outside. He saw piles of clothes, human feces and household goods. He said he also saw at least two bodies.
After a stopover in Bucharest, the pair flew to Munich, then Frankfurt, before arriving in Calgary on Thursday.
Copyright: (C) Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, http://www.cbc.ca/aboutcbc/discover/termsofuse.html
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