HUMAN RIGHTS GROUP DOCUMENTS ATROCITIES IN SIRTE
‘SCENES OF HORROR’
CAIRO • A leading international rights group on Wednesday released a report documenting atrocities by Libya’s Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant affiliate — including instances of “crucifixions” and shooting a man to death for “cursing God” — in the coastal city of Sirte, a stronghold of the militants.
Human Rights Watch recounts “scenes of horror” that followed the city’s seizure by ISIL militants in February 2015, with beheadings of dozens of residents accused of being spies or sorcerers.
Men were flogged for acts such as smoking or listening to music, and fathers were ordered to “marry off their daughters” to the group’s fighters as ISIL spread a wave of terror among the townspeople.
The 41-page HRW report entitled We Feel We Are Cursed: Life under ISIS in Sirte, Libya, is based on interviews with 45 Sirte residents conducted by the New York-based group in March. The residents were among the two thirds of the city’s 80,000-strong population that fled after ISIL overran Sirte.
The militant branch, more known for its spread in Iraq and Syria, gained a foothold in Libya amid the chaos that engulfed the country since the ouster and killing of the longtime autocratic leader Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.
“While the world’s attention is focused on atrocities in Syria and Iraq, ISIL is also getting away with murder in Libya,” said Letta Tayler, a senior terrorism and counterterrorism researcher at HRW.
After taking the city, ISIL handed out a 13-point charter or rule book and seized public funds. In return for personal safety, residents had to comply with its rulings, based on the group’s harsh interpretation of Islamic law, or Shariah.
Sirte’s central Martyrs’ Square was transformed into a stage for public extrajudicial killings — including beheadings by a sword — for a wide variety of offences.
If the group killed someone accused of “cursing God,” that person’s family would not even be allowed to bury his body because he was denounced by ISIL as an “infidel.”
Women were forced to cover up and wear the conservative black head-to-toe cloak known as abaya from the age of 10, and were not allowed to leave home without a male guardian. ISIL established a religious police that fined offenders up to $116 and flogged male relatives for not acting as proper guardians to their women.
ISIL also imposed the “zakat” or religious tax, something enforced in other ISIL-controlled territories and even by its rival al-Qaida group. Farmers were forced to hand over to ISIL one out of every 10 sheep and one out of every five camels.