In the initial days after Libyan rebels overran Col. Muammar Gaddafi's forces in eastern Libya last February, one of the most prevalent emotions on the street was shock. "We thought 90% of the people were with Gaddafi," Camilla Esbak remarked in the rebel stronghold of the Green Mountains. "So we never expected this." For years, most Libyans had been hesitant to voice opposition, they said, even to their children and close friends, fearing the pervasiveness and brutality of their dictator's security network. And when the revolution finally came, they marveled that so many of their neighbors had shared their opinions all along.
And yet, as rebels have begun to sift through the buildings and archives of Gaddafi's internal security apparatus over the past week, Libyans are also finding confirmation that they had every reason to be paranoid. (See pictures from Libya's raging rebel clashes.)
Based on TIME's examination of documents, maps, computer files, and surveillance hardware found in a handful of security offices around Tripoli, Gaddafi's internal security network appears to have permeated every neighborhood, town, and city of the vast North African country for decades. The regime monitored thousands of people; tapping phone calls and hacking e-mails, according to the Wall Street Journal. And in some cases, it appears that a single person of interest was matched by at least one security officer who was assigned to him specifically. In other cases, Abdel Karim Gadoora, a former interior ministry surveillance officer told TIME: "Whenever there was someone, they would just go and arrest them right away."
In one unmarked security office in an apartment building off of Tripoli's Green Square - now renamed Martyr's Square - there are registration books full of the plainclothes men that internal security had staffed around the city. A chart in one binder details the "youth" that the government had given Kalashnikovs to. In Abu Slim, there were 9 gangs and 143 people with weapons, it says; there were 170 in the rebel stronghold of Souk al-Jumaa and 45 in the wealthy, diplomatic neighborhood of Hay al Andalus. (See pictures of Gaddafi's 40 years in power.)
In a control room, Gadoora says that the seven TV screens are rigged to dozens of cameras around Green Square and downtown. The whole office, he says, was dedicated only to the surveillance of downtown Tripoli. But there are dozens like this, he adds, each dedicated to a different neighborhood. Detailed maps, including those produced by U.S. commercial satellite image providers, cover the walls. But Gaddafi's vast Bab al-Aziziya compound is always just a blank shape, suggesting that the dictator feared even the men who he had assigned to keep watch on his citizens. And indeed, the archives of another internal security building corroborates rebel claims that government employees and army officers were frequently targeted by the very regime that employed them.
For many, the opportunity to explore the long closeted corners of Gaddafi's security apparatus has been an emotional, even personal journey. "I've been here before," said Abdo, TIME's driver in Tripoli, upon entering the darkened and ransacked lobby of a larger internal security headquarters building. Abdo didn't mean recently, even though he has picked through the remnants of Gaddafi's regime for nearly two weeks, since the rebels took control of the Libyan capital. "It was years ago," he said, when he had come here to search for information about his brother and his brother-in-law. For seven years the family used to bring clothes to this building to have them delivered to the two men who they believed were in Abu Slim prison. But it wasn't until 2004 that the family learned that both men had been massacred by Gaddafi's forces, along with some 1,200 others in 1996. They have never recovered the bodies.
See pictures of Benghazi during wartime.
A day after breaking into it, the building still makes one rebel platoon nervous, and they won't allow journalists to visit the upper floors, where some say they fear booby-traps. Still, they've searched all of the rooms, they say, finding hundreds of thousands of document files, television control rooms, computer systems, switchboards, and what they allege was a makeshift prison in the parking garage. "I talked to former prisoners who said this garage was full of cages with prisoners. They moved them three months ago," says Bashir al-Jurushi, a rebel fighter guarding the building.
But perhaps the most disturbing data exists in the extensive details of Libyans' private lives, mapped out in hundreds of binders marked by location as "Darnah branch," "Benghazi branch" and so on in the basement archives. Among the files tracing specific individuals - most of them suspected Islamists - are the personal memorabilia, including family photo albums, which were confiscated by internal security officers during raids on homes. (See pictures of the meager belongings carried by Libyan refugees.)
One album contains the intimate portraits of a Libyan army officer at home with his family, at the beach, and hugging his children. "Yes, he was an army officer, but maybe he grew a beard and started praying," offers one of the rebels guarding the archive. Flipping through another stack of papers, Abdo locates a file on his neighbor, Mohamed Moussa Mohammed Madi, who he hasn't seen in 15 years.
A booklet titled "Evidence number 9" lists over 100 identification numbers, biographies, and pictures of men who, at the time (apparently the 1990s), were still wanted. The rebels say they recognize these booklets; security officers kept them at government checkpoints and airports. But the men in the booklets wear civilian clothes and hail from a range of jobs and cities. Ali Masbah was a schoolteacher. Hafez Salem worked at Tripoli International Airport. And Mohamed Abdallah was an economics student at al-Fatih University. Most likely, the rebels say, the only thing they had in common was religion. "He hated Islamists because Islamists know their religion well and hate oppression," says Ali Misrati, a rebel guard. "And Gaddafi was oppressive."
But despite Gaddafi's obsessive crackdown on Islamists and dissenters, rebels say his justice system only sporadically prosecuted those who committed actual crimes. "The police never used to arrest regular criminals," says Abdo. "Only political prisoners." He estimates that no more than 50% of those who perpetrated crimes were ever caught, a complaint reminiscent of Hosni Mubarak's Egypt, in which citizens said violence and theft often went without investigation or punishment, with security resources instead devoted to rounding up the opposition.
See how Libya may have helped the CIA round up terrorism suspects.
For those who were arrested, however, punishments were horrific. Those suspected of plotting against Gaddafi - and there were many - were often subject to execution or life in prison. And a computer located by rebels in the apartment of a Gaddafi family associate some the sentences meted out to one group during the final years of Gaddafi's rule.
"This is the laptop of the financial manager of Khamis, [Gaddafi's son and head of the feared Khamis Brigade]," claims a rebel who gave his name only as Hussein, because he still fears retribution from a lurking fifth column. "We captured him in an apartment in Hay al-Islami four or five days ago. The computer was there." (See TIME's video of the mental toll of the battle for Libya.)
The financial manager was Salem al-Gasi, Hussein says. And the computer contains dozens of family photos and pictures of al-Gasi with members of the Gaddafi family at a military ceremony. But one file on the computer's hard drive details the cases of some 764 prisoners who, it reads, were held at Tripoli's "Sports City" - presumably a makeshift prison.
The sentences are inconsistent, given the charges, but all are harsh. Those who murdered were sentenced to execution by firing squads. One man, convicted of theft, was sentenced to having his right hand and left foot amputated, plus three months in jail, and a fine of 100 Libyan Dinars. Another man was sentenced to 25 years for breaking into a car. And still another got 30 years and a fine of four million U.S. dollars and 728,250 Dinars for talking about "the leader of the revolution" - meaning Gaddafi.
Perhaps critically, Hussein points out, the vast majority of the people on the list appear to be common criminals, rather than political prisoners. And Hussein is certain that means they are men who Khamis released with "drugs and guns to go kill people." TIME was unable to verify that claim or the authenticity of the list. But Hussein was fearful enough not to share his last name. "It's like for years he planted fear in all Libyans," he says. (See how the youth in Libya are looking beyond Gaddafi.)
And indeed, after searching the file cabinets, shelves and binders of a ransacked regime, some rebels are now fearfully wondering, not where the prisoners are, but where the men who kept the files have gone. "It's not known where these men are now," says the former interior ministry officer-turned-rebel Abdel Karim Gadoora, staring off a discreet balcony, where his colleagues used to watch Green Square. "They've all dispersed."
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