TRIPOLI,
Libya — For Judge Jamal Bennour, one of the leaders of the Libyan
uprising, the day the revolution turned sour was when his friend and
fellow lawyer, Abdul-Salam al-Musmari, was shot dead in front of him.
It
was last July, nearly two years after the two had helped topple Col.
Muammar el-Qaddafi and a year since they had left government, ceding
power to the General National Congress. The two friends had lingered
after Friday Prayer in their mosque in Benghazi, and were walking home
when a man leaned out of a passing four-wheel-drive car and shot Mr.
Musmari in the chest. “It was just a moment,” his friend said. “We lost
Abdul-Salam. It was very hard.”
Libya
has suffered widespread bloodletting in the aftermath of the 2011
revolution. Over 1,200 people have been killed nationwide in the last
two years, victims of revenge, power clashes and spiraling crime.
Political divisions within the elected General National Congress, with groups backed by rival militias, have rendered the appointed government almost powerless. The power struggle kept Prime Minister Ali Zeidan under threat of dismissal for months before he was voted out of office on Tuesday, and left the country without an interior minister since August, when the last one resigned.
No
place has been harder hit than the country’s second-largest city,
Benghazi, the birthplace of the Libyan uprising. More than 100 prominent
figures, senior security officials, judges and political activists have
been assassinated in two years, and the wave of killings is decimating
local leadership and paralyzing the government and security forces.
Benghazi
is the city where the United States ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens,
and three other Americans died when the United States Mission and annex
were attacked in September 2012. Residents have long complained about
the lawless behavior of the numerous militias, including some extreme
Islamist groups that maintain bases there, and some that played a role
in the attack on the mission.
Some
of the killings are also blamed on smuggling and organized crime
groups, on the hundreds of common criminals who escaped from Colonel
Qaddafi’s jails during the uprising and on the caches of looted weapons
that are on the streets.
Yet
political assassinations have become so systematic that officials,
legislators and activists from the region describe them as a concerted
campaign to extinguish Libyans’ hope of building a stable, functioning,
democratic nation. Mr. Musmari, the man killed last July, was the leader
of the 17 February Coalition, a group of lawyers and activists who led
the rebel government in Benghazi during the war.
Three
years after the revolution, many in the group have fled their hometown.
“Most people have had to leave,” Judge Bennour said. “Most have left
Libya to try and get political asylum.”
Judge
Bennour narrowly escaped an assassination attempt 10 days before Mr.
Musmari was killed. He has since received so many threats on his
cellphone that three months ago he left Benghazi and moved his family to
Tripoli. He lives in hiding, separately from his family.
As
time passes, the rate of killing in Benghazi is rising. Early victims
were former security officials under Colonel Qaddafi. But increasingly,
younger police officers are being targeted, said one Western diplomat,
who asked not to be named in keeping with diplomatic protocol.
Foreign
consulates and expatriate workers have also been targeted in an
apparent effort to scare away allies of the new Libya state, including
diplomats and workers from neighboring countries such as Tunisia and
Egypt.
In
just one recent week, seven Egyptian traders were abducted and
executed, a French engineer was gunned down, and half a dozen Libyans
were shot dead. More were wounded in failed attacks.
When
four or five Libyans were killed in one day, Benghazi residents
protested on the streets, burning tires, and the judiciary announced it
was suspending work.
“Even
during the war we did not stop working,” Judge Bennour said sadly. “The
problem here is there is no army, no security. How can you ask the
judges to work when you cannot protect them?”
He
saw Mr. Musmari’s assassin fire his handgun from a distance of a few
yards and said the killer had looked like an ordinary criminal — in his
30s, cleanshaven, wearing a T-shirt — but he seemed smart and well
trained. Organized crime, Qaddafi supporters and Islamists all had an
interest in seeing the revolution fail, he said.
But
those following the assassination campaign closely see it as an attempt
to liquidate opponents among the local leadership, reminiscent of past
campaigns by Al Qaeda and other extremists in the tribal areas of
Pakistan and in Iraq.
“It
is a systematic process to eliminate the building of a modern state,”
said one Libyan congressman who sits on the National Security committee
in Tripoli. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared the
repercussions of speaking out against extremist groups.
“These
radical elements want to eradicate the security apparatus; in their
mind, they want to live according to Shariah, they do not want a state
with army and security forces,” he said, referring to Islamic law.
Their
method is terror, he said. “The more people you scare, then you are not
going to have an army and police, and then you control the territory.”
In
the town of Derna, east of Benghazi, known as a center of culture, the
most extremist groups are even targeting more moderate Islamists who
support the democratic transition. Mansour Hasadi, a congressman from
Derna for the Muslim Brotherhood’s Justice and Construction Party,
remembers calling a local radio station to denounce an assassination in
2011, though the victim had been a member of the hated Qaddafi internal
security.
“I
condemned the killing,” he said. “I said we don’t want any killing
outside the law, as Qaddafi did. Then it started escalating.”
Mr.
Hasadi said most assassinations in Derna were ideologically driven and
committed by extremist groups who had always refused to join the other
groups in the uprising. They have targeted the Muslim Brotherhood and
the Justice and Construction Party, bombing their offices and their
cars, he said.
Three
months ago the threats increased against Mr. Hasadi after he made a
series of media appearances. A speaker at a rally in the main square
denounced him by name, saying he was opposed to Shariah law, effectively
inviting violence against him. “I used to be wanted by Qaddafi, and now
I am wanted by these people,” Mr. Hasadi said.
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