Libya: The Arbitrary Detention of Ali Sulaiman Masoud Abdel Sayed before UN Working Group
On 27 March 2023, Alkarama submitted to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention the case of Libyan citizen Ali Sulaiman Masoud ABDEL SAYED arrested by members of the 8th Security Division of the Ministry of Interior of the Government of National Accord (GNA) on 17 August 2016 at 10 p.m. on public roads in Ain Zara (southern Tripoli).
Arrest of Ali Sulaiman Masoud Abdel Sayed
On August 17, 2016 at 10 p.m., Ali Suleiman Masoud Abdel Sayed was on the public road in Ain-Zara with his son when he was abducted by men in military uniform claiming to be from the 8th Security Division commanded by Haitham Tadjouri, officially affiliated with the GNA Ministry of Interior. Her son reports that no warrant was presented to the victim and that no reason for his arrest was given.
The next day, his son tried to find out the place of his detention by going to the headquarters of the 8th security division but could not have any confirmation that he was there. He then turned to several authorities, including the Ministry of the Interior and the Attorney General's Office, to find out the fate of his father without ever obtaining an answer.
Alkarama refers the case to the Working Group on Enforced Disappearances
Mandated by the family, Alkarama submitted an urgent appeal to the United Nations Working Group on Enforced Disappearances (WGEID) on 16 March 2017. However, the Libyan authorities have never replied to the communications of the Working Group.
It was only a year after the arrest that Abdel Sayed's family was able to learn, through messages he managed to send through released fellow detainees, that he was alive and being held in a secret centre controlled by a militia. In late 2017, he was finally transferred to the official Al Ruwaimi prison without a legal detention warrant.
In the course of 2020, Abdel Sayed was handed over to RADAA militias and has since been held in their headquarters in Mitiga, an unofficial detention centre where more than a thousand people are held in particularly inhumane conditions. This militia, one of the largest in the Libyan capital, claims the authority of the Ministry of the Interior and the Prosecutor General of Tripoli with which it collaborates but actually acts independently without reporting to any official authority.
Arbitrary detention of Abdel Sayed
It was only in 2020, while in Al Ruwaimi prison, that Abdel Sayed received his first family visit, during which he revealed that he had been tortured while in detention. To date, he has received only seven visits and the last phone contact he had with his family was in January 2022.
On 14 April 2021, five years after his arrest, Abdel Sayed was presented for the first time to the Tripoli prosecutor's office. The Prosecutor General then notified him for the first time since his arrest that he was charged with "concealment of facts and documents".
On 17 December 2022, Abdel Sayed was finally brought before the 3rd Criminal Chamber of the Tripoli Court, which acquitted him of all charges against him by judgment dated 20 February 2023. Despite this final court decision, RADAA forces refused to release him and returned him to the Mitiga detention centre.
The Working Group seized by Alkarama
At the request of Abdel Sayed's family, Alkarama turned to the UN Working Group to submit the case of another victim deprived of his liberty for nearly seven years in total violation of domestic law and international standards enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights ratified by Libya in 1970.
Alkarama therefore called on the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to urge Libya to immediately release Ali Sulaiman Masoud Abdel Sayed and ensure that all militias in Libya, and in particular RADAA militias, are placed under the effective control of the official government.