Libya: FREED - Al-Rabassi, serving 15 year sentence, is released

Arrested at his home on 3 January 2003 by agents of Interior Security, Abdenacer Al-Rabassi had previously been sentenced to 15 years imprisonment by a special court after having sent a controversial email to the Editor in Chief of the Arab Times. He was recently released on 8 March 2010 and has since returned to his home in Beni Walid.

Reminder

Abdenacer Younes Meftah Al-Rabassi was born in 1965 and is a graduate in social sciences. He was an employee of the Social Security Fund of Beni Walid Up until his abduction on 3 January 2003 by officer of Homeland Security, who arrested him without due cause or a judicial warrant.

Following his arrest, he was taken to the Interior Security bureau in Beni Walid before being transferred to Tripoli on 5 January 2003. He suffered severe torture for over a month while in a secret detention facility under the jurisdiction of the Interior Security agency.
He was eventually accused of having "sent an email to the Arab Times on 8 June 2002 at 8:35:54, in which he criticizes the Libyan Head of State, Colonel Moamar Al-Gaddafi". He was charged with "damaging the prestige of the leader of the revolution," which is punishable under Article 164 of the Libyan penal code.

On 26 June 2003, he was brought before the people's court and sentenced to 15 years imprisonment following an unfair trial. He was then assigned to Abu Salim prison in Tripoli.
In the period before his trial, Mr Al-Rabassi was never given access to a lawyer nor was he given visitation rights. As a result of his arbitrary detention, Alkarama sent his case to the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD). The WGAD thereafter rendered an Opinion on 30 August 2005 in which it deemed Mr Al-Rabassi's detention as arbitrary. As a result of his continued imprisonment, Alkarama submitted Mr Al-Rabassi's case as an individual communication to the UN Human Rights Committee on 17 December 2008.

Only a few people to have received heavy prison sentences or who have been held for years in secret detention have been released over the past two years. Wanis Charef El Abani, a judge in Benghazi's first instances court, who was arrested in 1990, had been disappeared for years. Sentenced to 13 years in prison following an unfair trial, he was not discharged in April 2003 as per his sentence; in fact, he was even disappeared for a second time in 2007, when the authorities refused to acknowledge his detention. Alkarama submitted his case as an individual communication to the Human Rights Committee on 15 October 2007. He was finally released 9 April 2008 after 18 years of arbitrary detention.

This is most recent release is also a reminder of the case of Dr Mohamed Hassan Aboussedra, arrested in 1989, arbitrarily detained and twice a victim of enforced disappearance.
His first court appearance did not come until 2004 when the People's Court in Tripoli sentenced him to life imprisonment following a categorically unfair trial. In October 2007, Alkarama sent his case as an individual communication to the Human Rights Committee as an individual complaint against the Libyan government. He was eventually released on 7 June 2009; he is however forbidden to leave Tripoli.