Post date: May 23, 2011 9:39:3 PM
Captured African "mercenaries" say they were tricked into fighting for Gaddafi.
ZINTAN, LIBYA (MAY 20, 2011) REUTERS - African migrants, captured and jailed by the rebels they were fighting in Libya's Western Mountains, say they were tricked or coerced into the army of Muammar Gaddafi in the belief they faced an al Qaeda invasion.
In rare first-hand accounts from a group branded "mercenaries" by Libya's rebels, five men from Sudan's western
Darfur region and Chad told Reuters how they were working in Libya as builders and decorators when they became embroiled in the conflict unleashed by an uprising to end Gaddafi's four-decade rule.
They spoke last week at a makeshift jail in a secondary school in the rebel-held town of Zintan. They have had nocontact with their families or aid groups, and medical workers in the town say they have had only limited access to the men.
Some of what they said about their treatment in the prison appeared aimed at pleasing their captors, several of whom stood in the corridor holding shotguns and Kalashnikov rifles.
At one point, a guard outside the cell loaded two cartridges into a double-barreled shotgun and motioned as if to shoot the prisoners.
Sudanese national, Al Gadafi Smail Haroune said he had been told he would be fighting "terrorists...and that Libya was facing an al Qaeda invasion." Only when he arrived in Zintan, he said, "we didn't find al Qaeda, just good Muslims."
"I hope that this message will be transmitted to all young men who don't know the facts, those who think that in Zintan or in western Libya there is al Qaeda, this is not true. There is no terrorism here but good people who fear God and his Prophet," he added.
Mohammed, a decorator from Darfur, said he enlisted in April in the capital, Tripoli.
"In Tripoli I went to military camp 77. They trained me in how to use weapons and told us we were only going to guard
checkpoints. They told us there were Algerians, French and al Qaeda in Maghreb fighting in Libya," he said.
Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIB) is a pan-Maghreb jihadist group.
"We found nothing like that," he said. "We've been tricked. It wasn't true."
A third man, who declined to be named, said he was from Chad and was working in Zintan as a builder when he was stopped by forces loyal to Gaddafi on his way to Tripoli.
"I had no official papers," he said. "I was in jail for four months. They told me, 'if you want to get out, you join us, we
give you papers and you work for us." He said he was taken to what he described as a guesthouse, and then sent to the frontline of Libya's Western Mountains, where rebels have seized most of the plateau and pro-Gaddafi forces mainly hold the desert plains below.