Anti-Gaddafi fighters are accused of torture

The New York Times reports:

First there were the blindfold, the wrist-scarring handcuffs and the death threats. Then came beatings and electric shocks. In the fog of pain, the detainee, who said he had done nothing wrong, would have confessed to anything, he later recalled.

The techniques were familiar to Libyans, but the perpetrators were not: they were former rebels, according to the detainee, a 36-year-old man who said he had worked in military intelligence for the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

The man, who requested that his name not be published because he feared retribution from his former captors, said he was arrested by armed former rebels almost two weeks ago, held in a building for four days and tortured.

His story was impossible to immediately verify, but he displayed what he said was evidence of the torture: huge bruises and welts on his legs, stripes of black and blue across the back of his thighs, and scars on his feet and ankles that he said marked the spots where his captors attached electrical wires.

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