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Inside the secret prison where survival is a miracle

2022-09-04 21:57:13Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
Inside the secret prison where survival is a miracle
Walid Elhouderi

On October 1, 2020, Walid Elhouderi was announced to attend a meeting with several ambassadors in the Libyan capital, Tripoli.

After the meeting ended, he recalls escorting the Congolese ambassador by car, then immediately returned to the hall to collect his belongings.

"As soon as I came back, four people were waiting for me. They immediately raped me. They were hitting me. They put a gun to my stomach and kidnapped me. After that, I disappeared. I didn't even know where I was," Elhouderi told the BBC.

The four people were sent by the intelligence services, says Walid. He was taken to one of Tripoli's secret prisons, sometimes also administered by the militias that control parts of the capital.

After the 2011 revolution in Libya, which overthrew the long-standing regime of Muammar Gaddafi and plunged the country into chaos, the UN has frequently documented the phenomenon of missing persons.

"For 47 days, no one knew anything about where I was," says Elhouderi. The days and weeks that followed were terrifying. He was accused of trying to steal secret defense information and was placed in solitary confinement, transferred to another country, tortured and disfigured from his former self.

"They did not give me water for three days in a row and they came and hit me on the back three times a day. They didn't ask me any questions, nothing", he remembers.

After about two weeks, Elhouder was finally brought in for questioning and the violence stopped. A month later, in mid-November 2020, together with another person, they were transferred to al-Rweimi state prison in Tripoli.

"The day we went to that prison, I felt like I was free even though I was in prison. We knew that we would spend another 13 months in that facility."

When he was arrested, Elhouder had only been working in the translation department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a few months. He was initially accused of "violation of the secret information system of the ministry". Walid was accused of installing several devices on the Ministry's server that were connected to a server in France, where his father was ambassador. The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined to comment on the case.

For Elhouderi, everything that happened was a "conspiracy", accusing his director, a man he says has strong connections in Tripoli.

In the end, after months of lobbying by his family, his lawyers and the National Commission for Human Rights in Libya (NCHRL), for which Elhouder volunteered, the court concluded that the charges "were not based on facts, but were after clashes between co-workers. In the release decision, it is also emphasized that Elhouder was forced to confess under pressure, facing physical and psychological violence.

The BBC writes that what happened to Elhouderi is evidence of a rampant culture of corruption and impunity in a state that has left power largely to the arbitrariness of personal interests and the influence of militias. / BBC


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