Libya ‘mass grave’ with seven bodies found

TRIPOLI — Libyan authorities said on Monday that seven unidentified bodies were found in the western town of Tarhuna, where scores of corpses have been discovered in mass graves in recent years.

A “mass grave” was discovered on Sunday in a “public waste dump” and seven bodies have been exhumed, the North African country’s missing persons authority said in a statement.

Mass graves were initially discovered in Tarhuna in June 2020 following the withdrawal of forces of Khalifa Haftar, an eastern Libya-based military chief who had spent a year trying to seize the capital Tripoli, 80 kilometres northwest of Tarhuna.

More than 250 bodies have since been found in the farming town, which was controlled for years by the Kaniyat militia — run by six brothers from the Kani family who imposed their dominance by slaughtering opponents and their families.

After starting their reign of terror in 2015, the militia “often abducted, detained, tortured, killed, and disappeared people who opposed them or who were suspected of doing so”, according to residents’ testimonies cited by Human Rights Watch.

Lions they kept were rumoured to be fed on the flesh of their enemies.

For a time, the group sided with Tripoli-based militias, but when Haftar launched his assault to seize the capital, the clan switched sides and offered him Tarhuna as a rear base.

When Haftar’s forces were routed, the Kani brothers disappeared — some are believed killed, others to be in hiding.

Oil-rich Libya was plunged into over a decade of chaos and lawlessness following a 2011 NATO-backed uprising that led to the removal and killing of longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi.

Dozens of militias and terror groups took advantage of the power vacuum.

A UN fact-finding mission last year found that all parties to Libya’s decade-long conflict have violated international humanitarian law since 2016, with some possibly guilty of war crimes.

Tensions remain high in Libya, where two rival prime ministers are vying for power.