"In Tripoli, people vanish sometimes without a trace"

"... Barely a year has passed, and the interim government has been in office less than three months. The government has yet to deliver on its pledge to reform the judiciary and conduct what it has called "interim justice". Any trial taking place today is being conducted in the very same judicial system that the rebels had fought against.

In the meantime, rebel militias particularly in Misurata, Sirte and Tripoli are being accused of a series of basic rights violations, murder and armed robbery. The government has yet to make a single arrest in those cases, let alone begin the process of trying them.

At least 10 of my friends have long since disappeared. I know that at least three of them were killed in cold blood, while another two are in jail. I know nothing about the other five. Their families, desperate for news, every now and then check whether I have heard anything.

They have tried every possible means available to find out what has happened to their loved ones, but in vain. Of the 10, eight were university professors whose only crime was going on live television to urge an end to the war last summer. We all share the same values, true Libyans concerned with rebuilding our country after years of living abroad.

It's not clear how many prisoners are being held in the "new" Libya. While human-rights groups, including those representing the United Nations, talk of 7,000 to 10,000, eyewitnesses and former prisoners talk of three times those figures. Warnings are now common about widespread torture. A recently released friend told me how he had been kept for more than a week, his diabetes medication confiscated by guards. He was tearful when he described what was going on in what he dubbed Misurata's "concentration camp", where prisoners as young as 15 are kept behind bars with no visits from relatives or access to lawyers.

The living conditions at those prisons are terrible. Death by torture is widespread across the country, but the most notorious stories come from Misurata.

In Tripoli, people vanish sometimes without a trace. Less than a month ago a well-known and highly respected career diplomat, Dr Omar Brebesh, a former ambassador to France, was lured from his office for an interview by militia members, some of whom he knew personally. He went to their makeshift office outside Tripoli and vanished. A couple of days later his body, showing signs of torture, turned up in a forest west of Tripoli...."