Abu Salim prison () is a maximum security prison in Tripoli, Libya. The prison was notorious during the rule of Muammar Gaddafi for alleged mistreatment and human rights abuses, including a massacre in 1996 in which Human Rights Watch estimated that 1,270 prisoners were killed.
In 2011, when the NTC invited investigators from CNN and other organizations it found only what appeared to be animal bones at that site and announced further investigations.
Construction
The prison was built in 1984 by foreign workers in record time from imported, pre-fabricated concrete slabs. Each slab had a concrete hole in its middle, so that cranes could put the slabs in place. The holes were then filled with mortar, but inmates later managed to reopen the holes, hide the openings and communicate through them with each other. It was built to replace the “Black Horse” prison. The prison consisted of two identical blocks called the military prison and the central prison. Each block consisted of eight wards.
Use before the alleged massacre
The first prisoners arrived in September 1984. They had been arrested after a May 1984 attack on Gaddafi's compound at Bab al-Azizia. In March 1988, 426 out of 530 political prisoners in Abu Salim were released in an Amnesty. However, the prison population increased again after mass arrests in the following years in successive waves, beginning with December 1988 to March 1989, followed by hundreds suspected to have participated in a coup attempt in October 1993. In March 1995, 306 prisoners were released, followed by mass arrests from mid-May to August 1995. There were three break-outs in July 1995, December 1995 and mid-June 1996, involving up to 400 men.
1996 massacre
A prisoner protest took place on June 28, 1996. Food rations had been drastically cut as a punishment after inmates had escaped a few days earlier. The revolting prisoners captured two guards while they distributed food. One guard died, and the other guards opened fire, killing six prisoners and wounding about 20. Government negotiatiors, including Abdullah Senussi, then met with prisoner representatives who asked for improved conditions, care for the sick and trials. Senussi did not accept to put prisoners on trial, but he agreed to the other conditions, once the captured guard was released. The prisoners agreed. 120 injured and sick prisoners were told they would receive medical care and were taken away in buses. As it turned out, they would never be seen again. The next morning, June 29, many prisoners were rounded up into the courtyards of the central prison, and were shot and killed by gunfire from the rooftops. More than 1,200 prisoners were killed over the course of two days. About 270 inmates from Block 2 and inmates from Block 1 were not shot, but were moved into the military section of the prison. The reason apparently was that the keys captured from the guards did not fit the locks of their cells. The commander spared them because he believed they had refused to participate in the uprising.
The reports by Human Rights Watch were initially based on the testimony of a single former inmate, Hussein Al Shafa’i, who stated that he did not witness a prisoner being killed: "I could not see the dead prisoners who were shot..." The figure of over 1200 killed was arrived at by Al Shafa’i calculating the number of meals he prepared when he was working in the prison's kitchen. Al Shafa'i's report was later confirmed by other testimonies, including testimonies collected by British journalist Lindsey Hilsum included in her 2012 book Sandstorm. She describes the massacre number as an uncertain estimate, because of the government's silence about the whereabouts of prisoners and their condition. The captured Mansour Dhao, a prominent figure in the Gaddafi regime, again confirmed the massacre in a BBC interview.
According to Hisham Matar, those killed were first buried in shallow graves in the six courtyards of the prison right where they had been executed. A few months later, their bodies were exhumed, the bones were ground up and dumped into the sea. An opposition group, the National Front for the Salvation of Libya, said that the bodies were removed by refrigerator trucks and later transferred to trains.
Government reaction
The Libyan government rejected any allegations about a massacre in Abu Salim for eight years.