THE SHAFT of sunlight at the door of the burnt-out warehouse catches millions of particles of a particularly gruesome dust. Its dull, grey colour comes from the remains of more than 40 bodies charred by flames until they became a pile of skeletons.
A team from the International Committee of the Red Cross took the last corpse away yesterday but the stench remains, an indescribable smell that can be detected as soon as you enter the compound. Inside the building, blackened outlines on the floor appear to show where the bodies lay as they burned.
Human Rights Watch says it inspected the remains of some 45 bodies here, in the Khalida Ferjan neighbourhood in the southern Tripoli district of Salahuddin, at the weekend. The yard containing the warehouse adjoins the Yarmouk military base, home to the feared Khamis Brigade, a force commanded by Muammar Gadafy’s son Khamis. The base, which was the scene of fierce fighting between rebels and Gadafy’s forces last week, is deserted apart from a handful of rebel fighters. At its entrance, the flag of pre-Gadafy Libya flies from the top of a gigantic granite eagle.
A statement from Human Rights Watch said members of the Khamis Brigade appeared to have carried out the killings at the warehouse on August 23rd. It said it had been told by a survivor, Abdulrahim Ibrahim Bashir (25), that at sunset that day guards of the Khamis Brigade opened fire on him and the other detainees from the roof, shooting through its corrugated steel covering, while another guard lobbed grenades in from the entrance. Bashir survived by escaping over a wall while the guards were reloading.
“I saw bullets and heard people saying Allahu Akbar, and that’s all,” he said. “I saw [eight people] fall down. When [the guards] were refilling their ammunition, I ran out and jumped over the wall. I was not wounded . . . They just shot and killed us. After I escaped, I saw one soldier finish off anyone who was wounded lightly.” Bashir said one of those killed had died in his arms. The Khamis Brigade had held him in the warehouse for three months after accusing him of being “one of the revolutionaries”, he said.
Human Rights Watch said it was told by a rebel fighter that he and his unit had discovered the smouldering warehouse and its grisly contents when they seized the nearby military base on August 26th.
“We smelled it,” he said.