[Picture from same article - copyright thedailybeast.com,
03/13/2012 – Image Moises Saman / Redux]
03.12.2012. I met Victor, a Nigerian migrant working
in Libya, when he was released from prison on the second night of violent
protests in Tripoli in February 2011. He was gaunt and emaciated—like a photo
negative of a skeleton.
All day long, there had been reports on
Libyan state television of prisoners rioting and of prisons being overrun
by rebels who were
unleashing rapists, drug addicts, and murderers to wreak havoc upon the
peaceful citizens of Tripoli. After Victor was freed, he called his girlfriend,
Mercy, our new Nigerian housekeeper. He had nowhere to go and he was afraid, so
he came to stay at our house.
I never found out whether Victor was
innocent or guilty of a crime. He may very well have been guilty, but he was
never officially charged. He had been in prison for more than six months, he
said, sleeping on a cold cement floor in a small cell with 70 other men. That
night, all of the prisoners had been gathered together and told that dictator
Muammar Gaddafi, in his clemency, had decided to pardon them. Before their
release, they had been led to shout a chorus of the new loyalist mantra:
“Muhammad, Muammar, and Libya!”
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