Four years ago the killing machine of Gaddafi murdered eight innocent Libyans. January 2nd 1997, the Libyan television showed footage of the execution. Those killed by a firing squad were Colonel Muftah Garroum Al-Warfally, Colonel Mustafa Abulgasem Al-Kikly, Colonel Saad Saleh, Major Khalil Al-Jedik, Major Ramadhan Al-Aihuri, and Major Ihbail. Dr. Saad Musbah and Suleiman Geith were killed by hanging. These martyrs were paraded on television as American spies.

They were tried twice in four years. The first trial was headed by Colonel Muhammad Al-Aisawi Al-Ruhiby and he handed them prison sentences ranging from 5 to 15 years. However, Gaddafi was not satisfied with the decision and demanded a second trial headed by Colonel Musbah Al-Arousi who was instructed to change the previous court rule to the count of capital punishment for all the eight accused Libyans.

During the trial the accusation was the involvement in an attempted coup to topple the Gaddafi regime, and contacting an exiled Libyan group. During one of the hearings Major Khalil Al-Jedik was asked about his meeting with the Libyan group at which there was an American named John present. His reply was that he met many people while he was abroad and that it did not make him a traitor, and it was unlikely that the American is being tried in his country.

During the interrogation period Colonel Garroum was brought in front of a group of intelligence officers including Abdullah Al-Sanusi, Musa Kausa, Ahmad Gaddaf-Eldam and Ali Al-Kilani to humiliate him by calling him “ai-wa ya rayis” and teased him by saying “oh president give us a speech”. He had to stand for about an hour at a time while being blindfolded and his hands tied behind his back.

Colonel Mustafa Al-Kikly was the head of the intelligence training school and was second in command to Garroum in the October 1993 attempted coup. He was an honest soldier and a true Libyan patriot who sacrificed his life for others, and was ignored completely throughout the television parade of his comrades. Al-Kikly and Muhammad Al-Ghoul were tortured the most, and Al-Ghoul was acquitted and a few months after his release he died of slow acting chemical poisoning. Ramadhan Al-Aihuri refused to ask for clemency and pointed out that he will be executed regardless, and would rather die on his feet than on his knees.

From 1993 until now the Gaddafi propaganda machine tried relentlessly to show that the October 1993 coup was a Warfalla movement aided by the American CIA, and he personally tried to sell this idea by touring different parts of the country to rally other tribes behind him against Warfalla. His agents called the coup the “Beniwalid Uprising” to confuse the rest of Libya between the coup and the true Beniwalid peoples’ uprising that followed the coup.

About 120 military and civilian personnel were involved in the October 1993 attempted coup, and there were only forty individuals from Beniwalid. Four of the executed Libyans were not Warfalli, and the second in command was from Kikla. Colonel Saad Saleh Al-Barghthy was from Tokra, Major Ihbail was Forjani and the nephew of Khalifa Haftar, and Sulaiman Geith is from Al-Baidha.

The Gaddafi regime atrocity did not end by killing those citizens, but he demolished their houses, exiled their relatives and confiscated their property. The harm done to their families are beyond imagination as they were expelled from schools, suspended from their jobs and forced to condemn their loved ones on television.

The blood of the Libyan victims will not run in vain and we will not forget them, and may God bless their souls.

Saleh Mansour