Photo: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad (The Guardian)What about torture?, I asked him. "Sometimes they would put the detainees in dog cages, just to scare them. It depended on the officer. Some would go out of their way to harm prisoners."
I was not beaten or tortured but I could hear the sounds of people getting beaten through the walls. The doctor had told me that the foreigners were treated differently. "Where they kept you the treatment was considered luxury compared to the guys who where kept in the back prison or the with the dogs. "The foreigners were not beaten but they beat and tortured the locals. They wouldn't beat the prisoners in front of me, but I did see officers walking with sticks made of palm tree reeds. But even without beating life was horrible, the dark, small dungeons, the fear, the sounds of the dogs. They terrorised the people in these dark cells. You lose your humanity, you lose your respect."
Time Magazine's Tony Karon asks whether, as Tunisia and Libya enter this next phase of this pro-democracy movement, the West will be able to accept that Islam is not fundamentally at odds with democracy.
Tunisia's election and Libya's celebration of the overthrow of Col. Muammar Gaddafi won't have made for a happy weekend among those fevered heads in Washington who believe the West is locked in an existential struggle with political Islam: If anything, the Islamist tones of the Libyan celebrations, coupled with the Islamist victory in the Tunisian polls will have evoked the collapsing dominoes of Vietnam-era anti-communist metaphor.
2023 GMT: According to NTC officials, Muammar Qaddafi and his son Muatassim will be buried in a secret location, with Muslim clerics present, likely sometime tomorrow.
2010 GMT: A very large crowd in Dael, Daraa, forms a human "SOS," a call for help:
After 42 years of absolute power in Libya, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi spent his last days hovering between defiance and delusion, surviving on rice and pasta his guards scrounged from the emptied civilian houses he moved between every few days, according to a senior security official captured with him.
Under siege by the former rebels for weeks, Colonel Qaddafi grew impatient with life on the run in the city of Surt, said the official, Mansour Dhao Ibrahim, the leader of the feared People’s Guard, a network of loyalists, volunteers and informants. “He would say: ‘Why is there no electricity? Why is there no water?’ ”
2020 GMT: The lawyer for five political activists accused of insulting the leaders of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has said that his clients spent years serving their nation and that their alleged "crimes" are rights guaranteed by the Constitution.
The five men, arrested in April for urging public protests and disrupting public order, have been on trial since June, with a verdict expected on 17 November.
"The defendants are among the experts who served this country," said attorney Mohammed al-Roken. "There is no legislation that forbids peaceful gatherings. On the contrary, there's an article in the constitution that guarantees the right of citizens to hold public gatherings."
The defendants include economist Nasser bin Ghaith, a lecturer at the Abu Dhabi branch of France's Sorbonne University. He published an article criticising attempts to avoid political reform by buying off citizens with generous government spending programmes.
Another defendant, Ahmed Mansoor, is a communications engineer and poet whose works were published by Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage. He is accused of running a website that provided a platform for the rest of the defendants to express anti-regime views.
1950 GMT: Braving gunfire that injured several people, protesters in Hodeidah in Yemen continue a march:
The Bab Amr District of Homs, Syria, is targeted by heavy machine guns, tank shells, and anti-personnel shells that explode overheadSee Also, Syria Video Essay: The Military Assault on Homs
1933 GMT: James Miller posts a video essay evaluating the assault by the Syrian military on the city of Homs and its aftermath.
1921 GMT: EA's source in Bahrain writes this report of what happened today:
Just came back from my last round in Bahrain. On my way out I saw groups of protesters (men and women) marching in Sitra, 7 villages, police vehicles chasing some of them. The roads looked like a war zone, sounds of horns honking the famous tune, "Tn.Tn.Ttn," AKA "down down Hamad" could be heard all around from protesters who were in the streets or up the roofs of the houses.
After managing to find a way out, I took the highway leading to the Saudi causeway. Police jeeps and traffic officers where all parking on both sides of the highway & at some checkpoints in the entrances to the villages. I noticed that the turn leading to Budayeh road (north of Bahrain) was open so I took it, and tried to get inside some of the villages there, like Karanah or Janosan, but it was no use. They were either blocked by police or by barriers that had been placed by protesters. So I had to go back from where I came.
I went back and took another road leading to east the of Bahrain. On my way I saw a group of protesters blocking the other lane of the highway near Athari village (police jeeps were just about 300m away!!). They used bricks, wood plats and 1 of them was pouring on the ground some kind of liquid -I think it was used car oil- they were fast and ran away immediately once they completed!
So I just contined on my way. I saw police SUVs heading toward the blocked road. I reached Juffair village, and I noticed the remainings of the roadblock that was done early this morning. There was a police SUV parked next to the scene, seems it was there to prevent protesters from doing it again, I continued until I reached Seef area (the place where protesters were determined to reach and gather). It was full, but with police thugs, not with protesters.
It's the last day of the weekend, people usually go out, malls are suppose to be full, but two main malls, Bahrain mall & Dana mall, were closed, and the other 2 big ones, Seef & City Center, the parking lots were almost empty!
That's when I decided to get back home, it's true that we couldn't reach the center point which we planned to gather in, but for sure and thanks to the huge security presence in all around Bahrain roads I can say with certainty that the Bahrain revolution is still alive and people are defiantly not going to give up. Government fears us, it fears our existence and fears our truthful movement for freedom and dignity.
Since yesterday, there have been a flurry of videos of the moment when former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi was seized by the fighters of the National Transitional Council. This four-minute clip, from Global Post, appears to be the most vivid record of the capture of an injured but conscious Qaddafi as he was taken to the truck where it appears he was shot and killed.
A crowd in the Bab Amr section of the Syrian city Homs celebrates the end of Muammar Qaddafi with singing and fireworks
Amidst the drama and the uncertainty over the death of Muammar Qaddafi --- how exactly was he slain? from injuries in an airstrike, a shoot-out, or (most likely, I think) an execution as he was being transported on a truck? --- this message came in from an Egyptian activist, Mahmoud Salem:
"One fled, one tried, one dead. If this keeps on at the same rate, Bashar will be smitten by God or something."
Photo: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad (The Guardian)What about torture?, I asked him. "Sometimes they would put the detainees in dog cages, just to scare them. It depended on the officer. Some would go out of their way to harm prisoners."
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, ;)
