(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has reiterated its call for the immediate release of former bookseller Abdel Razak Al Mansouri, saying he is almost certainly being held because of his articles on the Internet criticising the Libyan regime. Al Mansouri is officially charged with unauthorised possession of a pistol. “This man’s imprisonment is arbitrary even if you […]
(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has reiterated its call for the immediate release of former bookseller Abdel Razak Al Mansouri, saying he is almost certainly being held because of his articles on the Internet criticising the Libyan regime. Al Mansouri is officially charged with unauthorised possession of a pistol.
“This man’s imprisonment is arbitrary even if you were to give credence to the charge brought against him,” RSF said.
“How can the Libyan authorities justify holding someone secretly for more than five months on such a charge?” the organisation asked. “In this type of case, the defendant should be released while awaiting trial. On the basis of the information we have, this charge just seems to be a pretext for silencing a dissident.”
A Human Rights Watch representative was able to meet with Al Mansouri on 12 May 2005, during an official visit to Libya. The representative had asked to visit him after being alerted to the case by an earlier RSF release.
Aged 51, Al Mansouri was taken to the meeting handcuffed and blindfolded from the detention centre where he is being held. He said he was interrogated several times about the articles he posted on the Akhbar Libya website. He is convinced he was arrested because of these articles and not because of the pistol, which was found at his home only after his arrest. He described it as an old pistol given to him by his father.
Al Mansouri said that for the past three weeks he has been held in a Department of Internal Security detention centre in the Tripoli district of Fashloom. Before that he was held at a special departmental detention centre designated for combating “terrorism and zealots.”
Human Rights Watch told RSF that Al Mansouri showed no signs of physical mistreatment, that he was in relatively good spirits and that he had received clothes from his family. However, he has not been allowed any visits since his arrest and has not been able to see a lawyer.
He told the Human Rights Watch representative that he wrote “in order to make Libya a better place.”
Libyan Internal Security Head Col. Tohamy Khaled told Human Rights Watch that he was responsible for Al Mansouri’s arrest. “This man was not arrested for an article or the Internet or radio,” he said. “He was arrested because he had a gun without a licence.”
When asked why Al Mansouri was being held by Internal Security instead of a facility for regular criminals, Khaled said that illegal weapons were “a job for internal security.”
To view an article by Al Mansouri posted on the Akhbar Libya website on 10 January 2005, visit: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=13890
