Libyan city at forefront of rebellion gives up its horrific secrets

Today Libya is split in two. In the western half, where Colonel Muammar Gaddafi still has intermittent control, it is a place of violence, fear and revolution. In the east there is constant, and raucous, celebration from a people finally in control of their own destiny.

The fault line between the two is Benghazi, Libya's second largest city and now the centre of the movement to overthrow the dictator who controlled the country with a brutal tyranny for 41 years.

Convoys of cars are draped in the old monarchical flag that Gaddafi replaced when he seized power in 1969, their horns sounding incessantly and with children hanging out of windows flashing V for victory signs.

"For so long we were not able to say anything at all," said Ali Daims, waving a cartoon of Gaddafi lampooned as the devil. "You could not speak of what you felt because of the tyrant who controlled us. Today we can finally speak our hearts. We are free."

The centre of activity is the courthouse on the main boulevard bordering the Mediterranean. It is here that the Libyan revolution began when protesters gathered outside its entrance on February 15 after Gaddafi's henchmen arrested a group of dissidents.

Two days later the streets were filled with tens of thousands of protesters. By the end of that week the buildings that housed the regime's security apparatus were in flames and its soldiers and mercenaries escaping in cargo planes for Tripoli.

Now a constant stream of music and anti-Gaddafi slogans is played from the courthouse to the exultant crowd in the square outside. In an entrance a picture of the former ruler has been placed on the ground for every new arrival to wipe their feet.

With surprising rapidity committees have been set up, manned by volunteers and led by academics and lawyers, to deal with security, education, health, transport, media, finance and law and order.

Yesterday their attempt to present a clear alternative to Gaddafi took a significant step forward when a new provisional government was announced. Mustafa Abdel Jalil, the former justice minister who became a figurehead for the revolution after he became one of the first of the old regime to defect, said that the newly created "national council" would stay in power for no more than three months before the first free and fair elections were held.

Fathi Turbel, the 39-year-old lawyer whose imprisonment on the 15th was one of the triggers for the revolution, said the new government would only be in place during the transition from Gaddafi's rule. "We want a country established on the basis of liberty, democracy and which serves not oppresses the people," he explained. "We want a modern government - one that serves Libya, not installs fear like Gaddafi."

The evidence for this fear can be seen in the buildings used until so recently to control these people. It can be seen in the security building next to the courthouse with its underground prisons, the floors covered in filth and the only light coming through a barred two-foot square window high above ground level, where 20 protesters were discovered, 17 of them dead.

Above all, however, it can be found in the military complex at the end of Jamal Abdulnasar Street. It is a sprawling base, almost medieval in appearance with its high walls looming over the surrounding buildings and its watchtowers ringed by fortifications separated by slits wide enough for an AK-47 to poke through.

This was where the main fight to free Benghazi was staged. It lasted three days and involved scenes of almost unimaginable bravery by the protesters and barbarity by those they fought.

The soldiers fired not only machineguns but anti-aircraft weapons at the crowd. The protesters had few weapons, many only stones. Bulldozers from surrounding building sites were driven into the base's walls and then TNT, used by local fishermen, was piled into vehicles and detonated at the front gate, killing those at the steering wheel. Once the walls had finally been breached the full depravity of the regime was exposed.
There was the car filled with six burnt bodies, their hands handcuffed behind their backs. There was the labyrinth of underground prisons stretching the size of two football pitches in which opponents of Gaddafi had been held for months, sometimes years. And there was the pile of soldiers with their hands cut off, tortured and killed because they had refused to fire on their fellow countrymen gathered on the streets outside.

Idris el-Sharif, leader of the city's new security committee, said the rest of the country most now be freed. "The revolution must not stop," he said. "Gaddafi is weaker but we believe he still has at least three brigades of troops under his direct control."

A convoy of 35 vehicles piled with weapons taken from Benghazi's liberated bases has been sent west, he said. Repair work is being done on the 15 MiG and Mirage fighters at the nearby military airbase to try to make them airworthy.

Although rebellions have been reported in Misruata, Zawarah and others, these have yet to be fully liberated, with reports of clashes between the two sides. The concern of those in the freed east is that with each passing day that Gaddafi clings to power his opponents in the west will lose faith that he can be overthrown and become more fearful of possible retribution.

Mr Sharif said that it was therefore essential the uprising's momentum did not stall. Contact, he said, was being made between regime opponents in the west and east to co-ordinate what happened next. "They know what to do and will execute it accordingly," he said of the anti-Gaddafi forces in the west. "The revolution will not stop."