Home » blog, Featured, The Arab World

Libya: NTC concocts mass grave story in brazen propaganda ploy

25 September 2011 46,489 views 27 Comments

By the Editor.

Updated 25 September, 2011 – click here to go to the update.

Updated again 28 September, 2011 – click here to go to this update.

In a truly stunning display of dishonesty, the BBC has reported, citing no evidence to back its claim, that a mass grave containing over 1,200 bodies has been found in Tripoli’s Abu Salim prison complex. The BBC attempts to tie this ‘finding’ to the equally concocted ‘Abu Salim prison massacre‘, as it claims that the bodies are those of the inmates supposedly killed in 1996.

In a piece posted today after a NTC news conference, the BBC uses the headline:

More than 1,200 bodies found in Tripoli mass grave

Categorically, absolutely, unequivocally, this is an out-and-out lie; 1,200 bodies have not been found. Not a single body has been found. In fact, no excavation has been performed, and no more than ‘several bone fragments’ have been discovered, according to the NTC.

This is revealed to the reader within the BBC’s own concocted report in the paragraphs that follow (emphasis mine):

A mass grave believed to contain up to 1,270 bodies has been found in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, says the National Transitional Council (NTC).

The remains are thought to be those of inmates who were killed by security forces in 1996 in the Abu Salim prison.

Excavation at the site is expected to start soon.

Several bone fragments and pieces of clothing have already been found in the top soil.

While the unelected, illegitimate terror council known as the NTC claims to have found merely ‘several bone fragments‘, the BBC claims that 1,200 bodies have been found in its deliberately misleading headline.

Even this weak slew of lies from the BBC exposes the fragile nature of the ‘Abu Salim massacre’ propaganda, as it refers to the evidential basis of the event (emphasis mine):

A few eyewitnesses have talked about the fact they were killed in their jail cells by grenades and sustained gunfire after a protest.

Officials in the new government say they will need foreign forensic help to determine exactly what happened there.

The BBC’s report contains testimony from a ‘Sami Assadi’, who claims to have lost two brothers in the incident.

“Mixed feelings really. We are all happy because this revolution has succeeded, but when I stand here, I remember my brothers and many, many friends have been killed, just because they did not like Muammar Gaddafi.”

The inclusion of this testimony is a blatant attempt to twist and distort the reality on the ground. The BBC suggests that the ‘revolution’ has succeeded. In reality the ‘rebels’ and the foreign soldiers & special forces leading them, don’t even hold Tripoli, in addition to countless other locations still held by the Libyan resistance. These include Bani Walid and Sirte – locations now subject to NATO-prescribed blockades in an attempt to starve the resistance into submission, coupled with lethal bombing campaigns.

In its crude attempt to deceive the public, the BBC even manages to contradict itself in this one-page report. The testimony it provides above suggests that the alleged victims of the ‘Abu Salim massacre’ were killed because they “did not like Gaddafi“, while the BBC itself claims earlier in the piece, that they were killed for protesting against conditions in the prison.

Along with a dizzying number of other outlets, Associated Press has also picked up this story, citing rebel spokesperson Khalid al-Sherif: “We have discovered the truth about what the Libyan people have been waiting for for many years, and it is the bodies and remains of the Abu Salim massacre“. As with the BBC piece, this report also admits that only a few bone fragments have been found and excavation has not even begun.

Most certainly, this ‘mass grave’ propaganda will drop out of the news without retraction from the NTC liars or the media lackeys that peddled it, as it turns out to be an utter falsehood. ‘Abu Salim’ is an event toted by globalist-Zionist funded Human Rights Watch as the trump card in the propaganda war against Libya. It is an event for which there is no physical evidence, and HRW’s report on the event hinges on the testimony of one person who is now residing in the United States. Laughably, HRW even admits that they cannot independently verify a single detail of the man’s claims.

Update: 25 September, 2011

Hat tip to @Cordeliers on this. CNN has chimed in, stating that the bones found did not even appear to be human:

It was unclear, however, whether the site actually was a mass grave, as no excavation has taken place. Members of the media were shown bones at the site, but medics with CNN staffers on the scene said the bones did not appear to be human.

Update: 28 September, 2011

Knowing full well that the ‘Abu Salim massacre’ is a complete fraud, and the bodies of the supposed victims will never be found, Human Rights Watch is now advising that, “Unprofessional Exhumations Can Destroy Evidence of 1996 Abu Salim Killings“. In the press release they even call for a halt to any ‘mass grave’ exhumations.

The pernicious nature of these liars makes one thing for certain. The tens of thousands of bodies produced by NATO and rebel terrorism over the last six months, will no doubt be fraudulently touted as evidence of supposed Gaddafi mass killings.

27 Comments »

  • John Ish Ishmael said:

    The BBC has become a shameless travesty of independent reporting it is an arm of the British state and MI 5,6.

    Try the Guardian online which is far less corrupted and The Independent online as well as the Irish Times.

  • Johnny Canuck said:

    Someone who IS making lots of dead bodies, is the Canadian NATO Commander of Operation Unified Protector, Lt. Gen. Charles Bouchard. Bouchard has final approval of all targeting in Libya. Clearly this unindicted warcriminal should be held accountable for his very real crimes against Libya and humanity.

  • Enrique Ferro said:

    BBC’s cheap policy: parroting whatever the “rebels” claim as an absolute truth without further checking… Is that a credible media which is funded by public money?!?

  • Andrew said:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kargNcnpb0&feature=player_embedded

    This is how NATO is helping the civilians of Libya, with cluster bombs.

  • tom dee said:

    They need to make it look like there was a reason for the invasion and thief of the oil fields. They pulled the same stunt with Saddam who had rape rooms which never existed along with many other horrors that were used to start the war.

    BBC is just another fake news organization. They need to just admit they only report what the powerful tell them to print.

  • Caustic Logic said:

    Interesting – the dig here stops as HRW again urges no more exhumation, to not destroy evidence. So why the haste to dig up another mass grave near the Rixos hotel? It was evil and near where “journalists were held captive,” so clearly the regime’s work. Why would they want to throw away clues of that?
    http://news.sky.com/home/world-news/article/16078825

  • Revolutionary said:

    Lying BBC is state run and it never never never never tells the truth.

Leave your response!

Add your comment below, or trackback from your own site. You can also subscribe to these comments via RSS.

Be nice. Keep it clean. Stay on topic. No spam.

You can use these tags:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

This is a Gravatar-enabled weblog. To get your own globally-recognized-avatar, please register at Gravatar.

Show us you\'re human! *