Delivered Into Enemy Hands - Human Rights Watch

Methodology
This report is based primarily on interviews Human Rights Watch conducted during a
research trip to Libya from March 14 to March 27, 2012; documents that Human Rights
Watch discovered in Libyan foreign intelligence chief Musa Kusa’s office on September 3,
2011; and Human Rights Watch research on unlawful rendition and secret detention by the
United States and other governments over the past decade.
During its March 2012 trip to Libya, Human Rights Watch conducted in-depth interviews
with 14 former detainees who had been transferred to Libya between 2004 and 2006.
Before each interview, we informed interviewees of its purpose and the kinds of issues
that would be covered, and asked whether they wanted to participate. We informed them
that they could discontinue the interview at any time or decline to answer specific questions
without consequence. We did not offer or provide incentives to persons we
interviewed. We conducted each interview individually and in private.
Human Rights Watch was previously aware that seven of these individuals had been
transferred to Libya. We had already interviewed four of them in 2009 while they were still
in Libya’s Abu Salim prison, but had conducted those interviews in an open courtyard,
occasionally within the earshot of guards. 26 The fall of the Gaddafi government and the
prisoners’ release from detention provided Human Rights Watch with an opportunity to
speak to them in private, without the stress of prison conditions, and in greater depth
about their experiences.
These interviews and documents led Human Rights Watch to other individuals who had
also been unlawfully rendered, detained, and interrogated with varying levels of foreign
government involvement. In addition, Human Rights Watch worked with Sheikh Othman, a
former LIFG member who worked in the Tripoli Military Defense Council. He was in charge
26 In 2009 Human Rights Watch interviewed Abdul Hakim Belhadj, Mohammed Ahmed Mohammed al-Shoroeiya, Majid al-
Maghrebi, and Mostafa al-Mehdi in Abu Salim. Human Rights Watch also spoke briefly to Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi during the
same visit, but he refused to speak to us, saying “[w]here were you when I was being tortured in American jails?” “Libya/US:
Investigate Death of Former CIA Prisoner,” Human Rights Watch news release, May 11, 2009,
http://www.hrw.org/news/2009/05/11/libyaus-investigate-death-former-cia-prisoner.
15 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | SEPTEMBER 2012