Delivered Into Enemy Hands - Human Rights Watch

Mustafa Salim Ali el-Madaghi
Mustafa Salim Ali el-Madaghi (Madaghi) 236 was an LIFG member who said he left Libya in
1990. He was arrested in Mauritania and coercively interrogated by someone he believes was
American. As the Tripoli Documents indicate, US authorities later transferred him to a prison
in Morocco, where he was held for a month and then returned to Libya. In Libya he was
charged with trying to overthrow the government, given a summary trial, and then sentenced
to life in prison. This sentence was later reduced to seven years, then to four, but he re-
mained in custody after the four years were up, until the uprising against Gaddafi began on
February 16, 2011.
Human Rights Watch interviewed Madaghi in Tripoli in March 2012. The information in this
section is drawn from this interview unless otherwise noted. 237
Mustafa Salim Ali el-Madaghi said he left Libya in 1990 because of religious oppression. He
joined the LIFG in Afghanistan, spent time in Sudan, and finally ended up in Mauritania. He
was arrested in Mauritania on February 5, 2004, where he was living with his wife and
children. He told Human Rights Watch that the Mauritanian intelligence service took him to
a detention facility, but no interrogations began until a group of foreigners arrived about
two days later. The foreigner who led the interrogations spoke Arabic with a Lebanese
accent and was dressed in civilian clothes. He was joined in one interrogation session by
the head of Mauritanian intelligence and a Mauritanian interrogator named Ismael.
Madaghi believes the foreigner was American because he asked about threats to the United
States, talked on the phone in English, and sent text messages in English on his cell phone.
The foreign interrogator in Mauritania questioned Madaghi for about 10 days. He wanted
Madaghi to confess to being part of al Qaeda, to give up the location of a man named
Abdul Rahman, and to describe the next attacks being plotted against the United States. 238
236 Mustafa Salim Ali el-Madaghi’s name has been spelled “Mustafa Salim Ali Moderi Tarabulsi” (Tarabulsi meaning “from
Tripoli”) and he has also gone by the name “Shaykh Musa,” sometimes spelled “Sheikh Musa.” He served as the deputy of
Di’iki in Mauritania for the LIFG.
237 Human Right Watch interview with Madaghi, March 26, 2012.
238 Abdul Mohammed Omar al-Tawaty is another Libyan interviewed for this report who was in Mauritania at the time and
went by the name of Abdul Rahman (see below).
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