“The chief of staff has no control over the town and therefore armed men are able to prevent families from coming back”, the minister was quoted as saying by AFP on Monday.

Juwaili said the hilltop town was near-deserted as a result of the fighting and that the small number of people who remain are living in dire conditions.

In his first public statement on Bani Walid, Juwaili claimed that as many as 30,000 people had been displaced by the conflict out of a town reckoned to be home to some 80,000 residents, AFP reported.

Fighting in Bani Walid this month displaced tens of thousands of people, Jueili noted, including 30,000 who fled to the nearby town of Tarhuna and 10,000 who went to the capital.

Bani Walid, 185 kilometres (115 miles) southeast of Tripoli, was one of the last towns to fall to NATO-backed rebels in the 2011 conflict that toppled and killed Gaddafi.

The current violence began in early July, when unknown people from Bani Walid reportedly abducted two journalists from Misrata. Armed groups from Misrata went to retrieve the journalists, one of whom was Omran Shaban, who was credited with discovering Gaddafi in a drainpipe in Sirte one year ago. Shaban was reportedly shot and detained in Bani Walid, along with another man. The two men were released two months later, on September 13, after a negotiated deal. Shaban was then flown to France for medical care but he died there on September 25. Reports circulated that he was tortured in custody – reports that Bani Walid leaders deny.

On the day of Shaban’s death, Libya’s newly elected parliament, the General National Congress, passed Resolution No. 7, which authorized the Interior and Defense Ministries to “use all their powers” to apprehend Shaban’s alleged killers, as well as other people in Bani Walid suspected of crimes committed before and during the 2011 conflict. Government forces and aligned armed groups, mostly from Misrata, surrounded the town. The armed groups are under the umbrella of Libya Shield – a grouping aligned with the Defense Ministry.

Bani Walid and Misrata have a history of antagonistic relations.

Clashes between pro-government forces and Bani Walid fighters this month killed dozens of people and wounded hundreds, escalating tribal tensions and highlighting the difficulties of achieving reconciliation.

The 50-page report presented by Human Rights Watch, “Death of a Dictator: Bloody Vengeance in Sirte,” details the final hours of Muammar Gaddafi’s life and the circumstances under which he was killed. It presents evidence that Misrata-based militias captured and disarmed members of the Gaddafi convoy and, after bringing them under their total control, subjected them to brutal beatings. They then executed at least 66 captured members of the convoy at the nearby Mahari Hotel. The evidence indicates that opposition militias took Gaddafi’s wounded son Mutassim from Sirte to Misrata and killed him there.

“Our findings call into question the assertion by Libyan authorities that Muammar Gaddafi was killed in crossfire, and not after his capture,” said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch. .

Among the most powerful new evidence is a mobile phone video clip filmed by opposition militia members that shows a large group of captured convoy members in detention, being cursed at and abused. Human Rights Watch used hospital morgue photos to establish that at least 17 of the detainees visible in the phone video were later executed at the Mahari Hotel.

Under the laws of war, the killing of captured combatants is a war crime, and Libyan civilian and military authorities have an obligation to investigate war crimes and other violations of international humanitarian law, according to Human Rights Watch.

These killings constitute the largest documented execution of detainees by anti-Gaddafi forces during the eight-month conflict in Libya, Human Rights Watch said.

A review of the available evidence regarding the deaths of Muammar and Mutassim Gaddafi calls into question the official account by the Libyan authorities, who claim that the two, as well as all others who perished at the scene, died during fierce crossfire. Video footage shows that Muammar Gaddafi was captured alive but bleeding heavily from a head wound, believed to have been caused by shrapnel from a grenade thrown by his own guards that exploded in their midst, killing his defense minister, Abu Bakr Younis.

In the footage, Muammar Gaddafi is severely beaten by opposition forces and stabbed with a bayonet in his buttocks, causing more injuries and bleeding. By the time he is filmed being loaded into an ambulance half-naked, he appears lifeless.

According to the evidence collected by Human Rights Watch, Mutassim Gaddafi was also captured alive at the scene of the battle, trying to break out of the siege by opposition forces. He was wounded and then filmed being transported by members of a Misrata-based opposition militia to the city of Misrata, where he was again filmed in a room, smoking cigarettes and drinking water while engaged in a hostile conversation with his capturers. By the evening, his dead body, with a new wound on his throat that was not visible in the prior video footage, was being publicly displayed in Misrata.

“In case after case we investigated, the individuals had been videotaped alive by the opposition fighters who held them, and then found dead hours later,” Bouckaert said. “Our strongest evidence for these executions comes from the footage filmed by the opposition forces, and the physical evidence at the Mahari Hotel, where the 66 bodies were found.”

“Despite initial pledges by top Libyan officials that the events would be investigated, Human Rights Watch has not seen any evidence that any actual inquiry is under way or has been carried out,” HRW says.

“One of Libya’s greatest challenges is to bring its well-armed militias under control and end their abuses,” Bouckaert said. “A good first step would be to investigate the mass executions of October 20, 2011, the most serious abuse by opposition forces documented so far.”

The report is based on interviews conducted in Libya with 14 former detainees, most of whom belonged to an armed Islamist group that had worked to overthrow Gaddafi for 20 years. Many members of the group, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), joined the NATO-backed anti-Gaddafi rebels in the 2011 conflict. Some of those who were rendered and allegedly tortured in US custody now hold key leadership and political positions in the country.

“Not only did the US deliver Gaddafi his enemies on a silver platter but it seems the CIA tortured many of them first,” said Laura Pitter, counterterrorism advisor at Human Rights Watch and author of the report.

“The scope of Bush administration abuse appears far broader than previously acknowledged and underscores the importance of opening up a full-scale inquiry into what happened.”

The report is also based on documents – some of which are being made public for the first time – that Human Rights Watch found abandoned, on September 3, 2011, in the offices of former Libyan intelligence chief Musa Kusa after Tripoli fell to rebel forces.

The interviews and documents establish that, following the September 11, 2001 attacks, the US, with aid from the United Kingdom (UK) and countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, arrested and held without charge a number of LIFG members living outside Libya, and eventually rendered them to the Libyan government.

“The involvement of many countries in the abuse of Gaddafi’s enemies suggests that the tentacles of the US detention and interrogation program reached far beyond what was previously known,” Pitter said. “The US and other governments that assisted in detainee abuse should offer a full accounting of their role.”

The report also describes serious abuses that five of the former LIFG members said they experienced at two US-run detention facilities in Afghanistan, most likely operated by the CIA. They include new allegations of waterboarding and other water torture. The details are consistent with the few other first-hand accounts about the same US-run facilities.

According to the report, the Libyan detainee accounts had previously gone largely undocumented because most of those returned to Libya were locked up in Libyan prisons until last year, when Libya’s civil unrest led to their release. And the US government has been unwilling to make public the details about its secret CIA detention facilities. The accounts of former detainees, the CIA documents found in Libya, and some declassified US government memos have shed new light on US detention practices under the Bush administration but also highlighted the vast amount of information that still remains secret, HRW said.

Despite overwhelming evidence of numerous and systematic abuses of detainees in US custody since the September 11 attacks, the US has yet to hold a single senior official accountable, according to HRW.

Since the fall of the Gaddafi government, US diplomats and members of Congress have met with some of the former CIA prisoners now in Libya, and the US has supported efforts by the Libyan government and civil society to overcome the legacy of their country’s authoritarian past. Human Rights Watch urged the US government to acknowledge its own past role in abuses and in helping Gaddafi round up his exiled opponents, to provide redress to the victims, and to prosecute those responsible for their alleged torture in US custody.

Polls opened at 8am local time on Saturday and will close at 8pm (1800 GMT). Full preliminary results are not due until Monday.

Acts of violence, mostly in the east of the country, prevented 101 polling stations from opening on Saturday, the electoral commission’s chairman said, according to Al Jazeera.

On Friday, a helicopter carrying election material from Libya’s eastern city of Benghazi was shot at in mid-flight, fatally wounding a member of Libya’s High National Election Committee (HNEC) logistics team onboard, Al Jazeera reported.

The head of the United Nations mission to Libya, urged “all voters to exercise their hard-earned democratic right to elect their National Congress representatives” while slamming the deadly act on Friday.

The 2.8 million registered voters will elect a 200-seat General National Conference (GNC ) which will replace the  interim government that has ruled the country after the ouster of Muammar Gaddafi.

From the parties, the coalition of ex-war time prime minister Mahmud Jibril is seen as a key contender among liberals, facing stiff competition from two Islamist parties :Justice and Development and Al-Wattan, Al Arabiya reported.

Parties were banned as an act of treason during Qaddafi’s 42 years of iron-fisted rule. 
A February 2011 uprising ended more than four decades of the dictator who was killed while on the run last October.

Jordan, is now demanding that Tripoli pay up more than $200 million for treatment and services provided to thousands of Libyans by hospitals, doctors and hotels in Amman.

A Libyan official said on Saturday his government will hire a Jordanian firm to help process financial complaints filed by hospitals in Amman, according to Arabian Gazette.

On Saturday Private Hospitals Association chairman Fawzi Hamouri and director of the Libyan health office in Jordan Ali Bin Jlayel met to solve is ongoing issue. They agreed to task Jordanian medical insurance management company to process all the bills, which would be paid when the audit was completed and the money allocated by the Libyan government arrives, Arabian Gazzete reports.

Both countries stressed the importance of maintaining good relations and decided to work on enhancing cooperation between Jordanian private hospitals and the Libyan health sector in the long run, according to Petra news agency.

Hospitals affiliated with the Private Hospitals Association (PHA) said they will stop admitting Libyan patients except emergency cases and those who can pay cash up front, a PHA representative said on Saturday.

According to Hammuri, Tripoli now owes $105 million to Amman in medical bills, while around 2,000 Libyan patients are still hospitalised in the Jordanian capital, AFP reported.

Accordin to sources, Greece is facing a similar problem with Jordan as private Greek hospitals that had been earning revenues from treating rebels injured in their country last year, have stopped accepting them as patients due to a mounting unpaid bill by the Libyan government.

The election, for an assembly which will re-draft the system of rule put in place by toppled leader Muammar Gaddafi, will now take place 18 days later then originally scheduled.

The vote was originally scheduled for June 19. “The date for the elections will be July 7,” the president of the electoral commission,  told a news conference in Tripoli, citing “logistical and technical” reasons for the delay, Al Arabiya reported.

“We never planned on postponing the election, we worked hard for the election to be on time,” added the head of the electoral commission.

The vote was postponed due to a delay in adopting a law to organize the elections, in order to give voters more time to register and to allow candidates who have been ruled out by the commission to appeal the decision, president of the electoral commission Nuri al-Abbar said, according to Reuters.

During his 42-year rule, Gaddafi banned direct elections, saying they were anti-democratic. The last time Libya held a multi-party national election was in 1952, under the rule of King Idris.

More than 2.7 million Libyans, 80 percent of eligible voters, have registered to participate in the election.

On Friday, the European Union said it has deployed an election assessment team to Libya ahead of the polls, which EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

The team of experts, headed by Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, a member of the EU parliament, is to “undertake a comprehensive assessment of the upcoming electoral process, a process full of challenges after so many decades of authoritarian regime,” a statement by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said.

The team will be deployed throughout Libya and will remain until the whole electoral process is done.

The authorities have complete control over the airport,” deputy interior minister Omar al-Khadrawi told journalists in the capital, adding that dozens assailants were arrested, Al Jazeera reported.

He also said that an investigation had been launched to determine the circumstances of Habshi’s disappearance.

The group of ex-rebels called al-Awfea Brigade, from the town of Tarhouna, 80km southeast of the Libyan capital, was demanding the release of their leader whom they said was being held by Tripoli’s security forces, government official said.

Security forces flooded the airport after negotiations broke down, he said.

Tripoli’s security commission, which answers to the interior ministry, said it was not involved with “the disappearance and abduction” and that it has launched an investigation to find out the reason for his disappearance, AFP reported.

The NTC is still struggling to fully integrate many former rebels who fought forces loyal to Muammar Gaddaf and still won’t let their arms down.

The ex-rebels have remained in organised armed brigades, taking it upon themselves to ensure law and order in the absence of fully functional police and armed forces, Al Arabiya reported.

Monday’s assault on Tripoli airport came as Libya prepares to hold elections for a 200-seat constituent assembly by June 19, as pledged by the NTC although an official has told Al Jazeera that the ballot would be delayed until the first week of July at the earliest.

According to sources, private Greek hospitals that had been earning revenues from treating rebels injured in their country last year, have stopped accepting them as patients due to a mounting unpaid bill by the Libyan government.

Alyunaniya correspondent, Mohamed Benghuzzi, who was there at the embassy last night, has confirmed that “police and ambulance cars have surrounded the embassy as they cannot enter without the approval of the ambassador who has said to have been in negotiations with the Libyan rebels all night, threatening to kill the hostage of their demands are not granted.”

In a letter sent by the exterior ministry of libya has accused the Greek government of its inability to protect the diplomatic force of the embassy.

This morning, the Libyan authorities informed that the diplomat and embassy had been evacuated by forces of the Police.

The police have arrested 20 people, which will set free to go if the Libyan embassy does not press any charges.

The problem began last November, when the new Libyan government took over responsibility for paying the hospital bills. Until then, the costs had been paid by Qatar. Greek hospitals have treated more than 4,500 rebels since the uprising in Libya began last year.

However, hospitals since February refused to accept more wounded from Libya until the government in Tripoli pays for the care that has already been provided.

In an interview with Alyunaniya, the principal of the Libyan School in Greece, Attia Othman Al Bargati since 2007, talks about the Libyan School in Greece and education after the revolution. Mr. Bargati is the first principal to have studied education administration as before him random people with no educational background were hired as principals in the school.

The Libyan school in Greece, which is licensed by the Libyan government, has been operating since 1978. The school, which is sometimes referred to as the Arabic School as it hosts not only Libyan but also Arab students from different countries is the only Arabic-based school in Greece.

Q: Mr. Bargati what has striken our attention is the change in the name of the school. Why has the school’s name changed to 17th of February Libyan School?

A: We have changed the name to commemorate the martyrs that have fallen during the 17th of February revolution, which toppled Muammar Gaddafi.

Even though it is on the anniversary of this moving day important to remember that it is not all about the February 17 Revolution martyrs. Martyrdom for the Libyan Revolution started way back in 1976.

The formal name of the school, April 7 of 1976, was when Muammar Gaddafi supposedly won a revolution against university students opposing his regime, against “traitors of the country” as he called. April 7th was commemorated in Libyan universities annually, with arrests and public executions of students. In some cases, the killings followed years of imprisonment without trial.

Q: How was education in the Libyan school under Gaddafi?

A: Over his more than four decades of dictatorship, Gaddafi used the country’s schools to get his ideology into the minds of his people; it was a means of indoctrination. It wasn’t only his ideology; it was also his arbitrary decisions like changing the curriculum and bringing one from Singapore and applying it in the Libyan education.

Books like the Green book- a three part collection of political, economic, social studies were required readings for students.

Students who have graduated from Libyan school in Greece know only history from when Gaddafi lived. It’s as if world history started with him. Subjects like geography seem less problematic even though maps in Libyan books were used to confuse rather than inform the students. Even elementary books, which are suppose to have some pictures and look more appealing to little kids are horrible and tire students with unnecessary information.

I remember some of our little students use to glorify Gaddafi without knowing why.

Q: How is it possible that there is no freedom of speech in a school located in a  democratic country like Greece?

A: As I said, the school was clearly an indoctrination institution, designed to inculcate students a specific set of values and beliefs. These values and beliefs are ingrained in their minds. They learn to love Gaddafi without questioning. There was one student I remember you during the revolution kept chanting “Libya, Thuwar only” while his friends made fun of him and chanted “Libya Gaddafi”. Now that the power has switched he can express his opinion freely.

Q: What was the Libyan’s School role during the revolution?

A: Well, the Libyan school in Greece was maybe one of the first places in the world to take part in the uprising abroad. The revolution started on 17 of February and our students organized their first protest on 22nd of February. Just a few days after the uprising against Gaddafi began. At the beginning everyone was scared. We didn’t know what to do as the embassy was giving me orders to organize pro-government demonstrations. Ofcourse I did my best to prevent that. Soon students stormed the school at night with our concealed support to bring down the former flag of Libya. The national anthem chanted every morning with flattering tributes to Gaddafi was no more sung. Our students were repeatedly targeted from police which were ordered from the Libyan embassy to be arrested. Ofcourse I didn’t let them. From then eyes were on me. I knew well if this uprising wasn’t going to win I was going to be one of the first people hung by Gaddafi. I was getting threats all the time, they even stormed my house.

Q: What has changed since Gaddafi left?

A: Students are now returning to their studies and a school curriculum that needs a complete restoration. But the important thing is there is freedom. The school is now being cleansed of Gaddafi’s extensive influence. It is as if you are sifting sand, where all unnecessary debris is thrown away. We don’t want anything that signifies him neither his name, nor his signature green color. For now, the easiest change is getting rid of subjects like Al-Mujtama Al-Jamahariya, the study of the “Green Book” – Gaddafi’s core treatise on politics and civic life. But beyond that, many remaining subjects require severe changes. Students weren’t even taught history. History, which had amounted to glorifying Gaddafi and his regime, is being rewritten from scratch.

Our biggest goal is removing the false ideas and state of mind cultivated!  It is difficult to overcome the Gaddafi era.

“Praising or glorifying Muammar Qaddafi, his regime, his ideas or his sons… is punishable by a prison sentence,” said the text of the law read out to reporters by officials, Reuters reported.

The ruling National Transitional Council’s judicial committee on Wednesday read out laws including an amended version of one governing formation of political parties, with no mention of the ban, which was announced last week against parties based on religion, tribe or ethnicity.

It said then that the electoral law was put forward to preserve “national unity”.

Libyans vote in June to elect a national assembly for the first time since the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi. Eighty of the 200 seats will go to political parties, with the rest reserved for independent candidates, according to BBC.

Dozens of parties have launched since then with the intention of contesting the constituent assembly election that the NTC has pledged to to hold elections by June 19.

Registration centers opened throughout the country on 1 May, and voters have two weeks to register.

The NTC has promised to hold elections by the end of June, but Western diplomats say this might slip until later in the summer.