Libya: Did CNN Present A Rebel Atrocity As A Gaddafi Atrocity?

The video images show the charred remains of five bodies. A crowd has gathered around the grisly spectacle, and someone pulls away the top of a green body bag so that the camera can get a better view. The scene is reported to have taken place in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, sometime during the very first days of the rebellion against the rule of Muammar al-Gaddafi. The video appears to have been originally posted on YouTube by Libyan users on Fenruary 21.

“You can hear a grown man weeping,” CNN correspondent Ivan Watson comments in a report on the video that he filed on the same day. “Some of them are yelling ‘Dog! Dog!'” Watson continues, referring to the bystanders, “They are cursing the name of their leader Muammar al-Gaddafi….”

(CNN report embedded from YouTube. For the same report on CNN.com, see here.)

Watson’s commentary would lead one to believe that the embattled Libyan leader was somehow responsible for the apparent atrocity. At the time, what we now know as the Libyan rebellion was still almost universally presented as a protest movement and Libyan authorities stood accused of using force against unarmed civilians. This accusation would, of course, serve as the justification for foreign military intervention in Libya.

The “weeping of a grown man,” which is indeed audible on the soundtrack of the video, suggests that the bystanders are horrified by the inhumanity of a regime that would not only kill its own people, but incinerate them.

Citing unnamed “opposition sources,” a related post on the CNN “This Just In” blog identifies the bodies as those of “soldiers who refused to shoot at anti-government demonstrators.” The CNN report was just one of several reports in the early days of the rebellion suggesting not only that Libyan government troops opened fire on protestors, but that those that refused were executed. The title under the embedded video on CNN.com reads: “Libyan soldiers reportedly burned alive.”

But, on closer examination, the unverified report raises more questions than it answers, and additional evidence that has since emerged casts serious doubt on the version of events presented by CNN.

There is, of course, nothing in the images of the charred corpses to substantiate the claim that the victims were “burned alive,” as the sensational CNN title puts it. Moreover, the bodies have been burned almost to ash and the remains are so minimal that there is likewise nothing to identify them as soldiers. Supposing that they were soldiers, how would CNN’s “opposition sources” know that they had refused orders?

Adding to the mystery, one of the earliest postings of the video on YouTube appears in fact to identify the victims in Arabic as demonstrators. This version raises questions in its own right. It is one thing to open fire on demonstrators, but just how would soldiers have incinerated them? For that matter, why would they have done so?

But another video that emerged somewhat later provides perhaps the most serious grounds for doubting the account given by CNN. The second video forms part of a collection of footage documenting apparent rebel atrocities that I recently presented on Pajamas Media. The rebel atrocity videos, although readily available on YouTube, have been ignored by CNN and the rest of the “old” media.

The second video also shows charred human remains and a crowd gathered around them. Indeed, the crowd is much larger than in the first video. It is gathered around men on a raised surface who are holding up a charred torso. Some of the YouTube postings of the video identify the victim as a Libyan soldier, and the presence in the clip of what appears to be a captured military vehicle would seem to confirm this identification.

But far from bewailing the inhumanity of the soldier’s fate, this crowd is clearly reveling in it. As the torso is held up by two of the “presenters,” the crowd erupts in cheers. A man next to them can be seen waving the red, black and green flag of the eastern Libyan rebellion. The flag can also be seen in the crowd. At one point, the camera zooms in on a smaller clump of charred matter. Other members of the crowd can be seen photographing or filming it with their cell phones. One YouTube posting identifies the object as the victim’s heart.

As a man in a long black coat holds up the object in his right hand, cries of “Allahu Akbar!” ring out. With his left hand, the man flashes the victory sign. Additional footage shows a group of young men displaying what appears to be the same charred torso from a rooftop. The youngsters flash the victory sign and wave the flag of the rebellion.

Moreover, the clip is not the only evidence of rebel forces or sympathizers treating the charred remains of Libyan soldiers as “trophies.” One Flickr stream of a Benghazi-based photographer contains several examples of what appear to be “trophy” shots of killed and sometimes hideously maimed Libyan soldiers. Two of the bodies are heavily charred.

Supposing that the remains shown in the CNN video are indeed those of Libyan soldiers, how did their bodies come to be reduced to ash? There are simpler and more plausible explanations than that given by CNN and its “opposition sources.” Although it is difficult to reconcile with the standard narrative of “peaceful protesters” being mowed down by Libyan security forces, we know that in the early days of the rebellion so-called protestors in fact attacked government buildings, setting many of them on fire. The targets of the assaults included police stations and army barracks.

One Amer Saad, identified as a “political activist” from the rebel stronghold of Darnah, admitted to Al-Jazeera that some “conspirators” – i.e. Gaddafi loyalist forces – were “executed” by insurgents who locked the Gaddafi loyalists in a police station that was then set ablaze. On Saad’s account, the Gaddafi loyalists were indeed burned alive. (See the Guardian report here for the exact quote.) That was on February 18, three days before the mysterious video appeared on YouTube and was broadcast by CNN.

Perhaps the soldiers in the YouTube/CNN footage were killed in a similar attack or maybe even in the one in Darnah. As it so happens, one of the persons to have first posted the clip on YouTube goes by the screen name “Darna2011”.

Or perhaps they were killed by insurgents in battle or executed after capture and rebel forces or sympathizers burned their bodies after their deaths. Amer Saad mentions the execution of another fifty “African mercenaries” and two “conspirators.” The rebel atrocity videos contain evidence of both summary executions and lynchings.

But is there any reason to believe that the rebels would burn the corpses of Libyan soldiers? Well, as a matter of fact there is. Correspondent Jean-Louis Le Touzet of the French daily Libération was recently embedded with rebel forces in Misrata. His report suggests that while the rebels reserve a decent burial for their own, they regularly dispose of the bodies of enemy soldiers precisely by burning them.

Le Touzet accompanied the rebels to the Tameen Insurance Building, a strategic structure in downtown Misrata that they had only captured from loyalist forces the day before. A former employee of the company told him that the rebels had removed two bodies from the building, “thrown them in a pick up and burned them on the way to the port.” Le Touzet saw bodies still lying on the grounds outside the building. As for a dead comrade, one of the rebels explained, “We haven’t been able to collect him, but we’re going to bury him in the Cemetery of the Martyrs of February 20^th.”

And as for a dead loyalist soldier? “We’re going to burn him,” a rebel told Le Touzet and then spit on the ground.