Among Libya's Prisoners: Interviews with Mercenaries

At the Aruba School in the Mediterranean coastal town of Shehat, less than a mile from a grassy hillside covered in Roman ruins, a poster bearing Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's picture is being used as a doormat. School is not in session. But in the current state of limbo gripping eastern Libya, or "Free Libya," as some are now calling it, the Aruba School is currently serving a different function. It is a prison for nearly 200 suspected mercenaries of the Gaddafi regime.

Libyan soldiers who have defected from Gaddafi's ranks stand guard at the school's gates, draped in belts of ammunition and cradling machine guns — more to protect their hostages than to keep them from escaping, some locals whisper. A group of civilians from the nearby towns has gathered at the gate. They want to come in to get a glimpse of "the African mercenaries" who they say killed their families and neighbors last week. Shouting breaks out. The guards let them into the school's lobby and then hold them back. "They are scared that they will hurt the Africans," says Tawfik al-Shohiby, an activist and chemical engineer.
(See how Berlusconi went gaga for Gaddafi.)

The soldiers have good reason to be protective. Rumors abound in this restless region on Libya's eastern Mediterranean coast about the identity of the forces that fought the protesters for days before eastern Libya fell, as they say, "to the people." At the ransacked airport of Labrak, on the road between the towns of Darna and Beida where clashes were fierce, Gaddafi's government flew in two planes of foreign mercenaries on Wednesday night to fight the protesters, say the airport employees standing amid the wreckage.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2053490,00.html#ixzz1Erd3LZ92

Thanks for posting.

Ain't going to be any orderly transition.