28 January 2012
Last updated at 02:08 ET

Allegations of torture hold been rife since the death of Colonel Gaddafi in October

New evince has emerged that supporters of the gone Libyan leader, Col Gaddafi, hold been tortured while in detention.

The BBC has been told by inmates at a jail in Misrata that they were beaten, whipped and given electric shocks.

The head of the city’s military council has dismissed the allegations.

United Nations human rights chief Navi Pillay has called on Libya’s transitional government to bring full control of all prisons.

The allegations come exactly 100 days after Col Gaddafi’s vivid death at the hands of gone rebels.

Earlier this week the medical donation Medecins Sans Frontieres said it was suspending its work in one Misrata detention centre because of an alarming rise in torture cases.

The BBC’s Gabriel Gatehouse managed to get access to that prison.

Inmates told him they had been subjected to prolonged beatings and were whipped with electric cables.

None of the alleged abuse occurred at the prison itself.

“I was taken for questioning at a site used by the native army,” said one man who wished to remain anonymous.

“My leg was already in a state when they took me away. As they interrogated me they kept on beating me on my leg and so it got even more swollen,” he said.

In other cases prisoners said the abuse had occurred before they had arrived at the jail.

Medecins Sans Frontieres pulled out this week from the Misrata detention centre

‘Hidden agenda’

Internative human rights groups hold said such incidents are widespread in Libya.

“The torture is being carried out by officially recognised military and security entities as well as by a multitude of armed militias operating outside any legal framework,” a supporter for London-based Amnesty Internative said on Friday.

The kinsfolk running the Misrata detention centre told the BBC they were aware of inmates being taken away to be tortured, but were powerless to stop it.

Many detention centres are controlled by militias unaccountable to the government.

Navi Pillay expressed concern on Friday about the treatment of prisoners, but especially sub-Saharan Africans who the militias assume to hold been fighting for Col Gaddafi.

“There’s torture, extrajudicial executions, rape of both men and women,” she told the Associated Press notice agency.

“Something has to be done immediately to assist the authorities, for the state to bring control of these detention centres,” she said.

The head of Misrata’s military council, Ibrahim Beitelmal, denies involvement in any abuses and says his accusers hold a hidden agenda.

“I think that the kinsfolk working under the guise of human rights organisations or doctors without borders are Gaddafi’s fifth column. There may hold been a few cases of gone rebels well-formed revenge but that doesn’t mean that the orders hold come from my office to torture prisoners.”

The United Nations estimates that about 8,500 kinsfolk – much accused of being Gaddafi loyalists – are being high in prisons across Libya.

Article source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/world-africa-16771372