Mr Abdelhamid AL DAQUEL was born on 22 March 1963; he was a pilot in the Libyan Air Force holding the rank of commander. He lived in the municipality of Beni El Walid.

 He was arrested on Thursday 26 January 1989 at around 16:30 by the Internal Security (Al Amn Addakhili) in Foum Molghat near Tarhouna, by several agents of the Interior/Internal Security.

 At the time of his arrest Mr Al Daquel was in a company car accompanied by 3 other people. All were arrested.

 Two of the men were freed on the 10 February 1989 after 15 days of incommunicado detention in the premises of the Internal Security in Tripoli. The third was detained incommunicado for several years before being liberated from Abou Slim prison, near Tripoli, in the month of March 1995, without having been judged.

It was through him that Mr Al Daquel’s family, who had had no news from him since his arrest 6 years earlier, learnt that he was in that same prison and that he had never been subjected to any judicial process.

 Until the summer of 1996, his parents managed to get indirect snippets of information confirming his presence at that prison. However, they were never given permission to visit him as the authorities never recognized his detention.

From the summer of 1996 until 2001, the Libyan authorities forbade all visits to prisons, and therefore no more information came to the attention of Mr Al Daquel’s loved ones.

On 8 November 2008, and for the first time since his disappearance, Mr Al Daquel’s family received a visit from the Internal Security (Al Amn Addakhili) informing them of his death. The agents refused, however, to give details on the date or circumstances of the death. They also refused to return the body and simply asked the family to “publicly announce his death”, informing them that they would receive an official certificate.

Mr Al Daquel’s parents stated their refusal to make such an announcement until the cause of death was communicated to them, and an autopsy be carried out to determine the cause.

Consequently, with this approach, the authorities explicitly acknowledged that Mr Al Daquel was indeed disappeared and that they were responsible for this disappearance.

Having no possibility of recourse before a national jurisdiction or any other authority, Mr Abdelhamid Al Daquel’s family have addressed the UN institutions in order for them to address the Libyan Jamahiriya with questions relating to the date, causes and circumstances of the victim’s death.

On 6 January 2006, Alkarama submitted to the Working Group on Enforced Disappearances a list of 11 people arrested at different times, all disappeared, among which Mr Abdelhamid Al Daquel’s name also featured. Amongst these persons, he is the second whose death has been announced. The Internal Security services established a document on the 22 August 2006 attesting to the death of Amsaad Al Abid, arrested in 1995 and disappeared since. He too figured on this list. It is possible that these men were killed during the massacre perpetrated at Abou Slim prison in 1996. To this day, the authorities have not made public the list of the victims.

Alkarama also informed the Working Group on Enforced Disappearances of the death of Mr Abdelhamid Al Daquel.