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Home » Press Releases » LBY - News » Libya: Sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment for an email - Mr. Al Rabassi
Abdennaser Yunus Miftah Al Rabassi was born on 10 October 1965 at Beni Walid. He is a graduate in social sciences from the Janzour Institute of Tripoli and was employed at the Social Security Bureau of Beni Walid until his arrest on 3 January 2003. He was kidnapped from his home at Beni Walid by plainclothes Internal Security agents, who did not tell him why he was being taken, much less present a warrant.
He was driven to the Beni Walid Internal Security post, then transferred to Tripoli on 5 January 2003. He was tortured very cruelly for more than a month in a secret detention centre belonging to the Internal Security Agency before he was told why he had been arrested.
He was accused of having “sent an email to the Arab Times newspaper on 8 June 2002 at 08h35:54 in which he expressed a position critical of the Libyan Head of State, Col. Muammar Al Qaddafi, from his virtual electronic personal address.”
For this he was found guilty of having “harmed the prestige of the Guide of the Revolution”, as outlined and punished by article 164 of the Libyan penal code.
Brought before an exceptional court, the people’s tribunal, on 26 June 2003, he was condemned, after a manifestly unfair trial, to fifteen (15) years of criminal imprisonment, which he is currently undergoing at the Abu Slim prison in Tripoli.
For the length of the period before he was brought before a court, he neither had access to a lawyer nor received family visits.
On 20 May 2005, Alkarama for Human Rights sent the Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions a letter asking it to examine the case of Mr. Al Rabassi. It issued an opinion on 30 August 2005 reporting that:
“the information made available to the Working Group in the letter in question, which are not disputed by the government, make it impossible to believe that the apparently critical opinion that Mr. Al Rabassi expressed about the Head of State in an email addressed to the Arab Times had gone beyond the bounds of freedom of expression.
“As for the claim, which is equally not contested by the Government, that Mr. Al Rabassi did not have access to a lawyer during the stage of the penal procedure against him dedicated to enquiry, the Working Group deems that it is incompatible with the right to a fair trial to deny a person against whom a grave accusation liable to lead to a long jail term is made the right to the assistance of a lawyer.”
In light of the facts, the Working Group considers that Mr. Abdennaser Yunus Miftah Al Rabassi has been arbitrarily deprived of liberty, for it is contrary to articles 14 and 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ratified by the Libyan government on 15 May 1970.
Alkarama for Human Rights also addressed a letter to President Muammar Al Qaddafi’s son, Saif Al Islam Al Qaddafi, president of the “Gaddafi International Fondation for Charity Association”, to bring his attention to the opinion issued by the Working Group and ask him to intervene in favour of Mr. Al Rabassi.
He remains in prison to this day.