Mr. EL ABANI Wanis Charef (AL OUERFELI), now sixty years old, has been a judge at the Court of First Instance in Benghazi for several years during which he has received several warnings and threats of dismissal from the Ministry of Justice  for not complying with the instructions of the authorities on court decisions he had to make.

On 19 April 1990, he was summoned for disciplinary reasons, at the headquarters of the Ministry of Justice in Tripoli and received by the Minister Azzedine Al Hinchiri Al in his office.

After having criticized his attitude contrary to what is expected of him, the minister notified him that he was under arrest. Members of the internal security arrested him in the very office of the Minister of Justice without judicial warrant and without informing him of the  legal reasons for his arrest.

He was take to a secret location where he was subjected to torture of great cruelty for 03 months before being led to the prison of Abu Slim (Tripoli).

All actions of his family to know his fate and place of detention were unsuccessful and it was not before June 1996 that his wife learned that he was detained in the prison of Abu Slim, without however any official confirmation. Having sought permission to visit him, the authorities replied that he was not detained.

Mr. El Abani was placed in solitary confinement in a special wing of the jail during the first six years of his detention during which he had contact only with his jailers.

He was then transferred to a collective cell only a few days before the events of 28 and 29 June 1996 in which several hundred detainees (more than a thousand according to some sources) have been killed by forces of Interior Security inside the prison .

Survivor of the massacre, he was again placed in solitary confinement for several years, in an individual cell, still without communication with the outside world or with other prisoners and without visit, neither from his family or a lawyer.

On 19 April 2001, 11 years after his arrest, the military Attorney General officially notified him and for the first time, the accusation of "having been in telephone contact with opponents from abroad" and "not having informed the authorities."

Only on 15 December 2001, during his presentation before a magistrate, that he was allowed, for the first time after eleven years, to talk to his wife who had been exceptionally authorized by the judge to communicate with him during a quarter of an hour before his hearing.

Presented before the military court, 1 January 2002, he is condemned, as a result of a grossly unfair trial, to thirteen (13) years' imprisonment in total: 10 years for "failing to denounce" and 3 years for "possession of explosives", the latter charge being invoked for the first time while reading the judgement.

On 13 May 2002, and on appeal from the military prosecutor's office, the court of appeal, "the higher court of armed people," cancelled the first judgement and referred the case to another Military court which confirmed the first judgement on 29 September 2002.

Mr. El Abani finished serving the entire sentence to which he was sentenced on 19 April 2003. However, ihe was not released and, after that date, he continued to be detained in the same prison under the same conditions, while his family awaited his release.

In the year 2005, his family filed a request for liberation before the Popular Tribunal which rejected it on the grounds that the military prosecutor does not recognize that the person is detained in the prison of Abu Slim.
Having received confirmation, however, by several prisoners that Mr. El Abani was still in Abu Slim, his family mandated two lawyers to file a complaint against prison officials.

Due to the fact that it is impossible to file a criminal complaint against agents of the State or the security services for kidnapping, lawyers filed a civil procedure to ensure that Mr. El Abani was still held in the prison of Abu Slim.

They therefore sought the appointment of an expert with a mandate to visit the prison of Abu Slim to ensure the presence of Mr. Al Abani in that prison. But in September 2006, the prison authorities refused to the expert appointed by the court access to the prison.

The family of Mr. El Abani, however, continued to receive information according to which he was still being detained in the same prison until early January 2007. During this month, the family learned that he was taken out of the prison by members of the internal security.

He was then again victim of enforced disappearance beginning in January 2007 because the authorities did not recognize his detention. The Department of Public Prosecutions has expressly stated that he is no longer detained in the prison of Abu Slim but refused to reveal his whereabouts.

The family no longer had any news of him, and fearing for his life, then decided to address the Human Rights Committee to observe the serious violations of his fundamental rights and ask for urgent protection.

Alkarama had therefore asked the Committee to ensure that such measures of protection are communicated to the Libyan government as a matter of urgency and that Mr. Al Abani be released or placed under the protection of the law while informing his family.

Alkarama also requested, on the merits, that the UN Committee observes the numerous violations of the rights protected by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights ratified by Libya from which Mr. Al Abani has suffered since his arrest and in particular the opening of an investigation into his disappearance and the provision of adequate compensation to him and to both his wife and children, because of the serious moral and material damage that they have suffered.

This request was forwarded by the Committee to the Libyan government who has finally liberated Mr. El Abani on 19 April 2008, 18 years after his arrest.