A boy looks at pictures of missing and killed Libyans posted on a street in Benghazi on March 4.
Excerpt from MSNBC:
"Please escape, they are going to kill us."
Those were the last words that Ramadan Elosta said he heard from his youngest brother, Salem, a teacher and father of three, as gunmen loyal to embattled Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi led him away. Days later, his brother's battered body was found at the morgue.
"He is killed because he is just protesting against Gadhafi," Elosta said in an emotional telephone interview with msnbc.com from Tunisia, recalling his brother's final words to him in a cell phone call. "We are calling the whole world to listen to us. We are dying; we are dying, while the world is watching."
Salem is one of an unknown number of people believed to have been kidnapped by Gadhafi supporters in Libya since the uprising began in February. In some cases, relatives saw their loved ones arrested, while in others, the victims simply vanished. Some bodies were found, while the fate of others remains unknown.
While some may have fled the fighting, witnesses, experts and human
rights groups say the frequency of the reports and the fact that
kidnappings have long been used by Gadhafi to silence his critics
suggest that an abduction campaign is occurring.
Determining the number of Libyans abducted by the Gadhafi gangs is
impossible in the midst of the heavy fighting occurring in many parts of
the country. But interviews with human rights groups and local
residents indicate that the number is in the hundreds in the capital of
Tripoli and the country's second- and third-largest cities -- Benghazi
and Misrata -- alone.
