A harrowing first-person account has been published by BBC journalists who were arrested and tortured in Libya. The role of identities in these conflicts is illuminating. Note for example that one of the three journalists, a Palestinian, receives the harshest treatment. The torturer seems to call out bad relations between Libya and Hamas, as well as a hatred for Al-Jazeera:

“He said something bad about Palestinians, a lot of bad things, and he asked his team what they thought about Palestinians and they said the same things. He thought they had helped the Palestinians a lot, but Hamas has given a very bad reaction to Gaddafi. Lots of bad language.

“When I tried to respond he took me out to the car park behind the guard room. Then he started hitting me without saying anything. First with his fist, then boots, then knees. Then he found a plastic pipe on the ground and beat me with that. Then one of the soldiers gave him a long stick. I’m standing trying to protect myself, I’m trying to tell him we’re working, I’m a Palestinian, I have a good impression of the country. He knew who we were [ie journalists] and what we were doing.

“I think there was something personal against me. They knew me and the sort of coverage I had been doing, especially from Tajoura the Friday before. I think they monitored the BBC and had an idea, not just the reports but also DTLs [interviews from the studio with a correspondent in the field]. They don’t like us or Al-Arabiya or Al-Jazeera.”

While in detention they had access to other prisoners and their stories.

…they had been arrested because their phone calls had been intercepted – including ones to the foreign media…

Then after days of beatings and interrogation by the military, they are sent to intelligence headquarters for review.

We were crammed in worse than sardines. The others were so badly beaten, and it was so full, that every time you moved someone screamed. They had mashed faces, broken ribs. We were handcuffed, really tightly, behind our backs.

The intelligence group changes the situation dramatically. The BBC journalists point out that things are cleaner, and more organized. Their description of their oppressors switches, from the above examples of basic and angry brutality, to something far more sinister.

A man with a small sub-machine gun was putting it to the nape of everyone’s neck in turn. He pointed the barrel at each of us. When he got to me at the end of the line, he pulled the trigger twice. The shots went past my ear.

“They all laughed as though it was very funny. There was a whole group of them in plain clothes.”

At this point a man “who spoke very good English, almost Oxford English” interrogates them and then they are released. Another man tells them “sorry it was a mistake by the military”.

It is hard not to notice the flow of identities in this story from an outsider view; a British man is left unharmed and even finds a commonality when facing Libyan intelligence, while an Arab is despised and brutalized. Differences between people obviously have been the source and focus of great tragedy in history, however differences are very relative. Another awful reality is seen here; the fear of espionage and civil war leads oppressors to treat those who we may see as similar to them far more brutally than those who are far more different. The integrity (papers, please) and confidentiality (networking) of communication in Libya today thus are issues of life and death.

Updated to add: below is a video released today of an American Congressman remembering an American 9/11 first responder who died while trying to help rescue people from the North Tower.

Muhammad Hamdani loved his country and sacrificed himself to help other Americans similar to himself, but other Americans have tried to denigrate him and hold his differences in contempt.

After Mr. Hamdani, 23, disappeared on Sept. 11, ugly rumors circulated: he was a Muslim and worked in a lab; he might have been connected to a terrorist group. Months later the truth came out. Mr. Hamdani’s remains had been found near the north tower, and he had gone there to help people he did not know.