Talk:Abu Salim prison

1,270 prisoners were killed
The number of prisoners (and guards) killed in the "Abu Salim massacre" isn't clear at all. It's important to point out that the numbers are based on vague eyewitness accounts. The fact that the mass media picks up the stories and makes the massacre appear as an undisputed fact doesn't mean that an encyclopedia should go the same way. I'm already very defensive with my criticism towards the HRW article, let's not delete the information that the cited report is mostly based on a single former inmate's account. StopWarCrimes (talk) 15:04, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Noclador says I'm whitewashing Gaddafi's crimes
Noclador removed all my recent changes, saying I've been


 * adding unsourced material, deletion of material, trying to whitewash Gaddafi crimes, and adding made up material i.e "most prominent leaders"

Here's what he removed: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Abu_Salim_prison&diff=437376463&oldid=437370448

My answer to his allegations:


 * adding unsourced material: not true. As you can see, every statement in my changes is accompanied with a source.
 * deletion of material: the only sentence I removed is this: "After the February 17 uprising, in April 2011, inmates of the prison escaped and engaged Gaddafi forces in armed combat at Bab al-Azizia", which is made up, and was unsourced for months.
 * trying to whitewash Gaddafi crimes: If I add Libya's official statements on the incident, is that whitewashing, or is it just stating facts? Also, if I note that the HRW report was based mostly on one inmate's reports, then that's a fact. See also Criticism of Human Rights Watch.
 * "most prominent leaders": as for bin Qumu being a prominent leader; that he's a rebel leader now is what his main article says: Abu Sufian bin Qumu. And he's rather "prominent", because he's been in the news a lot, unlike other rebel fighters.

Noclador, please answer to these points individually and refrain from undoing my changes wholesale again. If you think that some of the points need to be addressed, I'm happy to talk about it, and we can discuss and we'll find a way. But undoing all of it saying that I'm "whitewashing Gaddafi's crimes" is a pretty heavy statement. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by StopWarCrimes (talk • contribs) 10:48, 3 July 2011 (UTC)
 * first a little note: your choice of username is unfortunate as it seems to indicate that you have a certain POV, coupled with the articles you edited led not just me to believe that you are a sock of the banned vandal User:SuperblySpiffingPerson. The modus operandi for all banned users is to "Block on sight!/Revert on sight!" - therefore also your account was blocked last night and then unblocked after we made Check User on you to see if you edit from the same IP range as SuperblySpiffingPerson - as you do not come from Australia, you were unblocked. HOWEVER I strongly urge you to read WP:Neutral Point of View, because your Twitter account shows an immense biased view and wikipedia strives to be as neutral as possible!
 * Now that it is clear that you are not SuperblySpiffingPerson and thus the "Block on sight!/Revert on sight!" policy was erroneously applied to you, I find only one error which needs to be corrected: the paragraph about Bin Qumu must be deleted: a) no-where in the source you give it says that he "is one of the most prominent leaders" - you made that up. "Today, Mr. Qumu, 51, is a notable figure in the Libyan rebels’ fight to oust Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, reportedly a leader of a ragtag band of fighters known as the Darnah Brigade for his birthplace,". As a leader of such a group of fighters (or not maybe even that "local residents say the Darnah Brigade is led by Abdul-Hakim al-Hasadi, another Libyan thought to be a militant who was in Afghanistan during the Taliban’s rule, when Al Qaeda had training camps there.") he is not notable enough to be mentioned here, as he fails WP:Biography of a living person and also because this article is about the prison and not the person (and as he is not notable, he can not have an article here). noclador (talk) 16:36, 3 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Yeah, yesterday's block was pretty unfortunate. What I post on Twitter is my private, biased opinions, and I'm not confusing Twitter with Wikipedia.  I hope you neither do.  Thanks anyway for leaving most of what I edited this time.
 * You say bin Qumu fails WP:Biography of a living person, yet he has his own article on WP.
 * notable figure -> notable is a synonym of prominent - check your thesaurus. Also, you're citing NYT yourself: leader of a ragtag band of fighters, so he's a leader.  Thus, I'd argue that you're hair-splitting.
 * Also, you've deleted information about the amnesty granted by the Gaddafi regime to anti-government prisoners. In light of the recent developments, this is a very delicate fact. Bin Qumu's personal story illustrates wonderfully how an anti-Gaddafi prisoner and Islamist extremist was granted amnesty but went back to Benghazi to fight against him. — Preceding unsigned comment added by StopWarCrimes (talk • contribs) 17:25, 3 July 2011 (UTC)


 * an amnesty does not mean that you are not allowed to go back and fight again. Abu Sufian bin Qumu has his own article? oops - I did not realize this; but I doubt that this is relevant for the Abu Salim prison article - only the first sentence mentions him: "Former Guantanamo Bay detainee and Islamist extremist bin Qumu was a prisoner in Abu Salim." The rest is unrelated to the prison... maybe it will be better to create a new section titled "Inmates of Abu Salim" and list him there with all other people that were incarcerated there? noclador (talk) 17:58, 3 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Libya has actually released 90 anti-government Islamist prisoners in 2008, all of which were held in Abu Salim prison. I think that this amnesty story is quite relevant for the prison article, especially in light of recent developments, and if you agree, I'll be happy to try and incorporate it from a different angle StopWarCrimes (talk) 18:32, 3 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I fail to see any connection between the prison, two amnesties in two different years, and an uprising years later, and a single person, whose only connection to the prison is that he was an inmate for three years. How is the amnesty relevant to the prison? How did recent events affect the prison? How has bin Qumus stay in the prison affected the current uprising? As said I fail to see any connection between these events. noclador (talk) 18:56, 3 July 2011 (UTC)


 * You don't need to see a connection because it's not what I want to write about. All I want to add is a mention of the amnesties in recent years which affected dozens of political opponents of the regime in this particular prison.  This page puts a heavy emphasis on the human rights abuses, and fails to mention the amnesty, which is a sign of goodwill, and may be seen as a reaction to the criticism.
 * I'd be happy if you let me mention the amnesty, and then I'll add a list with inmates, and make a brief mention of bin Qumu's recent role in the uprising in that list. Sound good? StopWarCrimes (talk) 19:14, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

If there is no connection then this is the wrong place to write about. noclador (talk) 19:32, 3 July 2011 (UTC)


 * OK, so I added a hopefully non-controversial Inmates of Abu Salim prison section, as suggested by you. I did not mention the amnesty at all. StopWarCrimes (talk) 08:42, 4 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I haven't followed the full discussion here, but have read about StopWarCrimes' request to add something about the amnesty. Clicking on his source which is Al Jazeera, the accepted television channel for the rebels at the time, the amnesty was to prisoners of Abu Salim!! This has nothing to do with Abu Salim?
 * Something is very weird about the whole "Libya/oil/Ghadaffi/Rebel/Al Qaeda/USA/Media/SunniVs.Shiite" story here. Who was supporting who, what were the alignments, what were the goals... who perpetrated atrocities, and who had an interest in disseminating or exaggerating them? I hope some day we'll be able to understand it factually. Sadly, even the Khmer Rhouge leaders and the SS guards live on in high authority positions, so there's not much to expect for justice, revenge never brings good, and terror many times succeeds in making the masses comply. My hope is that at least we get as many parts of the facts correctly. פשוט pashute ♫ (talk) 13:46, 4 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Also, NoClador writes that StopWarCrimes has a POV on Twitter. Every person has a POV on almost every topic. Its just that your POV shouldn't be showing in the text you write on the Wikipedia. The WP articles should be NPOV. A writer with a strong POV should still be able to sort out the facts and search for sources. Without passion, 90% of the wikipedia's information wouldn't be written at all. You won't find anything about sports written by people who have no interest in the field. Same with Physics. Same with History. And of course politics. The thing is that you should be trying to get to the bottom of it, with the best sources possible. פשוט pashute ♫ (talk) 13:52, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Ripped off text?
Where has this text come from? It's an obvious a copy-paste. It's been added by 188.244.99.44, a one-hit IP. Any one recognise it? 188.244.99.44 couldn't even be arsed removing the caption of the diagram that existed wherever the text has been ripped off from. 121.45.199.81 (talk) 11:17, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

OK, that comment makes no sense now that the old stuff has disappeared without trace! So much for consensus building and maintaining an open edit record! 121.45.199.81 (talk) 14:50, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

not sure how to edit, sorry, can someone expand on the the 'Abu Salim prison massacre' there is no info on wiki. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.223.213.25 (talk) 17:37, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Missing material and contended information
Many of us humans tend to spend much time hunting each other down primitively, or as Nigel Calder wrote in his book "The Brain": Most of the human brain's activity is aimed at figuring out how to put little peaces of metal into other brains.

There is a lot of missing material here, and much of what is said has been contended by reliable sources. Its not that Ghadaffi wasn't a terrorist supporter and horrid person, but it must be taken into consideration that many of the rebel groups were patently horrible, and that many of the atrocities were in fact preformed against Ghadaffi's south Libyan dark skin soldiers, while portraying the victims as heartless and ruthless people (perhaps they were... but what was shown was the opposite)
 * Vidoes section: The AP movies and CNN interpretations - about the storming of the jail, and about the return of prisoners to testify atrocities.
 * Description of Mathew VanDyke as a 'volunteer rebel fighter' - is that so? (at the time he was described as a Human Rights activist. OK I read the sources. You have to agree that some of the parts of this story just don't tie in together. Rebels and beer? McDonalds in Libya is the goal? He has no clue as to what's going on, and does not understand the language but he's a guide? Some information here is missing or skewed.)
 * Video of VanDyke's reconstruction of his time in prison, showing his room including toilet and shower, and the fact that he says he was never beaten
 * VanDyke's mention in inmates
 * Belhadj's mention in inmates

And finally, I wouldn't totally emit the Ghadaffi supporter's narrative. פשוט pashute ♫ (talk) 13:23, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

External links modified
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Structure and tone of the article
The structure and the tone of the article, as it stands today, insinuate that the massacre may not have happened at all or, if killings should have occured, they happened in fighting between inmates who tried to escape and guards. The narrative thus is close to the storyline used by the Libyan government at the time of Gaddafi.

However, the article itself includes quotes that the massacre actually happened, including by Mansour Dao, an important figure of Gaddafi's regime. These quotes are buried deep in the text. It seems inappropriate for a section heading to be called "alleged human rights violations" when there is apparently no reasonable doubt that a massacre did occur. Furthermore, the undisputed fact that political prisoners were tortured in the prison is a human rights violation in itself. This is mentioned nowhere in the article and should be added. Mschiffler (talk) 17:28, 23 August 2022 (UTC)
 * If you are going to use unreliable sources like "Human Rights Solidarity", then you are not helping. Aman Kumar Goel (Talk) 20:16, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
 * You have deleted large sections, so that the narrative is again close to the one by the Libyan government under Gaddafi. You have undone substantial work and failed to provide a jutstification. This is not acceptable. Mschiffler (talk) 19:26, 21 October 2022 (UTC)
 * It is acceptable because you are using a WP:ADVOCACY group for making exceptional claims and removing the facts that are contrary to this advocacy group. I have tagged the source for being unreliable and restored the lead from earlier version. You will have enough time to prove reliability of this "Human Rights Solidarity". Aman Kumar Goel (Talk) 02:13, 22 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Agree that it is an unreliable source and should not be used. Lorstaking (talk) 12:21, 22 October 2022 (UTC)
 * First, thank you for not reverting the changes again and for engaging in a discussion on this talk page. You claim that quoting an advovacy group, such as Human Rights Solidarity, constitutes advocacy as per the definition of Wikipeia. However, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are also advocacy groups. Quoting statements from advocacy groups is not in itself advocacy, as defined by Wikipedia. Wheter such a quote may constitute advocacy must be decided in each individual case. Since the statements made by HRS - an organization I admit I did not previously know - are detailed and in line with findings from credible sources, it seemed to me prima facie that they HRS is a credible source. What is the evidence or, at least, what are the arguments for HRS being an unreliable source?
 * On a separate note, the lead section that you restored insinuates that the massacre did not take place. This fails to include information from the article itself indicating that the massacre did take place. The lead section, as it stands now, thus seems biased to me and should be revised to be more balanced. Mschiffler (talk) 22:52, 25 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are heavily cited sources while Human Rights Solidarity is beyond negligible. You cannot cite just any advocacy group to promote exceptional claims not backed by any WP:RS.
 * CNN's independent investigation is more reliable than claims by political opponents and human rights group that's why lead should stay just like it is now even if you think that it is casting doubt over massacre. Aman Kumar Goel (Talk) 02:30, 26 October 2022 (UTC)
 * You fail to provide any evidence that HRS is an unreliable source. CNN did not do an "independent investigation", just a report. Your very brief justification to keep the lead section is unconvincing. Mschiffler (talk) 19:45, 26 October 2022 (UTC)
 * You are just not getting it. Which part of "You cannot cite just any advocacy group to promote exceptional claims not backed by any WP:RS" is difficult for you to understand? The group has a WP:COI with the events and it cannot be cited for this or any other Libyan article per their own description that "Solidarity was established by a group of Libyan expatriates residing in Switzerland on December 10, 1999 in Geneva". Aman Kumar Goel (Talk) 04:07, 27 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Since you quote Wikipedia policies, here is another one: "Every user is expected to interact with others civilly, calmly, and in a spirit of cooperation. Do not insult, harass, or intimidate those with whom you have a disagreement." Given your attitude and tone, it does not make sense to further engage in this debate. Mschiffler (talk) 16:41, 28 October 2022 (UTC)