How the six brothers and their lions sowed horror across the region: investigators still don’t count casualties

The workers, dressed in seven protective suits for seven months, visited Tarhuna, a small agricultural town an hour’s drive southeast of the country’s capital, Tripoli. Using the red and white bars, they marked regular rectangles on the brown dirt fields. The bodies of 120 people have been excavated from these ‘plots’, although much of the area has yet to be touched, the BBC reports.

“Every time I excavate new remains, I try to be as careful as possible,” said one of the workers, Wadah al-Keesh. “According to our faith, when a corpse’s bone is broken, its soul will feel pain.”

Some of the remains appear to belong to young fighters killed in clashes in the Tarhuna area last summer, the ninth year of the protracted Libyan civil war. On the other hand, many of the dead were not soldiers but civilians, including women and even five-year-old children. Traces of torture can be seen on some bodies.

These tombs are a horrible legacy from a terrible reign that lasted almost eight years. During that period, Tarhuna belonged to the Kani brothers here and the militant group they formed.

Three of the seven brothers are no longer alive, and the rest were forced in June 2020 by forces loyal to the United Nations-recognized Government of National Cohesion of Libya (NSV). Despite this fact, many Tarhuna residents still dare not speak out about the brothers’ crimes. Some say they are still threatened by Kani’s supporters.

It is not easy to put together the whole history of the Abdul-Khaliq brothers, Mohammed, Muammar, Abdul-Rahim, Mohsen, Ali and Abdul-Adhim. Talking to people who know them reveals the horrifying facts of how a poor family took advantage of the chaos surrounding Libya after the 2011 revolution against dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and ruled the city community with sheer cruelty.

“Those seven brothers were straight, uneducated. Their social status was zero, ”said Hamza Dilaab, a lawyer and community activist who saw members of the Kani family at weddings and funerals before the 2011 revolution.

Together, they acted like a swarm of hyenas. He cursed and got angry. Sometimes they even hit each other with sticks, ”he added.

When the revolution broke out, the majority of Tarhuna’s population remained loyal to Gaddafi. The dictator viewed the city favorably and provided good jobs for the men of his main families in his security forces. Kani was one of the few families who supported the revolutionaries, not because of idealistic incentives, but because of a 30-year dispute with some of Gaddafi’s supporters, Dilaab explained.

Different ideologies led to a cycle of revenge, and in 2012. the second youngest of Kani’s siblings, Ali, was killed. “He was young and beautiful. After Ali’s death, the remaining brothers made him a legend, “said Jalel Harchaoui, a Libyan expert at the Clingendael Institute in the Netherlands who studied family history.

“The reaction of the brothers to the murder was not limited to finding and killing those responsible. They also killed their families,” said the expert.

The Kani brothers gradually took over and strengthened the old military forces in the city and formed their own militant group of several thousand members. Like many militant groups of this nature in Libya, they had access to public funds. Satisfied with the desire for revenge, the remaining brothers used funds and fighters to take full control of Tarhuna.

“His tactic was to terrorize people for one reason: to intimidate. It was for this reason alone that they killed. “Any Tarhuna resident who opposed them left Anapilin,” Dilaab said.

2017 April 17 Hanan Abu-Kleish was at home when a platoon of Kani brothers fought inside. “One of them put a gun to my head,” the woman recalls. – He asked who else was home. I replied that there is nothing without me, but the wrestler dragged me to my father’s room.

The intruders told my father that I would kill him first. And murdered. I did everything I could to stop them, but the fighters simply pierced his chest with bullets. “

Three H. Abu-Kleish brothers and two nephews (ages 14 and 16) also died that day. Other loved ones disappeared without a trace. It is believed that they were kidnapped by the forces of the Kani brothers. Abu-Kleish said there was no reason other than the fact that his family was rich and respected in Tarhuna.

By this time, the brothers had already established their own mini-state in and around Tarhuna. Even uniformed policemen were found in his pockets. The men of the Kani family ruled a kind of business empire, imposing “taxes” on a cement factory and other local businesses, as well as building a supermarket and establishing several legal businesses, including a laundromat.

They have benefited from providing “protection” to drug traffickers and migrants crossing their territory from the Sahara to the Mediterranean. At the same time, the brothers bragged that they were fighting drug traffickers and having created an oasis of order in war-torn Libya.

The Kani brothers led the Kaniyat militia, known as the Ninth Brigade of the LNA during Haftar’s assault on Tripoli. The LNA spokesperson denied that the killings occurred during his year in Tarhuna, but refused to commit to handing over the Kanis to the ICC, which is investigating pic.twitter.com/F5uSWNUBpV

– Daniel Hilton (@DanielHiltonCFC) September 30, 2020

The mini-state was led by Mohammed al Kani, a sapphire (professor of a fundamental Islamic leadership) and second eldest brother. He was the only member of the Kani family who had had such an education and had a regular paid job; He worked as a driver for an oil company before the revolution. The modest and quiet M. al Kani usually wore traditional sapphire clothing.

“It often happens in gangster families that the main character is neither very intimidating nor charismatic,” Harchaoui explained. – At the top you will usually find a person who is capable of understanding all the complex machinations necessary for the existence of a criminal organization. Also Mohammed “.

Second in importance is Abdul-Rahim, bareheaded, responsible for “internal security”, that is, dealing with all suspected treason. With a long face, Mohsen served as “Defense Minister” and was responsible for the Kani family of militants.

“Abdul-Rahim was the main killer, the second was Mohsen,” Dilaab recalled. According to the man, he and many other people fleeing Tarhuna informed the new governments in Tripoli about the killings, “unfortunately the governments ignored all the crimes of the Kani family because they were benefited by a group of brother combatants.”

In 2017, the brothers held a military parade with heavy weapons, uniformed police officers, and lions. These beasts were the personal property of the brothers. Rumors are circulating that several terrible family victims have been beaten to the lions.

2019 The Kani brothers decidedly changed their minds about the participants in the civil war: after breaking the alliance with the USSR, which controlled the western part of Libya, they offered their biggest opponent, General Khalifa Haftar, who ruled the eastern side, use Tarhun to attack the capital.

Suddenly, the city became a scene of international conflict. Haftar was backed by a strange alliance of France, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Russia, which sent mercenaries to Tarhun, led by the Kani brothers. On the other side of the barricades, Turkey provided ample weapons to support the Tripoli government. Probably the Turkish drone in 2019. It killed Mohsen and the youngest of the Abdul-Adhim brothers (he was 22 years old) in September.

Their deaths and their failed attempts to occupy Tripoli brought the bloodiest period in Tarhuna’s history. “The brothers had to kill people more often because things went wrong,” Harchaoui said. – How else to ensure that the townspeople do not turn to the enemy? Then Kani’s family sinks more and more into paranoia. “

Fighters loyal to the government finally captured Tarhun in 2020. in early June, and the four surviving Kani brothers and their fighters with K. Haftar’s forces fled to eastern Libya. “So we hoped they weren’t there, we didn’t sleep that night, the children were happy,” Rabia Jaballah said.