Arabic writing that reads, "missing, Mohammed Mohammed Al Mahgoub Sheikh," during protest demanding that the government act faster to find those who disappeared in Tripoli, Libya, November (Photo: AP)
About 200 Libyans on Monday gathered in the eastern city of Benghazi – the cradle of the recent uprising that ousted Muammar Gaddafi – to protest against the National Transitional Council (NTC) and council head Mustafa Abdel Jalil.
Angry protesters chanted slogans against Abdel Jalil and accused the NTC of a lack of transparency, an AFP correspondent at the scene reported.
"Abdel Jalil has a lot of questions to answer. The regime has not changed. It’s the same, which oppresses and marginalises cities," said Benghazi lawyer Tahini Al-Sharif.
She said that protesters were furious over recent remarks by Abdel Jalil, in which he said that Gaddafi fighters should be forgiven.
"Abdel Jalil is asking us to forgive Gaddafi fighters. Would he say the same thing if his son had been killed or wounded in the revolution?" Al-Sharif said as the crowds behind her chanted, "NTC must quit. Jalil must go!"
On Saturday, the NTC held the first post-Gaddafi conference on national reconciliation in which Abdel Jalil said that Libya’s new rulers could forgive the slain dictator’s fighters who fought rebels during the recent uprising.
"In Libya, we are able to absorb all. Libya is for all," he said at the conference.
"Despite what the army of the oppressor did to our cities and our villages, our brothers who fought against the rebels as the army of Gaddafi, we are ready to forgive them," he said.
"We are able to forgive and tolerate," he added.
Abdel Jalil is the chief of the NTC, which has ruled Libya since the revolution erupted against Gaddafi from Benghazi and spread across the North African country before ending with the former leader's murder on 20 October in his hometown of Sirte.
Monday's protest took place in a key square in downtown Benghazi, where the first anti-Gaddafi demonstration had been held on 15 February.
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