Ahmed Elumami TRIPOLI – Several hundred gunmen stormed Alassema TV station Thursday afternoon in Tripoli's Gurgi district, smashed the place up and kidnapped five members of staff including the channel's manager and its chief executive officer. According to Rajab Ben Gazi, one of Alassema's presenters who was present during the attack those involved were a mix of revolutionaries, Islamists and civilians. “Some of them were shouting ‘the blood of the martyrs will not go in vain'. Others set fire to part of the building and destroyed a lot of the channel equipment,” he said. Another member of staff told the Libya Herald that some were dressed in uniform and others in civilian clothes. They accused the station of causing fitna – dissension and discord. The gunmen then seized channel manager Juma Usata and his secretary, Mohamed Atif, its executive director, Nabil Shaibani, and two Alassema presenters, Mohamed Huni and Mahmoud Sharkisi. “They accused us of being linked to Mahmoud Jibril (the head of the National Force Alliance) and said that our manager, Juma Usta, is a Gaddafi loyalists because he worked as manager of a Chamber Commerce and Industry during the Gaddafi regime,” Ben Gazi said. “The gunmen were asking about the editors of the channel and who was the responsible for the news tickers,” he added. “They told me to leave Tripoli immediately and return to Misrata.” The gunmen later released Sharkisi, Huni and Atif. Sharkisi said that he had been treated respectfully and that no one touched or hurt him. Usata and Shaibani are still missing. Following the attack, a force from the Chief General Staff arrived to assess the situation to take necessary measures to secure the place and assess the damage. There are allegations circulating in Tripoli this evening linking the attack to Tuesday's seizure of Congress members and the attempt to force them to pass the “Political Isolation Law” which would ban senior Gaddafi officials from office, and the shooting at Congress President Mohamed Magarief's car afterwards. This is not the first attack against Al-Assema. At the beginning of February, an Alassema TV crew outside the General National Congress building in Tripoli were attacked and beaten by security guards. Last August, Shaibani and two Alassema journalists were arrested by the Supreme Security Committee which objected to the station's coverage of the destruction by Salafists of the Al-Sha'ab mosque in Tripoli. Ironically, earlier Thursday before the raid and seizure, the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) issued a statement saying that it was deeply concerned about attacks on media organizations in Libya and threats against journalists. It called on Libyans to respect freedom of the press. “The universal values of tolerance, moderation, and respect for differences are deeply rooted in Libyan society's religious and cultural heritage,” the UN's Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Tarek Mitri, said. “These values should be the foundation upon which the new Libya is built.” – Libya Herald
