Grad student recounts his two years in Libyan prison

 

Mohamed Elcataani. (Photo by Maegan Murray, Murrow News Service)

PULLMAN – For two years, Mohamed Elcataani survived in a prison in Libya where vicious beatings by guards were routine. Elcataani, now a 34-year-old WSU graduate student, said he and his older brother were arrested in 1995 for collecting money for the poor in his hometown of Benghazi.

 

His older brother died in the notorious Abu Salim prison in 1996 under mysterious circumstances, he said. Guards beat his younger brother so often that the teenager suffered permanent brain damage.