Dec 14 (Reuters) – Thousands of former supporters of Muammar Gaddafi who fled their town because of revenge attacks will try to return next week, their leaders said on Wednesday, risking a confrontation with their neighbours.
Tawargha, a town about 250 km east of Tripoli, was ransacked and looted, and its residents forced to flee in one of the worst cases of reprisals against Gaddafi loyalists since the Libyan leader was overthrown three months ago.
Elders from the town decided at a meeting in Tripoli that all the residents — who they said number 30,000 and are scattered in camps and makeshift accommodation across Libya — will go home on Dec. 20.
Jaballah Mohammed, one of the delegates from the town who was at the meeting, appealed to the Libyan government to help the people of Tawargha return.
“Please understand this request,” he said. “We are innocent and helpless … The people of Tawargha were under Gaddafi’s militias, we did not know anything about the revolution (against his rule).”
But an official from the neighbouring town of Misrata, one of the centres of the anti-Gaddafi rebellion whose fighters carried out the reprisals in Tawargha, said it was too early for residents to go back.
“It will be dangerous for them because everybody has weapons and we cannot guarantee that the people with weapons in their hands will not make trouble,” said Fethi Bashaga, a member of the Misrata military council.
“Nobody forced the Tawargha people to leave the city. They went of their own accord.”
BAD BLOOD
He said the Tawargha residents should wait until Libya’s caretaker leadership, the National Transitional Council, organises their return as part of a programme of national reconciliation it launched this month.
“All reconciliation should be organised by the state,” Bashaga told Reuters by telephone.
People in Misrata accuse Tawargha of being complicit in a siege of their city by pro-Gaddafi forces which killed hundreds of civilians and fighters.
Rocket and artillery batteries stationed in Tawargha fired on residential districts of Misrata. Some people from Tawargha fought in the city in pro-Gaddafi units. Misrata residents allege that Tawargha men raped women in the city.
Deep-seated prejudices may also be a factor. Tawargha residents are dark-skinned, many descended from sub-Saharan African slaves, while almost everybody in Misrata is from Libya’s lighter-skinned Arab majority.
International rights groups say some people from Tawargha may have committed crimes during the fighting in Misrata, but that the reprisals since then have swept up thousands of innocent people.
The attacks in Tawargha took some of the lustre off Libya’s revolution, which had been feted by its Western backers for its proclaimed ideals of justice, tolerance and democracy.
One Tawargha resident, speaking at the meeting in Tripoli on Wednesday, said a delegation had been to see interim prime minister Abdurrahim El-Keib.
“He said that for now he could not do anything about our problem,” said the man, who did not give his name. “So we have to sort the problem out ourselves. Our people are suffering.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/14/libya-tawargha-return-idUSL6E7NE3JS20111214
Global Civilians For Peace In Libya 
No Libyan do a threat again a civillien of misrata 50000 was before evacuated to tripoli! Only heroic millitary was inside what figth again the invaders. All what no lokk wunderfull is nothing elsa as colisses of movie nothing of demaged infrastructure is rebuild or build by the occoupiers that now hold in that reagon they all placed by settlement that no Libyens. When some one real think he can peacefull stay next to them than my do so but dont think anyone will cry only one tear for you for your naiv traiter doing. Gaddafi warnt you gaddafi all said to you and you real think they let you alive. For all other i hope you come back but with weapons to clean that dirt from planet. Their enough lost countrie in style of america on that planet it need not only one more. Irak is total fisted what they called progress is a joke.