This book is the work of a Libyan-American scholar who spent fifteen years researching the history of Italian colonial concentration camps (Mu’taqalat) in Libya between 1929 and 1934. Ali Abdullatif Ahmida, who teaches political science at the University of New England in the United States, based his methods of inquiry on local culture and values as well as archives and survivors’ first-hand accounts. According to the evidence that Ahmida was able to collect in his fieldwork and archival research, Fascist Italian colonizers subjected Libyans to all kinds of maltreatment, war crimes, starvation, deportations, displacement, concentration camps and murder. More than 110,000 Libyans, who inhabited the eastern part of the country, were interned in sixteen concentration camps and, by 1934, only 40,000 had survived the ordeal. The Fascists committed all sorts of criminal practices to quell nationalist resistance and resorted to widespread executions while the unfortunate Libyans who remained...

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