Originally posted to the Guardian website, 1 April 2021.
The family of a British-based photographer killed in 2011 by pro-Gaddafi forces during the Arab spring have launched a campaign to pressure Libya to investigate his death.
Anton Hammerl, 41, was shot after being targeted as part of a small group of journalists, including the US reporter James Foley who himself was subsequently kidnapped and murdered by Islamic State in Syria.
Left for dead in the desert after Foley and fellow journalists Clare Morgana Gillis and Manu Brabo were captured, Hammerl’s body has never been recovered.
The case was briefly investigated as a war crime by the international criminal court, but it was dropped after the death of Muammar Gaddafi and the fall of his regime.
The lack of a body has meant no inquest into Hammerl’s death has taken place in the UK, where the father of two, a joint South African-Austrian citizen, lived with his family.
After years of chaos and conflict in Libya, the family hope the new interim government will be able to help them locate his body.
The family are being represented by Caoilfhionn Gallagher QC, who has been heavily involved in the push to secure justice for the murdered Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, and they are also being supported by Foley’s mother, Diane.
With the 10th anniversary of his killing on Monday, the family plan to take the case to the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and the UN working group on forced disappearances.
“On the face of it we believe there is reasonable evidence to believe that Anton’s death was a war crime,” said Gallagher, who added that research into Hammerl’s death that James Foley had been working on at the time of his own murder had been supplied to the campaign.
‘This wasn’t journalists just caught in a crossfire. They were identifiable as civilians and journalists when they were targeted and Anton was killed during an enforced abduction.” She added that in the intervening period “the international community has treated his death with a shrug of the shoulders”.
Hammerl was among a number of journalists killed during the chaos of the Arab spring and its long aftermath – not least in Syria – including Marie Colvin of the Sunday Times, the Sky News cameraman Mick Deane, Foley himself, and the photojournalists Chris Hondros and Tim Hetherington.
Hammerl had been covering the conflict between pro-regime and anti-Gaddafi forces when the group he was with came under fire from Libyan soldiers in a remote desert location near Brega on 5 April 2011.
Initially the family were led to believe by Libyan officials that all four journalists had been captured, and it was only six and a half weeks later when the survivors were released that it was revealed Hammerl had been killed and his body left in the desert.
Since his death, there has been sporadic and vague information about the location of his body, with a suggestion in 2012 that a body matching his description had been found in a mass grave of 170 people and DNA samples had been taken but never delivered for processing.
His wife, Penny Sukhraj-Hammerl,who had just given birth to the couple’s second child when Hammerl was killed, hopes the new government in Libya will finally take action to help find Hammerl’s body and explain his death.
“It’s been hard, a very hard 10 years for the family but it’s our hope after all these years there might be a different flavour in the air, a different calibre of leadership that may consider things in a different way.
“So we’re hopeful. They have things at their disposal they should have been able to use if they would consider what we’ve been through. Because we’ve not even had a body. To think you knew someone who you had heard their voice the day before, and suddenly they’ve vanished. There’s always a real hole.”
Link to original post: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/01/family-photographer-urges-libya-investigate-death-anton-hammerl
