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28 June 2011, 3:30 a.m. Salem Mohamed's home in the Abu Slim district of Tripoli is quiet when suddenly twenty security agents violently break down the front door. They are all heavily armed, some are wearing hoods others are in civilian clothing. The 31-year-old academic, father to two children, is immediately handcuffed and taken by force in a military car to an unknown destination. Forty minutes later, some of the agents came back to his home and confiscate Salem's personal documents and belongings.

In the morning, Salem Mohamed's father went to the internal security services headquarters of Abu Slim to establish his whereabouts and provide him with his medication, believing his son had been brought there. Salem Mohamed is indeed diabetic, a pathology that requires daily treatment. However, the security agents refused to acknowledge his detention and did not take the medication the father had brought, meaning that Salem Mohamed's life is now clearly in danger.

Salem Mohamed's family had already suffered persecution from the authorities in the past, as one of his brothers, a political activist, fled abroad in 2006. In reprisal, the authorities had disappeared another of his brothers and tried him before a special court. The family fears Salem Mohamed's disappearance is part of a pattern of reprisals by the authorities against the families that are suspected of opposing Gaddafi's regime.

Salem Mohamed's case has been sent to the Working group on arbitrary detention, which was requested to intervene with the authorities upon his case. The Special Rapporteur on Torture was also informed of the situation.