The police station Al-Monitor visited keeps weekly and monthly records of crimes, and the numbers are staggering compared to crime rates in the capital before 2011. According to their records, on any given day there are at least two murder cases, three armed robberies, three to four car thefts and two kidnappings. Other crimes like assault, threats of violence and rape are also rife, but no statistics were disclosed.
According to Ahmed, the crime types and rates in the capital are "unprecedented." He said, "I have been here for the last 15 years but I have never seen crime flourishing like it is now.” Certain crimes are somewhat new to Libya, particularly kidnapping and murder. There was a time when such crimes were very rare.
In Libya’s southern capital of Sabha, the main police station keeps a Facebook page updated every month with the number and types of crimes. In February, for example, 12 cars were stolen, nine people were kidnapped and 24 people died — 22 of them were murdered while one was electrocuted trying to illegally tap into the electrical grid.
None of these crimes were fully investigated and most were attributed to unknown perpetrators. In such cases, people usually take revenge for what they speculate happened and go after the murder suspect on their own. Particularly in murder cases, this practice leads to a vicious cycle of vengeance, which in many cases can be stopped only by local social councils made up of elderly individuals and tribal leaders, as in the recent case in which the Warfalla tribal leaders succeeded in stopping bloodshed between the Oulad Suleiman and al-Gaddafa tribes.