Libya: Try This for TV Violence?

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The usual TV fare of movies and soccer was abruptly interrupted by the macabre image of six hooded Libyans with nooses around their necks, perched atop stools. As horrified Libyan viewers watched last week, executioners moved down the line of the doomed, kicking over the stools. The state-run TV also showed three soldiers as they were shot to death by firing squads.

The victims were accused of belonging to an extreme antigovernment Muslim fundamentalist group said to have plotted to assassinate selected Soviet advisers in Libya and members of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's revolutionary committees. Exiled Libyans, however, claim the soldiers were executed for taking part in a mutiny protesting against Gaddafi's recent armed intervention in Chad.