Benghazi Rising

The conflict that erupted in Benghazi was as unexpected as it was cataclysmic, but at its heart lay years of hurt and political repression. Through personal stories told by the people of Benghazi, we trace the conflict from its beginnings in a small protest over one lawyers imprisonment, and capture the inspiring story of how the unarmed people of Libya rocked the titanium police state built by Gaddafi. The chanting protesters hold aloft pictures of martyrs, not of this conflict but of political prisoners placed in Abu Salim prison since 1996. Police massacred 1200 of them and Benghazi has never forgotten its sons who died that terrible day. It was over justice for these men that the inhabitants of Benghazi first took to the streets. For the first time, fifteen years later they can mourn the casualties of Gaddafi's reign in public. Evocative scenes which speak volumes of the pressures Libyans have lived under for decades.