A/HRC/17/44 conducted by the Commission with eyewitnesses and families of victims in refugee camps in Tunisia, a large number of persons have been disappeared since mid-February. 101. An interviewee from Zintan District reported to the Commission that Government forces started stopping travellers as of mid-March on their way to the mountain to check their identity cards, detaining them if they were residents of districts supporting the opposition. They were then taken away to unknown places. The interviewee also noted that the Government forces restricted the locations where fuel was available in the outskirts of Yafran and Zintan districts and would then capture persons from those locations. 102. Witnesses referred to the failure of the authorities of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya to acknowledge detention and failure to respond to requests for information about those missing. In several interviews, the Commission heard that relatives called a missing person‟s mobile phone and ended up speaking with someone who they believed to be from the Government‟s security forces. The Commission met with persons who had reappeared after being held incommunicado, tortured or ill-treated over a number of days. 103. One interviewee told the Commission that hundreds of residents of the Nafusa Mountain area have disappeared as of mid-February throughout March and April 2011. He stated that his cousin from Yafran District and his friend from Jado District disappeared in March 2011. None of them had been carried weapons. Their families have not heard from them since. Another interviewee noted that Government forces abducted his civilian cousin from Nalut District on 18 March 2011. He reported that his cousin had been detained for expressing pro-opposition views, and that he had not taken part in the hostilities. His whereabouts remain unknown. 104. In some cases documented by the Commission, persons who had been disappeared appeared subsequently on Al Libya television channel, a channel which is owned by Saif al-Islam Qadhafi. They were reportedly forced to state their allegiance to the regime during a live transmission in an attempt to send a message to the opposition that their followers are traitors. During the broadcast, some others confessed to being members of Al-Qaida group in Libya while having visible signs of torture or ill-treatment on their faces and bodies. 105. Interviewees from the Nafusa Mountain, for example, stated that three residents of Nalut District disappeared in Tiji District around 6 March 2011, 40 kilometres away from Nalut, while travelling to Tripoli to buy car spare parts. Two days later, the Al Libya television channel broadcast them voicing their allegiance and support to Colonel Qadhafi. Signs of beating were evident with their faces swollen and blue bruises marked their eyeballs. 106. The Commission documented cases of the disappearance of at least 14 medical personnel by Government forces from hospitals in Az-Zawiyah, Benghazi and Tripoli. An Egyptian physician told the Commission that his colleague, a Libyan physician disappeared together with an Egyptian practitioner in the beginning of March, in Ras Lanuf. His colleague was later seen on Al Libya TV wearing military uniform and confessing that he belonged to Al-Qaida. This case was also referred to in the submission of the Fondation Alkarama to the Commission, along with the details of six other cases of disappearances of doctors in western Libya since the beginning of the uprising. Another physician told the Commission about the disappearances of four anaesthetic surgeons in Az-Zawiyah between February and March 2011. The Commission received further information concerning the arrest of a physician from Misrata with his 3 children and his 18 years old daughter in Tripoli. Their whereabouts remain unknown. 107. Reports indicate that journalists who were covering events were also subject to arbitrary arrests and disappearance. As a result of international pressure, some have been released but others are still missing or unaccounted for. At least a dozen journalists and other media professionals, including foreign nationals, went missing in Libya. These cases 31