EVIDENCE has emerged that Muammar Gaddafi's retreating forces executed scores or even hundreds of political prisoners, even as victorious rebel fighters seem to have carried out their own abuses.

Survivors of an attack by pro-Gaddafi troops said they had watched as fellow prisoners were mowed down by machinegun fire, minutes after being told they were free.

Rebels arrest one of Gaddafi's fighters.

But Gaddafi loyalists were also targets of apparent extrajudicial killings. Those deaths have cast a dark shadow over Libya's new-found freedom and call into question whether the rebels will break with Colonel Gaddafi's blood-soaked style of governance or merely mimic it.

Diana Eltahawy, Libya researcher for Amnesty International, said a trail of abuse, torture and the extrajudicial killing of captured pro-Gaddafi fighters had followed the rebels from east to west as they took over the country.