ON ONE side of the prison courtyard sat 29 alleged regular army soldiers still loyal to the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi. They included Omar al-Sudani, allegedly involved in the killing of a British police officer, Yvonne Fletcher, outside the Libyan embassy in London in 1984.
Click the image to view the gallery
''All Libyans,'' said our guide, Khalid Mohammed, a Benghazi businessman who is now working as a volunteer with the rebels. ''They were captured during the last week.''
Sitting opposite the soldiers were 23 alleged African mercenaries. ''The mercenaries first,'' commanded Mr Mohammed, as he led a kind of roll call, asking the men to say where they were from.
Most said they were from Chad and Mali, but some were born in Ghana, Niger and Sudan.
Whether the men had served as Colonel Gaddafi's mercenaries was impossible to verify.
''I am working as a taxi driver and last week my car was stopped and I was arrested and then beaten,'' said Ali Hassan, 23, from Ghana. ''I am not a mercenary. This is a lie.''
Many of the others also protested their innocence.
''We are looking after them. They are being fed well and if they are innocent they will be let go,'' said Mr Mohammed, who said access to the International Red Cross and the advocacy group Human Rights Watch was also being arranged.
The captured Libyan Army soldiers were more convincing.
''Yes, I was serving in the army,'' said Abdul Majid, 27, from Tripoli. ''I had to fight. I was given no choice. It was either that or I would be executed. They said they would cut my throat if I did not fight.''
As the words were translated into English, men sitting next to him nodded in agreement.
Alone on a chair against a wall between the two rows of prisoners sat Brigadier Ala Adin, the marks on his hands and face indicating he had been beaten.
''I was taken prisoner last Saturday in the fighting near Garyounis University [in Benghazi],'' he said.
An army engineer who co-ordinated the clearing and laying of landmines, he said he was from Tripoli.
''Of course I had no choice but to follow orders. They have my family, and they have me. If I try to desert I am shot, and perhaps my family also.''
Brigadier Ala Adin said the Libyan Army was in a state of near disarray.
''There is no Libyan Army to speak of. There are just groups within the army, gangs loyal to Gaddafi, but as a united fighting force the army doesn't exist.''
After all the prisoners in the courtyard were led back to their cells, the rebel guards presented one of their most prized captures: Omar al-Sudani.
A professor of public health at Garyounis University, he was allegedly involved in the killing of the British officer Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan embassy in London in 1984.
Mr Mohammed said it was Professor Sudani who had fired the fatal shot from inside the embassy compound.
A gunman believed to have been firing from inside the embassy shot Constable Fletcher, her killing prompting Britain to sever diplomatic ties with Libya.
Professor Sudani admitted being in London at the time, after working as an attache at the embassy, but denied any involvement in the shooting. ''I was there. But I was not at the scene when the shooting took place.''
He said he was outside the embassy grounds, being interviewed by police over a ''quarrel'' he had with another police officer.
As to his notorious reputation around Benghazi as one of Colonel Gaddafi's security enforcers, he said it was all a mix-up with his brother, a police officer.
''Yes, people are frightened of me. My name is famous, and anything that happens, they say I was involved in it.''
Although a member of the Revolutionary Committee, the form of government introduced by Colonel Gaddafi in which the state is governed through committees, Professor Sudani said he was guilty of no crime. He had turned against Colonel Gaddafi in the mid-1990s, he said.
Email a friend