politicians \"They grabbed my two brothers last night and took them to prison. We\'re black, that´s our only crime,\" Zeinab Muhamed, a Tripoli resident told Deutsche Welle. At first glance, the atmosphere at Tripoli\'s former sport club - opposite the city\'s main harbour - has changed dramatically. Yesterday\'s yacht and sailing boat owners have been replaced by prisoners and their relatives waiting outside. All of them are black residents of Tripoli\'s old town, Medina. \"None of them are Libyans. Those guys we keep inside are all foreigners paid by Gadhafi to kill our people, what are we expected to do with them? They are mercenaries, you know?\" local rebel council officer Abdulhamid Abdulhakim told Deutsche Welle from the main gate. Apparently, the unexpected visit of foreign journalists to the makeshift prison has made him nervous.
\"Did you know that Gadhafi would never let journalists work the way you\'re doing it now? Isn\'t that real proof of democracy in the new Libya?\" says the officer.

\"They say we\'re not Libyans but that\'s not true,\" says Zeinab Muhamed in response. \"I was born in Chad but we moved to Sebah - 900 kilometers (560 miles) south of Tripoli - 20 years ago. We have had Libyan passports almost since the day we moved.\"
Old town resident Salwa Eisa is also queuing at the main entrance. She\'s carrying a bag with food for her husband.

\"We arrived from Chad two years ago and Abdulllah, my husband, has worked doing all sorts of things except accepting money from Gadhafi to kill people,\" the 36-year-old explains. She concurs with the rest of the relatives gathering outside the sport club jail: \"Our main problem is the color of our skin.\"

During his four-decade-long rule, Gadhafi opened the doors of Libya to a lot of migrants from the neighboring countries looking for a better life. Little wonder here, as Libya\'s small population of around six million hardly matches with the sheer size of the north African country and its huge oil resources. Most of them were used as cheap labour but the alleged large numbers of foreign black nationals recruited by Gadhafi is said to lie behind the mistrust of many Libyans today.