In the end, after two flat tyres and a five-hour roadside wait sweltering beneath the desert sun, our journey to Ghadames was interrupted by 16 Touareg who burst on to the road armed with Kalashnikovs. In the space of a 24-hour kidnapping in the rolling sand seas where Libya, Algeria and Tunisia meet, our Touareg captors, vestiges of the Gaddafi loyalist militia, threatened to kill us unless their fellow Touareg prisoners in Ghadames were released. Their homes had been robbed and burnt to the ground, they said, their animals slaughtered.

When I finally made it to Ghadames — my friend remains hostage in the desert at the time of writing — much of the talk was of how the Touareg were no longer welcome in the town. While Jibril was sending out all the right messages in Tripoli, echoed four days later in Martyrs Square by Jalil ("We are Muslims, people of forgiveness"), reprisals were already under way in this remote desert oasis. The town council was almost alone in declaring that the Touareg, most of whom had not been involved in the brutal rule by Gaddafi's Touareg militia, had a future in Ghadames.

If you are a black Libyan, chances are you are more likely to be fearing, or experiencing, reprisals than welcoming reconciliation at the moment. The prevalence of reports that Gaddafi was using sub-Saharan mercenaries to prop up his regime has resulted in attacks on innocent black Libyans who played no role in the conflict. In its report "The Battle for Libya: Killings, Disappearance and Torture", Amnesty cites figures from the International Organisation for Migration showing that before the revolution Libya was home to between 1.5-2.5 million foreign nationals, mostly from sub-Saharan African countries, including Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia and Sudan. "Racist and xenophobic attacks, already frequent before the unrest, increased as a result of the breakdown of law and order and an escalation of xenophobic rhetoric by both sides of the conflict," the report says, documenting numerous instances of reprisals and abuse. 

During a visit to Tripoli General Hospital, I saw four terrified black African prisoners under guard. Possibly fearing for their lives, they tried to escape, triggering a row between the hospital authorities and the rebel guard which resulted in pistol-pulling, gun-waving and only narrowly avoided a fatal shooting.