The headline to a March 24 Los Angeles Times article by David Zucchino reads Libyan rebels appear to take leaf from Kadafi’s playbook. To wit:

The rebels of eastern Libya have found much to condemn about the police state tactics of Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi: deep paranoia, mass detentions, secret prisons and tightly scripted media tours.

But some of those same tactics appear to be creeping into the efforts of the opposition here as it seeks to stamp out lingering loyalty to Kadafi. Rebel forces are detaining anyone suspected of serving or assisting the Kadafi regime, locking them up in the same prisons once used to detain and torture Kadafi’s opponents.

And who are these “suspected mercenaries and government spies”? “Libyan blacks and immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa,” Zucchino reports.

“We know who they are,” said Abdelhafed Ghoga, the chief opposition spokesman. He called them “people with bloodstained hands” and “enemies of the revolution.” Any suspected Kadafi loyalist or spy who does not surrender, Ghoga warned, will face revolutionary “justice.”

At one detention center, a

. . . young man from Ghana bolted from the prisoners queue. He shouted in English at an American reporter: “I’m not a soldier! I work for a construction company in Benghazi!” . . . The Ghanaian was one of 25 detainees from Chad, Niger, Sudan, Mali and Ghana described by opposition officials as mercenaries, though several of them insisted they were laborers.

All too easy to finger immigrants and those of a darker hue. Meanwhile, it’s characteristic of rebels that they often fail to understand that, when applied to justice, the use of the word revolutionary doesn’t refer to its definition as a novelty. Justice isn’t a new car you’re taking for a joy ride. Ideally, it means that justice in their country is finally afforded an opportunity to be what it’s meant to be — truly just.