TRIPOLI, Libya — On May 20, seven Libyan men — some of whom were high-ranking military officers under the former Moammar Gadhafi regime — arrived in Tripoli from their self-imposed exile in Cairo. None of them would have openly set foot in Tripoli unless they had been assured their safety was guaranteed in the Libyan capital, which they hadn't visited since Gadhafi's regime fell in 2011.The group of three former military officers, three activists and one university professor had been invited to attend a reconciliation meeting in the capital hosted by the different militias that are the de facto power brokers in western Libya. One of them, Naji Ahrar, had been a brigadier in the former Libyan armed forces.

While in exile, the men joined one of several political groups set up in Cairo and Tunis. Such groups broadly define themselves as representatives of the former regime’s political agenda, which opposes foreign intervention in the country, particularly the NATO military intervention in the 2011 civil war.

The men have, in the past, repeatedly expressed their political opposition to the so-called February Revolution of 2011, but their opposition apparently has remained peaceful as they seek discussions to salvage the war-shattered country that is on the brink of partition — if not disintegration. To this end, they attended reconciliation meetings organized and attended by the United Nations special envoy to Libya, Lebanese Ghassan Salame, in Cairo on April 29 and Geneva on Feb. 15.

In Tripoli, the men attended a May 21 meeting with influential, diehard revolution supporters and militia leaders. According to the available details, the meeting took place near Tripoli’s destroyed airport just south of the capital. However, at some point in the meeting, something went wrong. Another militia, known as the Special Deterrent Force (SDF), intervened and took the men to jail, accusing them of plotting actions to further destabilize Tripoli and of possessing arms and explosives. The SDF also accused them in a statement on its Facebook page of links with local sleeper cells with the same agenda. As the men are still in detention, little else is really known about what happened.