Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said in a video released on social media Jan. 28 she has been placed under investigation by the Prosecutor’s Office over her government’s surprise release of a Libyan national who is wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC). Italian police arrested Osama Najim, the head of the Tripoli government’s Judicial Police, in the city of Turin nine days earlier. Najim, popularly known as “Almasri,” serves as director of a network of detention centers where systematic abuse and human rights violations have been repeatedly documented in a reports by the UN Human Rights Council. Mediterranea Saving Humans NGO stated that the arrest “came after years of complaints and testimonies from victims, which were sent to the International Criminal Court.” Yet Najim was released after just one day, and arrived at Tripoli International Airport on Jan. 21. Queried about the release, Italian authorities cited “procedural irregularities” in his arrest. However, media commentators have widely pointed to Rome’s arrangements with Tripoli to block migrants seeking to cross the Mediterranean to reach Italy’s shores.
Both Libya’s rival governments are accused of abusing detained migrants. The worst accusations against Najim concern the facility at Mitiga airbase near Tripoli, where thousands are arbitrariy detained. But the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) on Jan. 14 expressed alarm over disturbing video footage circulating on social media that appears to show beatings of naked inmates in the Garnada detention facility outside Benghazi, run by the breakaway Libyan government of warlord Khalifa Haftar. (Jurist, Jurist, BBC News, Agenzia Nova, InfoMigrants, PRI)
The ICC has issued several warrants for Libyan officials since opening an investigation into the situation in the country.
