You are here

International Criminal Court opens inquiry into Italy over release of Libyan warlord

International Criminal Court opens inquiry into Italy over release of Libyan warlord
International Criminal Court prosecutor attends a United Nations Security Council meeting, Jan. 27, 2025 in New York City. (AFP)
Short Url

https://arab.news/93neh

Updated 10 February 2025
AP
Follow

International Criminal Court opens inquiry into Italy over release of Libyan warlord

International Criminal Court opens inquiry into Italy over release of Libyan warlord
  • Italian Justice Minister Carlo Nordio defended the decision to send the suspect back to Libya
  • The warlord was arrested in Turin on an ICC warrant on January 19 but was later released
Updated 10 February 2025
AP
Follow

THE HAGUE: Judges at the International Criminal Court have officially asked Italy on Monday to explain why the country released a Libyan man suspected of torture, murder and rape rather than sending him to The Hague.
Italian police arrested Ossama Anjiem, also known as Ossama Al-Masri, last month but rather than extraditing him to the Netherlands, where the ICC is based, sent him back to Libya aboard an Italian military aircraft.
“The matter of state’s non-compliance with a request of cooperation for arrest and surrender by the court is before the competent chamber,” the court’s spokesperson Fadi El-Abdallah said in a statement.
Addressing parliament last week, Italian Justice Minister Carlo Nordio defended the decision to send Al-Masri home, claiming the ICC had issued a contradictory and flawed arrest warrant. The court, he said, “realized that an immense mess was made,” he told lawmakers.
Al-Masri was arrested in Turin on the ICC warrant on Jan. 19, the day after he arrived in the country from Germany to watch a soccer match. The Italian government has said Rome’s court of appeals ordered him released on Jan. 21 because of a technical problem in the way that the ICC warrant was transmitted, having initially bypassed the Italian justice ministry.
The ICC said it does not comment on national judicial proceedings.
Al-Masri’s arrest had posed a dilemma for Italy because it has close ties to the internationally recognized government in Tripoli as well as energy interests in the country.
According to the arrest warrant, Al-Masri heads the Tripoli branch of the Reform and Rehabilitation Institution, a notorious network of detention centers run by the government-backed Special Defense Force, which acts as a military police unit combating high-profile crimes including kidnappings, murders as well as illegal migration.
Like many other militias in western Libya, the SDF has been implicated in atrocities in the civil war that followed the overthrow and killing of the Libyan president Muammar Qaddafi in 2011.
Additionally, any trial in The Hague of Al-Masri could bring unwanted attention to Italy’s migration policies and its support of the Libyan coast guard, which it has financed to prevent migrants from leaving.
In October, the court unsealed arrest warrants for six men allegedly linked to a brutal Libyan militia blamed for multiple killings and other crimes in a strategically important western town where mass graves were discovered in 2020.

Topics: Libya Italy International Cricket Council (ICC)

Related

2 mass graves with bodies of nearly 50 migrants found in southeastern Libya
Middle-East
2 mass graves with bodies of nearly 50 migrants found in southeastern Libya
Italy blames badly drafted ICC warrant for Libyan suspect’s release
World
Italy blames badly drafted ICC warrant for Libyan suspect’s release

Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces paramilitary claims it took control of a strategic western town

Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces paramilitary claims it took control of a strategic western town
Updated 3 sec ago
Follow

Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces paramilitary claims it took control of a strategic western town

Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces paramilitary claims it took control of a strategic western town
Updated 3 sec ago
CAIRO: Sudan’s notorious paramilitary group claimed a “sweeping victory” Friday saying it took control of the key town of Al Nahud in West Kordofan state in a fight that intensified a day earlier.
A victory there by the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, would mark a strategic loss for Sudan’s military in its war with the paramilitary force as the territory is home to the headquarters of the 18th Infantry Brigade.
The Sudanese army didn’t immediately comment on its social media channels on whether it lost Al Nahud to its rival.
Sudan’s Culture and Information Minister Khalid Ali Aleisir said on his Facebook account on Friday the RSF committed crimes against defenseless citizens in the town, looting their properties and destroying public facilities.
The RSF said on its Telegram channel Friday that it destroyed vehicles belonging to the army and seized their weapons and ammunition during the battle for Al Nahud. The paramilitary group also claimed that it managed to secure the city’s facilities and markets after defeating the army.
The war erupted on April 15, 2023, with pitched battles between the military and the RSF in the streets of the capital Khartoum that quickly spread to other parts of the country.
RSF attacks in Al Nahud have killed more than 300 unarmed civilians, the Preliminary Committee of Sudan Doctors’ Trade Union said on Facebook on Friday. The Associated Press couldn’t independently verify that figure.
The Resistance Committees of Al Nahud condemned the RSF attacks, which it said began Thursday morning.
“They invaded the city, stormed residential neighborhoods, terrorized unarmed civilians, and committed cold-blooded murders against innocent civilians whose only crime was to cling to their dignity and refuse to leave their homes to the machine of killing and terror,” the Resistance Committees said Thursday on Facebook.
An army loss of Al Nahud would impact its operational capabilities in Northern Kordofan state, according to the Sudan War Monitor, an open source collaborative project that has been documenting the two-year-war. Al Nahud is a strategic town because it’s located along a main road that the army could use to advance into the Darfur region, which the RSF mostly controls.
Al Nahud also shelters displaced people fleeing from Al-Obeid, Umm Kadada, Khartoum and El-Fasher — the provincial capital of North Darfur province, according to the Darfur Victims Support Organization.
Meanwhile, in North Darfur, the fighting has killed at least 542 people in the last three weeks, though the actual death toll is likely higher, according to UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk. This figure includes the recent RSF attacks on El Fasher and Abu Shouk displacement camp, which killed at least 40 civilians.
“The horror unfolding in Sudan knows no bounds,” said Türk i n a statement on Thursday.
Türk also mentioned “extremely disturbing” reports of extrajudicial killings committed by RSF, with at least 30 men in civilian clothing executed by the paramilitary fighters in Al Salha in southern Omdurman.
“I have personally alerted both leaders of the RSF and SAF to the catastrophic human rights consequences of this war. These harrowing consequences are a daily, lived reality for millions of Sudanese. It is well past time for this conflict to stop,” said Türk.
The war in Sudan has killed at least 20,000 people, but the real toll is probably far higher. Nearly 13 million people have fled their homes, 4 million of them streaming into neighboring countries.
Half the population of 50 million faces hunger. The World Food Program has confirmed famine in 10 locations and warns it could spread further, putting millions at risk of starvation.

Tunisia court jails former officials including former PM Larayedh

Updated 1 min 1 sec ago
Follow

Tunisia court jails former officials including former PM Larayedh

Tunisia court jails former officials including former PM Larayedh
Updated 1 min 1 sec ago
The sentences are for 18 to 36 years, and apply to eight people

TUNIS: A Tunisian court on Friday handed down lengthy prison sentences against former officials, including former Prime Minister Ali Larayedh, a senior figure in the opposition Ennahda party, on charges of facilitating the departure of jihadists to Syria over the past decade.
TAP state news agency quoted a judicial official as saying that the sentences are for 18 to 36 years, and apply to eight people.

West Bank residents losing hope 100 days into military assault

West Bank residents losing hope 100 days into military assault
Updated 58 min 5 sec ago
AFP
Follow

West Bank residents losing hope 100 days into military assault

West Bank residents losing hope 100 days into military assault
  • Israel’s military in late February deployed tanks in Jenin for the first time in the West Bank since the end of the second intifada
Updated 58 min 5 sec ago
AFP

JENIN: On a torn-up road near the refugee camp where she once lived, Saja Bawaqneh said she struggled to find hope 100 days after an Israeli offensive in the occupied West Bank forced her to flee.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been displaced in the north of the territory since Israel began a major “anti-terrorist operation” dubbed “Iron Wall” on Jan. 21.
Bawaqneh said life was challenging and uncertain since she was forced to leave Jenin refugee camp — one of three targeted by the offensive, along with Tulkarm and Nur Shams.
“We try to hold on to hope, but unfortunately, reality offers none,” she said.
“Nothing is clear in Jenin camp even after 100 days — we still don’t know whether we will return to our homes, or whether those homes have been damaged or destroyed.”
Bawaqneh said residents were banned from entering the camp and that “no one knows ... what happened inside.”
Israel’s military in late February deployed tanks in Jenin for the first time in the West Bank since the end of the second intifada.
In early March, it said it had expanded its offensive to more city areas.
AFP footage this week showed power lines dangling above Jenin’s streets blocked with barriers made of churned-up earth.
Wastewater pooled in the road outside the Jenin Governmental Hospital.
Farha Abu Al-Hija, a member of the Popular Committee for Services in Jenin camp, said families living in the vicinity of the camp were being removed by Israeli forces daily.
“A hundred days have passed like a hundred years for the displaced people of Jenin camp,” she said.
“Their situation is dire, the conditions are harsh, and they are enduring pain unlike anything they have ever known.”
Medical charity Doctors Without Borders in March denounced the “extremely precarious” situation of Palestinians displaced by the military assault, saying they were going “without proper shelter, essential services, and access to health care.”
It said the scale of forced displacement and destruction of camps “has not been seen in decades” in the West Bank.
The UN says about 40,000 residents have been displaced since Jan. 21.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has said the offensive would last several months and ordered troops to stop residents from returning.
Israeli forces put up barriers at several entrances of the Jenin camp in late April, AFP footage showed.
The Israeli offensive began two days after a truce came into effect in the Gaza Strip between the Israeli military and Gaza’s Hamas rulers.
Two months later, that truce collapsed and Israel resumed its offensive in Gaza, a Palestinian territory separate from the West Bank.
Since the Gaza war began in October 2023, violence has soared in the West Bank.
Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 925 Palestinians in the territory since then, according to the Ramallah-based Health Ministry.

 

Topics: War on Gaza Palestine Gaza USA

Related

While the world watches Gaza, here is what’s happening in the West Bank
Middle-East
While the world watches Gaza, here is what’s happening in the West Bank
Herders suffer in West Bank as settlers encroach on grazing land
Middle-East
Herders suffer in West Bank as settlers encroach on grazing land

Gaza rescuers say 42 killed in Israeli strikes

Gaza rescuers say 42 killed in Israeli strikes
Updated 02 May 2025
AFP
Follow

Gaza rescuers say 42 killed in Israeli strikes

Gaza rescuers say 42 killed in Israeli strikes
  • Nine people were killed when an Israeli air strike hit a home in Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza
  • In Gaza City, a strike on a community kitchen claimed the lives of six more
Updated 02 May 2025
AFP

GAZA CITY: Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli strikes killed at least 42 people Friday in the Palestinian territory, devastated by war and under a total Israeli aid blockade for two months.
Israel resumed its military campaign in the Gaza Strip on March 18 after the collapse of a ceasefire that had largely halted the fighting.
Nine people were killed when an Israeli air strike hit a home in Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, civil defense official Mohammed Al-Mughayyir told AFP.
AFP footage in the aftermath of a strike on Bureij camp showed Palestinians searching for casualties in the rubble of a flattened building.
“They gave us no warning, no phone call — we woke up at midnight to smoke, rubble, stones, and shrapnel raining down on us,” said Mohammed Al-Sheikh, standing among collapsed concrete slabs.
“We pulled out martyrs — bodies and limbs from under the rubble.”
Another six people were killed in a strike targeting the Al-Masri family home in the northern city of Beit Lahia, civil defense official Mughayyir added.
In Gaza City, a strike on a community kitchen claimed the lives of six more, the civil defense agency reported.
Across the Gaza Strip, at least 21 other deaths were reported in similar attacks, the agency said.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Thursday that at least 2,326 people have been killed since Israel resumed its campaign in Gaza, bringing the overall death toll since the war broke out to 52,418.
The war erupted after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.
That attack resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Militants also abducted 251 people, 58 of whom are still being held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
The Israeli government says its renewed campaign aims to force Hamas to free the remaining captives, although critics charge it puts them in mortal danger.
Israel halted aid deliveries to Gaza on March 2, days before the collapse of the ceasefire which had come into effect on January 19.
The United Nations has repeatedly warned of the scale of the humanitarian catastrophe on the ground, with famine again looming.
On Friday, the International Committee of the Red Cross said the humanitarian response in Gaza was on the “verge of total collapse.”
“This situation must not — and cannot — be allowed to escalate further,” its deputy director of operations, Pascal Hundt, said in a statement.

Topics: Gaza War on Gaza

Related

Desperate children and adults in Gaza struggle to get food as Israel blocks aid
Middle-East
Desperate children and adults in Gaza struggle to get food as Israel blocks aid
‘Deadly blockade’ leaves Gaza aid work on verge of collapse: UN, Red Cross
Middle-East
‘Deadly blockade’ leaves Gaza aid work on verge of collapse: UN, Red Cross

Desperate children and adults in Gaza struggle to get food as Israel blocks aid

Desperate children and adults in Gaza struggle to get food as Israel blocks aid
Updated 02 May 2025
AP
Follow

Desperate children and adults in Gaza struggle to get food as Israel blocks aid

Desperate children and adults in Gaza struggle to get food as Israel blocks aid
  • “Until when will life be like that? We’re slowly dying. We haven’t eaten bread for a month and a half,” said Abu Arar
  • Aid groups have warned that Gaza’s civilian population is facing starvation
Updated 02 May 2025
AP

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip: Screaming in anguish as the desperate crowd crushes them against a barrier, young children and adults frantically wave pots and pans at charity workers, begging for a portion of some of the last food aid left in Gaza: Rice.
The chaos at the community kitchen in Khan Younis in southern Gaza on Friday was too overwhelming for Niveen Abu Arar. She tried and tried, but the 33-year-old mother of eight didn’t get to the front of the crowd in time. She left with her pot empty, and her eyes full of tears.
“Until when will life be like that? We’re slowly dying. We haven’t eaten bread for a month and a half. There is no flour. There is nothing,” said Abu Arar, whose ninth child, a 1-year-old boy, was killed in an Israeli strike near their home at the start of the war in 2023. “We don’t know what to do … We don’t have money. What do we get for them?”
She cradled a toddler in her lap as she spoke. With no milk to provide, she poured water into a baby bottle and pressed it into her youngest daughter’s mouth, hoping to stave off the baby’s hunger pangs.
With Israel blocking any form of aid — including food and medicine – into Gaza for the past two months, aid groups have warned that Gaza’s civilian population is facing starvation.
Israel has said that the blockade and its renewed military campaign aim to pressure Hamas to release the remaining hostages it still holds and to disarm. Aid groups stress that blocking humanitarian aid is a form of collective punishment and a violation of international law.
Israeli authorities didn’t immediately respond when asked about accusations that starvation was being used as a weapon of war, but in the past they have accused the Hamas militant group governing Gaza of stealing aid.
In an emergency call with reporters on Friday to discuss Gaza’s humanitarian crisis, aid groups described a territory nearly out of food, water and fuel, with prices for the meager supplies remaining skyrocketing beyond the reach of many.
With nearly the entire population reliant on humanitarian aid, according to the United Nations, warehouses are empty, community kitchens are closing down, and families are skipping meals.
A 25-kilogram (55-pound) bag of flour now goes for 1,300 shekels ($360), said Ghada al Haddad, Oxfam’s media coordinator in Gaza.
“Mothers in Gaza now feed their children one meal per day, dinner, so they don’t wake up and complain they are starving,” she said.
Amjad Shawwa, the director of the Palestinian NGO network, said that more than 70 of their community kitchens inside Gaza would close within the week if the Israeli blockade continues.
Israeli airstrikes have also taken out large swaths of Gaza’s agricultural land and livestock, making it nearly impossible for the territory to produce its own food, said Gavin Kelleher, a humanitarian manager with the Norwegian Refugee Council who recently left Gaza. Even fisherman have been targeted, he said, killed in small fishing boats by Israeli naval forces.
“Israel has engineered a situation where Palestinians cannot grow their own food or fish for their own food,” he said.
Kelleher, whose organization coordinates the provision of shelter to Gaza, said that not a single aid group has any tents left to distribute — as 1 million people inside Gaza remain in need of shelter given the devastation caused by the nearly 19-month war.
In Khan Younis, Mustafa Ashour said he had walked for an hour to get to the charity community kitchen, and waiting for another two hours before he managed to get food.
“The situation is hard in Gaza. The crossings are closed. It’s a full siege,” said Ashour, who was displaced from the southern city of Rafah. “There is no food. There is no water. There are no life necessities. The food being sold is expensive and very little.”
As for Abu Arar and her family — left without a handout from the charity kitchen — another family in a neighboring tent took pity, and shared their own meager portions of rice.
Keller of the NRC said that if Israel continues its blockade, “thousands of people will die, there will be a complete breakdown of order, telecommunication networks will come down and we will struggle to understand the situation because it will be unfolding in the dark.”

Topics: War on Gaza children Israel Gaza blockade Food Khan Younis

Related

UK tells ICJ Israel must allow aid supplies into Gaza
Middle-East
UK tells ICJ Israel must allow aid supplies into Gaza
‘Deadly blockade’ leaves Gaza aid work on verge of collapse: UN, Red Cross
Middle-East
‘Deadly blockade’ leaves Gaza aid work on verge of collapse: UN, Red Cross

Latest updates

France mosque murder suspect had indiscriminate ‘urge to kill’: prosecutor
France mosque murder suspect had indiscriminate ‘urge to kill’: prosecutor
Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces claims to have seized strategic western town
Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces claims to have seized strategic western town
Tunisia court jails former officials including former PM Larayedh
Tunisia court jails former officials including former PM Larayedh
Bangladesh to face the UAE in 2-match T20 series in Sharjah
Bangladesh to face the UAE in 2-match T20 series in Sharjah
What We Are Reading Today: Utopianism for a Dying Planet
Photo/Supplied

Search form

Print Edition
Read pdf version Subscribe now
© 2025 SAUDI RESEARCH & PUBLISHING COMPANY, All Rights Reserved And subject to Terms of Use Agreement.