The International Criminal Court on
Thursday asked Libya to arrest and hand over Osama Almasri, a
general and migrant detention centre head arrested and then
released and flown home by Italy earlier this year, for war
crimes and crimes against humanity.
ICC prosecutor Karim Khan asked Libyan authorities to arrest
"General Njeem Osama Elmasry, known as Al-Masri", and hand him
over to the Court "so that he can be tried for the crimes he
allegedly committed".
"We have issued an arrest warrant for him but he escaped and
returned to Libya via Italy", Khan said in a briefing to the UN
Security Council, quoted prominently by Libyan media.
On May 5 the Italian government sent the ICC its report on
Almasri, who was arrested by Italian authorities on January 19
on an ICC warrant on charges of war crimes and crimes against
humanity but was released two days later and flown back to
Tripoli on a State-funded secret service flight.
The court has asked Rome to provide all the information on why
Almasri was not handed over and on the fact that Almasri was not
searched and the material in his possession was not seized.
The Rome Tribunal of Ministers is probing what happened between
the arrest on the ICC warrant of the Libyan general at a hotel
in Turin at dawn on January 19 and his return to Tripoli on a
State
flight following his release by a Rome appeals court in Rome on
January 21.
Almasri is wanted for allegedly torturing, raping and murdering
migrants as young as five since 2015.
The release was ordered after Justice Minister Nordio did not
respond to the Rome appeals court's request to back the arrest.
Premier Giorgia Meloni, Nordio - over his alleged refusal to
perform public acts - Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi and
Cabinet Undersecretary with the intelligence brief Alfredo
Mantovano are under investigation in the case after attorney
Luigi Li Gotti filed a criminal complaint against them.
Li Gotti, a former centre-left justice undersecretary and
earlier a neo-Fascist party member, filed the complaint to the
State Attorney's Office in Rome on presumed charges of aiding
and abetting and embezzlement, due to the use of the publicly
funded secret services flight to take Almasri back to Libya.
Justice Minister Carlo Nordio has blamed errors in the ICC
warrants, which he described as a "mess", while Interior
Minister Matteo Piantedosi has said Rome was forced to expel the
general as a danger to Italy.
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