Beirut — Torture, Disappearances, Killings in War-Time Prisons
A visit to Libya by the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor has reignited hope for long-delayed justice for the victims of a militia that controlled a town during the 2019-2020 battle for Tripoli, the capital, Human Rights Watch said today.
Members of the militia, known as al-Kaniyat, and their affiliates detained, tortured, disappeared, and executed people in at least four detention facilities while they controlled the town of Tarhouna. They sided with the Libyan Armed Arab Forces under the command of Khalifa Hiftar, in attacking the UN-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA). No one has been brought to trial for the abuses.
“If the Libyan authorities cannot bring a measure of domestic accountability for the horrors against the people of Tarhouna, then the ICC prosecutor should investigate the crimes that fall within the court’s jurisdiction,” said Hanan Salah, associate director at Human Rights Watch. “Relatives of the hundreds who were arbitrarily detained and tortured, or disappeared and later found in mass graves are still waiting for justice.”
The ICC has jurisdiction over war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide committed in Libya since February 15, 2011. In November 2022, the ICC prosecutor, Karim Khan, conducted an official mission to Libya. In Tarhouna, he visited prisons previously operated by al-Kaniyat and the sites of mass graves, and met with families of victims of abuses attributed to al-Kaniyat.
Human Rights Watch, in March, interviewed four men in Tarhouna who said that they and other relatives were held in four detention facilities in Tarhouna during the 2019-2020 Tripoli conflict. All four said they were held incommunicado for the duration of their detention, without any judicial process or access to their families or lawyers, and described ill-treatment, torture, and unlawful executions in the prisons.
Researchers also met with a relative of 10 people whose bodies were found in mass graves after their detention by al-Kaniyat and their associates. The researchers visited all four detention locations and all known sites of mass graves in Tarhouna. Researchers also met with Tarhouna municipal authorities, the Public Authority for the Search and Identification of the Missing, and the Interior Ministry’s Criminal Investigations Department.
The bodies of some of those seized by the militia were later found in unmarked mass graves around Tarhouna, 93 kilometers southeast of Tripoli. Of the 261 bodies exhumed since June 2020 from these graves, 160 have been identified by the Public Authority for Search and Identification of Missing Persons, an agency attached to the Council of Ministers.
Khan offered technical assistance from the ICC with forensic work. While in Benghazi, Khan met with Hiftar and told him that the ICC had received information and evidence of allegations of crimes committed by the Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF) and that those “would be and are being investigated.” In his report to the UN Security Council, the ICC prosecutor did not make any announcements regarding specific cases the court was investigating in Libya.
Senior government officials in the GNA and previous Tripoli-based administrations, and LAAF Commanders, including senior LAAF leadership, may be criminally liable for war crimes of their subordinates in Tarhouna, if they knew or should have known of the crimes and failed to take measures to prevent them or hand over those responsible for prosecution.
The UN’s Independent Fact Finding Mission on Libya, in a July 2022 report, found that “the crimes against humanity of extermination, imprisonment, torture, persecution and enforced disappearance were committed by members of the al-Kaniyat militia against a defined population in Tarhouna.” The mission said that Libya should establish a special tribunal to prosecute international crimes with international technical support and expertise, and that judicial officials in other countries should investigate those implicated in crimes in Tarhouna, including through exercising universal jurisdiction. Libya has not taken any steps to establish a special court.
The United States, in November 2020, sanctioned Mohamed al-Kani and al-Kaniyat militia under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act for the “killing of civilians, torture, forced disappearances, and displacement of civilians.” Mohamed and Abdulrahim al-Kani are both subject to sanctions by the European Union, since March 2021, for “extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances between 2015 and June 2020 in Tarhouna.” The United Kingdom, in May 2021, also sanctioned al-Kaniyat militia and their leaders Mohamed and Abdulrahim al-Kani for “enforced disappearances, torture, and the killing of civilians in Libya.”
“Justice for victims in Tarhouna remains elusive as Libyan authorities struggle to gain custody over those responsible for these crimes,” Salah said.
The people Human Rights Watch interviewed consented to the information being published. Human Rights Watch decided to use pseudonyms instead of the names of interviewees to protect them from retaliation for speaking out.
Two of the four prisons used by al-Kaniyat during the 2019-2020 Tripoli conflict were make-shift facilities. One was a former water bottling facility known as the “Water Factory,” where detainees were held in small box-like cells they described as measuring 1.2 meters high and 1.2 meters wide. The second was a facility belonging to the Ministry of Agriculture that became known as the “Boxes Prison.” Detainees there were also held in square box-like cells they described as measuring one meter high by 80 centimeters wide.
The other two facilities were state facilities formerly under the GNA that al-Kaniyat took over and controlled fully during the 2019-2020 conflict – the Central Support Prison, under the Interior Ministry, and the Judicial Police Correctional Prison under the Justice Ministry.
Al-Kaniyat unlawfully executed people in all four of these detention facilities, the former detainees said. They described inhumane conditions and treatment that would amount to torture at all four locations, especially the use of plastic hoses to whip detainees on the soles of their feet (falaka), sometimes while they were suspended or tied up.
The people interviewed named figures in relation to these crimes: including Mohamed Al-Kani, killed in July 2021 by unidentified gunmen in Benghazi, and his brother Mohsen, killed during clashes in south Tripoli in September 2019. They named a number of associates who they said helped these men manage the prisons and participated in the arrests, torture, and ill-treatment, including senior prison officials.
The Libyan attorney general, al-Siddiq al-Sur, announced in August 2022 that the judicial investigations committee that he tasked with investigating crimes by the al-Kaniyat had opened 280 criminal cases, 10 of which had been referred to court. Al-Sur said that of 76 people sought by the judiciary for crimes in Tarhouna, 20 were being held in provisional detention for killings, torture, abduction, enforced disappearance, armed robbery, robbery, and other offenses. Some of those being sought were in Tunisia, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, he said.
The attorney general’s office has not said when these cases would be tried.
Judicial proceedings in Libya are marked by grave due-process violations. Detainees are held in prolonged pre-charge and pre-trial detention, often without access to lawyers or family visits. During interrogations, they are subjected to coerced confessions, and while in detention they face inhumane conditions and systematic ill-treatment.
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