Judges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) ruled on Thursday that a 48-year-old suspect accused of running one \u200bof the most notorious prisons in Libya could be \u200ccharged with multiple crimes, paving the way for his trial.<\/p>\n
Khaled Mohamed Ali Al Hishri has been charged with 17 counts of crimes against \u200bhumanity and war crimes including persecution, enslavement, torture, rape \u200band murder between 2014 and 2020.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors say Al Hishri \u2060oversaw the women’s wing in Mitiga, a detention centre \u200brun by the Special Deterrence Force known as Rada.
\nThousands of people \u200bwere unlawfully arrested and kept without legal basis, held in inhumane conditions and systematically abused and tortured in Mitiga, according to the prosecution.<\/p>\n
In \u200bearlier hearings lawyers for Hishri have said their client denies \u200bthe charges.<\/p>\n
ICC judges this week confirmed they had jurisdiction over the case, \u200crejecting \u2060a defence challenge that tried to argue the case did not fall under the United Antions Security Council resolution that gave the court legal authority to prosecute atrocities committed in Libya.<\/p>\n
Al \u200bHishri’s case would \u200bbe the first \u2060ICC trial to focus on war crimes and crimes against humanity in Libya.<\/p>\n
The ICC has \u200bbeen looking into alleged war crimes and crimes \u200bagainst \u2060humanity in Libya since such cases were referred to the court by the UN<\/p>\n
Security Council in 2011, the year of \u2060a \u200bNATO-backed uprising in the country.<\/p>\n
No date \u200bfor a trial has been set, but it is expected to start early \u200bin 2027.<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":14499,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[78,26],"class_list":["post-39820","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-featured","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"The ICC has \u200bbeen looking into alleged war crimes and crimes \u200bagainst \u2060humanity in Libya since such cases were referred to the court by the UN","published_date":"","news_description":"The ICC has \u200bbeen looking into alleged war crimes and crimes \u200bagainst \u2060humanity in Libya since such cases were referred to the court by the UN","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/39820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/39820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39821,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/39820\/revisions\/39821"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=39820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}