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.
International Criminal Court opens inquiry into Italy over release of Libyan warlord
https://arab.news/n2964
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
Israel’s hostage forum releases AI-generated video of last Gaza captive
- The Gaza ceasefire, which came into effect in October, remains fragile with both sides alleging violations, and mediators fearing that Israel and Hamas alike are stalling
JERUSALEM: An Israeli group representing the families of Gaza hostages released on Tuesday an AI-generated video of Ran Gvili, the last captive whose body is still being held in the Palestinian territory.
The one-minute clip, created whole cloth using artificial intelligence, purports to depict Gvili as he sits in a Gaza tunnel and appeals to US President Donald Trump to help bring his body back to Israel.
“Mr President, I’m asking you to see this through: Please bring me home. My family deserves this. I deserve the right to be buried with honor in the land I fought for,” says the AI-generated image of Gvili.
Gvili was 24 at the time of Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
He was an officer in Israel’s Yasam elite police unit and was on medical leave when he learnt of the attack.
He decided to leave his home and brought his gun to counter the Hamas militants.
He was shot in the fighting at the Alumim kibbutz before he was taken to Gaza.
Israeli authorities told Gvili’s parents in January 2024 that he had not survived his injuries.
The AI clip was released by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, the main group representing those taken captive to Gaza.
The Forum said it was published with the approval of Gvili’s family.
“Seeing and hearing Rani speak in his own voice is both moving and heartbreaking. I would give anything to hear, see and hold him again,” Gvili’s mother Talik said, quoted by the Forum.
“But all I can do now is plead that they don’t move to the next phase of the agreement before bringing Rani home — because we don’t leave heroes behind.”
The Gaza ceasefire, which came into effect in October, remains fragile with both sides alleging violations, and mediators fearing that Israel and Hamas alike are stalling.
In the first stage, Palestinian militants were expected to return all of the remaining 48 living and dead hostages held in Gaza.
Since the ceasefire came into effect on October 10, militants have released 47 hostages.
In the next stages of the truce, Israel is supposed to withdraw from its positions in Gaza, an interim authority is to govern the Palestinian territory instead of Hamas, and an international stabilization force is to be deployed.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to meet Trump in Florida later this month to discuss the second phase of the deal.
