UNITEDS NATIONS: Libya has accepted the authority of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate alleged war crimes in the country despite not being party to the Rome Statute, the court’s founding treaty, ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan said Thursday.

“I strongly welcome the courage, the leadership and the decision by the Libyan authorities,” Khan told the UN Security Council, noting the move “represents a profound step to a renewed platform for collective action.”

The Tripoli-based Government of National Unity has agreed to grant the court jurisdiction over alleged war crimes and repression that began during the 2011 armed rebellion that killed longtime dictator Muammar Qaddafi and the years of civil war that followed, Khan said.

The ICC’s jurisdiction will last until the end of 2027. The court has had a mandate to take action from the security council since February 2011.

With fresh gunbattles rocking Tripoli this week, Libya has faced continued instability since the NATO-backed 2011 uprising that unseated Qaddafi, the repressive Libyan leader who’d held onto power since 1979.

The country remains split between a UN-recognized government in Tripoli, led by Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah, and a rival administration in the east, controlled by the Haftar family.

Khan also called on Libya’s prosecutor general Al-Seddik Al-Sour to arrest Osama Almasri Najim — who has an outstanding ICC warrant issued in January — “and surrender him to the ICC.”

Najim is wanted on charges including murder, rape and sexual violence and torture, committed since 2015 in his role as head of Tripoli’s Mitiga detention center. His actions were often based on alleged crimes against religion, such as “immoral behavior.”

He was arrested in the northern Italian city of Turin on January 19 on the ICC warrant, only to be released on a technicality and flown back to the Libyan capital Tripoli two days later on an Italian air force plane.

Khan said the inquiry would methodically look at Libya’s detention centers, which he called “a black box of suffering on the coast of the Mediterranean that nobody has wanted to open.”

Khan also pledged to crack down on militia leaders who, he said, are no doubt experiencing “a rising awareness that the rule of law has entered the territory of Libya.”