Authorities in Libya detained a prison director, who is accused by the International Criminal Court of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in the alleged abuses of inmates, the country’s attorney general’s office said on Wednesday.
The detention of the man, Osama Elmasry Njeem, comes months after his initial arrest on the charges in Turin, Italy. Italian authorities ignited a controversy in Europe by swiftly sending the man back to Libya after his arrest, despite the requests of the I.C.C.
The I.C.C.’s arrest warrant said Mr. Njeem was suspected of crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder, torture, rape and sexual violence. The Libyan attorney general’s said on Wednesday that it had collected reports that inmates in a prison overseen by Mr. Njeem had been subjected to torture. The office added that it had “sufficient evidence supporting the charges.”
The statement did not specify when he had been detained, nor his response to the charges.
A 2018 report by the United Nations Human Rights Commission found that armed groups in Libya hold thousands of people in “prolonged, arbitrary and unlawful detention.” Since fighting among those groups began intensifying in 2014, three years after the fall of the Libyan dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi, rival militias have rounded up suspected opponents, the report found. Detainees at the Mitiga detention facility, which Mr. Njeem directed, are subjected to “torture, unlawful killing” and other atrocities, the report said.
Mr. Njeem, the head of the Libyan judiciary police, was accused of committing, ordering or assisting in crimes against people imprisoned in the system since February 2015, according to the I.C.C.
A statement by the court said some of his victims had been imprisoned for religious reasons, on suspicion of “immoral behavior” or homosexuality, or for the purpose of coercion.
When Mr. Njeem was repatriated to Libya from Italy in late January, Italian officials said that he had been expelled both for “security reasons” and on procedural grounds. But critics accused the Italian government of trying a political maneuver to cozy up to Libya, which Italy depends on to stem the flow of migrants from Africa.
The I.C.C. said Italy had breached its obligations to the court by failing to properly execute the arrest.
Opposition lawmakers in Italy jumped on Mr. Njeem’s arrest in Libya to attack the government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
“What a humiliation for the Meloni government,” a former prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, of the opposition Five Star Movement, said in a post on X on Wednesday. Instead of cooperating with the court, the Italian government “brought him home on a state flight, flying our flag, trampling on international law and the International Criminal Court, whose Statute protecting rights was signed in Rome,” Mr. Conte wrote.
Elly Schlein, the leader of the Democratic Party, the biggest opposition party, publicly called on the government to “apologize to all Italians” for losing face on the international stage.
Islam Al-Atrash contributed reporting.
Pranav Baskar is an international reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.
Elisabetta Povoledo is a Times reporter based in Rome, covering Italy, the Vatican and the culture of the region. She has been a journalist for 35 years.
The post Libya Detains Former Prison Director Wanted for Crimes Against Humanity appeared first on New York Times.
