DUBAI (Reuters) -Libya said it had detained senior police officer Osama Almasri Njeem, months after Italy arrested him on international war crimes charges before swiftly repatriating him, triggering political uproar.
Njeem is alleged to have committed, ordered or assisted in the murder or torture, including rape, of detainees in the Mitiga Prison in Tripoli from February 2015 onwards, according to the International Criminal Court.
Libya’s attorney general said on Wednesday the prosecutor’s office had received reports of “torture and cruel and degrading treatment of inmates” and that Njeem is “currently in pretrial detention,” with sufficient evidence to support the charges.
It was not clear when he had been detained or how he had responded to the charges.
“The investigator conducted an interrogation addressing the circumstances surrounding the human rights violations against ten inmates and the death of one inmate as a result of torture,” the attorney general’s statement said.
Njeem is the head of the Operations and Judicial Security Department in the justice ministry in Tripoli, part of the conflict-riven country’s internationally-recognised government.
He was arrested by Italian police in January while he was staying at a hotel in Turin, but Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s administration ordered his release just two days later and flew him back to Libya on a state aircraft.
The government said he was freed on procedural grounds, arguing that it had not been correctly informed about the arrest warrant. It denied opposition accusations that Njeem had worked with Italy to help control migrant flows from Libya.
The Rome Tribunal of Ministers, the judicial body responsible for overseeing charges against ministers accused of wrongdoing while in office, asked parliament in August to lift immunity for three ministers over their handling of the case.
Meloni’s coalition parties, who have a strong majority in parliament, voted down the request last month.
The ICC has also complained about Italy’s handling of the case.
The Italian government made no immediate comment about news of Njeem’s arrest in Libya.
Libya, a major oil producer in the Mediterranean, has known little law and order since a 2011 NATO-backed uprising that toppled dictator Muammar Gaddafi and eventually divided the country between warring eastern and western factions.
(Reporting by Tala Ramadan in Dubai and Alvise Armellini and Crispian Balmer in Rome; writing by Elwely Elwelly; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
