Oltremani Italia joins the international civil society mobilization promoted by Refugees in Libya and ECCHR, European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, ahead of the hearing to confirm charges against Khaled Mohamed Ali El Hishri before the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Who is El Hishri
El Hishri is a senior member of the Libyan militia Al-Radaa, the same militia to which Osama Elmasry belongs and which manages detention camps in Western Libya. Arrested in Germany in July 2025 and transferred to the International Criminal Court in December, El Hishri is the first person to be held accountable for crimes connected to the detention of migrants in Libya since the dossier on the North African country was opened in 2011. The charges include 12 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, among them murder, torture, sexual violence and persecution, committed at the Mitiga detention camp between 2015 and 2020. The International Prosecutor considers these practices to have been ordinary instruments of control within the facility, part of a deliberately coercive system organized along hierarchical lines.
A historic hearing
The May 19th hearing will allow the judges of Pre-Trial Chamber I to assess whether sufficient evidence exists to open a trial. For years, the crimes committed in Libyan detention camps have been documented and denounced, yet the testimonies of survivors have been ignored. This first hearing marks a break in that pattern, granting legal recognition to the voices of those who have spent years fighting for justice and the restoration of human dignity for torture victims and their families.
European responsibility in the Libyan detention system
What takes place in Mitiga and in the other Libyan detention facilities is a consolidated system, known and endorsed by international institutions, that has over time become a fully-fledged detention industry built on the violent control of migration routes.
Enabling it are the funds that the EU has for years directed toward the so-called Libyan coast guard and militias, presented as tools for managing migration flows but serving, in practice, only to push back those seeking to reach Europe. As reported byHuman Rights Watch as early as 2023, since 2017 over 100,000 people attempting to flee Libya have been intercepted and forced back, through economic and logistical support provided primarily by the Italian state — effectively funding the very human traffickers we should instead be fighting.
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