Germany arrests alleged Libyan war crimes suspect

German authorities have arrested a Libyan war crimes suspect accused of being a senior official at a notorious prison where inmates were routinely tortured and sometimes sexually abused, the International Criminal Court (ICC) said on Friday. Khaled Mohamed Ali Al Hishri, alleged to have been a member of the Special Deterrence Force armed group during Libya's civil war, was arrested last Wednesday, German authorities said, according to TimesLIVE. The ICC said he would remain in German custody, pending the completion of national proceedings. Prosecutors at the ICC accuse Al Hishri of war crimes and crimes against humanity including murder, torture and rape from February 2015 until early 2020, a period during which he was allegedly one of the most senior officials in the Mitiga prison. According to the prosecution, Mitiga was the largest detention facility in western Libya, where thousands of detainees were held in cramped cells without basic hygiene and were systematically subjected to brutal interrogations and torture. Men and women held there also faced sexual violence including rape, the prosecution said. In a statement on Friday, the office of the prosecutor said it expected Al Hishri to be transferred to The Hague and added that it stood ready to start his trial. ‘This development is so needed at a time of unprecedented turmoil in the field of accountability generally and at the ICC specifically,’ Kip Hale, an attorney who documented crimes in Libya for the UN, told Reuters.