The International Criminal Court has confirmed all 17 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity against Libyan militia commander Khaled Mohamed Ali El Hishri , committing him to trial in the first case from its Libya investigation to reach this stage since 2011.
In a unanimous decision, the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber found "substantial grounds" to believe El Hishri is responsible for torture , cruel treatment, unlawful imprisonment, rape , murder, enslavement and other inhumane acts and outrages upon personal dignity.
Judges said these crimes were committed between 2014 and 2020 at Mitiga prison and across the wider Mitiga compound, where thousands of men, women and children, many of them refugees and migrants, were held under the authority of the Special Deterrence Force (RADA), a Madkhali Salafist group loosely allied with the government in Tripoli.
El Hishri – also known "Sheikh Khaled" and nicknamed the "Angel of Death" – is accused of being one of Mitiga’s most senior officials, with direct control over the women’s section. Survivors and witnesses have long described him as among the worst instigators of violence in a place that ICC prosecutors say was "designed to inflict extreme pain, deep humiliation, and ultimately to destroy the lives of those detained".
Allison West, legal advisor at the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), called the ruling "a landmark case" in efforts to confront impunity in Libya . "If one reads the list of the 17 counts that El Hishri is being accused of – it’s just like a catalogue of horror, and it’s quite amazing to me the extent to which the survivors that we speak to have experienced not just one or two, but usually the entire catalogue of the accusations he’s facing," she told The New Arab .
Survivor testimonies describe detainees being picked up every morning, forced into hours of hard labour, then brought back for only one or two hours of sleep in overcrowded cells where they were beaten and starved. Many recall "witnessing killings and having to clean up dead bodies", experiences that continue to trigger severe psychological trauma years later.
"That kind of lasting psychological trauma can’t be overstated," West said, noting that many survivors still report being haunted by the violence they endured.
The decision follows a three‑day confirmation of charges hearing in May, during which judges heard from dozens of witnesses, including former detainees, and considered submissions from victims’ lawyers and the defence.
El Hishri, arrested in Germany in 2025 on a sealed ICC warrant and transferred to The Hague later that year, will now face a Trial Chamber, which will set a timetable for proceedings.
For many survivors, the ruling is both a legal milestone and a rare moment of recognition. "It can’t be overstated how important this is to the victims of this particular prison," West said, stressing that those who came forward did so at the cost of reliving intense physical and psychological trauma.
Europe’s entanglement in Libya’s detention system
Rights lawyers say the El Hishri case shines a light not only on abuses inside Mitiga but also on the wider "detention industry" in Libya – one they argue has been enabled by European border policies.
In November 2022, ECCHR submitted a detailed communication to the ICC targeting 24 individuals, including 16 high‑level decision‑makers from EU member states, the European Commission, the EU border agency Frontex, the European External Action Service and the EU military operation EUNAVFOR MED.
The submission urges prosecutors to investigate whether they bear individual criminal responsibility for crimes against humanity linked to interceptions at sea, returns to Libya and subsequent abuses in detention.
Since 2016, the EU and key member states have stepped up capacity-building and operational support to the so‑called Libyan Coast Guard, providing funds, patrol boats, equipment and training, as well as backing the creation of a Libyan search‑and‑rescue zone in the central Mediterranean in an effort to prevent migration.
Officials from EU institutions and member states have, in some cases, directly participated in interceptions by relaying the coordinates of boats in distress – often gathered by Frontex drones and other surveillance assets – to Libyan authorities instead of dispatching European rescue vessels or alerting civilian search-and-rescue ships.
"This degree of support and collaboration demonstrates the decisive role that high‑ranking officials within EU member states and EU agencies play in the deprivation of liberty of migrants and refugees fleeing Libya," West said. She argues that the El-Hishri case "can really push the Office of the Prosecutor to also look beyond this and to expand its investigation also to European actors as well as other Libyan actors".
Although the EU does not directly fund RADA, West says the group is "inextricably entangled with the broader detention industry around migrants and refugees in Libya – and this we can see through the survivor experiences of the people that we support who have registered as victims in the El Hishri case."
Survivors describe being intercepted at sea and then taken either straight to Mitiga or to other detention sites such as Al Judeida prison, many run by or linked to the Department for Combating Illegal Migration.
Italy and Malta, in particular, have been central to the consolidation of the Libyan search-and-rescue zone and, at times, have positioned an Italian naval vessel in Tripoli harbour to act as a de facto Libyan maritime rescue coordination centre.
In practice, West notes, the connection between European capitals and Libyan forces is "in some instances, as close as sending coordinates of boats in distress to the Libyan Coast Guard instead of sending European rescue assets or informing civil search and rescue as well."
West insists that these are "structural crimes because they always take place in the context of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population, and in that sense, we think that it is possible to claim individual criminal responsibility of the highest‑up decision makers responsible for the broader system that both fuels and makes possible this entire containment enterprise that we see and detention industry in Libya for migrants and refugees."