Medici per i diritti umani condemns the repatriation of the Libyan general Almasri

Rome, January 30, 2025 – MEDU firmly condemns the decision of the Italian authorities to release and repatriate General Njeem Osama Elmasry, known as Almasri, to Libya on a State-operated flight. The International Criminal Court (ICC) had issued an international arrest warrant against him for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

A prominent figure in Libya’s security apparatus, Almasri is the commander of the judicial police and controls several prisons through his militia. He is accused of being one of the main perpetrators of atrocities committed in Mitiga prison in Tripoli, including murders, torture, rapes, persecution, and unlawful detentions—crimes he allegedly ordered or personally carried out since 2015.

For over twenty years, MEDU has been documenting and denouncing human rights violations in contexts of forced migration, working alongside victims of torture and abuse through numerous medical and psychological assistance projects in Africa and Italy. The testimonies collected and documented by our staff from 2014 to the present confirm that most people detained in Libyan prisons and captivity camps are systematically subjected to torture, violence, and inhuman and degrading treatment. These include overcrowding in disastrous sanitary conditions, constant deprivation of food, water, and medical care, beatings, sexual violence, and torture.

In the report the torture factory, MEDU gathered the direct testimony of a patient assisted at the Pozzallo hotspot in 2017, who was detained in Mitiga prison.

“We were taken to a prison near Tripoli called ‘Mitiga’. I suffered many forms of violence. I was beaten every day. I was tortured while my family listened over the phone to the violence I was enduring to force them to pay a ransom. They tied my legs and hung me upside down, then struck the soles of my feet with great force. Sometimes they poured cold water on me and then beat me all over my body with hard plastic pipes. I felt intense pain, my skin swelled and turned red, then the marks disappeared. Once an Arab man cut the back of my hand with a knife. I saw many people being killed for trivial reasons, sometimes just for fun. Very often I was afraid I would die; I thought I would never get out of prison…” I., 20 years old, Ivory Coast – September 2017.

n the last week of January alone, over 2,000 people arrived in Italy from Libya. A drastic increase in arrivals from the North African country is not only due to good weather and possible conflicts between the militias controlling migrant transit, but also, possibly, linked to the arrest of Almasri. This hypothesis would once again confirm the general’s role in the repressive system of managing migration flows, which is functional to the agreements signed between Italy and Libya in 2017, and still in effect today

MEDU once again denounces the policies of externalizing border control, aimed at stemming migratory flows at the expense of human rights protection, sacrificing the safety of migrants and refugees and allowing the continuation of a system in which severe crimes are committed with impunity within detention centers. MEDU calls for Italy, the European Union, and the international community to urgently intervene to ensure the life, safety, and access to international protection for the thousands of migrants still detained in Libyan centers.

See the report The Torture Factory