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A man who says he experienced abuses at a notorious prison in Tripoli at the hands of the head of Libya’s judicial police, Osama Najim, has said Italy has “crushed” his hopes for justice by releasing the war crimes suspect despite an international criminal court arrest warrant.
David Yambio was held at Mitiga prison in Tripoli after several attempts to cross the Mediterranean in search of refuge in Europe were thwarted by Libya’s coastguard as part of a controversial pact with Italy.
Najim is believed to have been in charge of prison facilities in Tripoli, including Mitiga, since February 2015. The former warlord, also known as Almasri, was arrested in Turin last week on the warrant issued by the ICC before being unexpectedly released on a technicality and swiftly repatriated to a hero’s welcome.
“The fragile hope for justice that we were all holding on to has been crushed,” Yambio said in an interview with the Guardian.
The 27-year-old, who now lives in Italy and is the co-founder of the NGO Refugees in Libya, is among the many refugees and migrants who provided testimony to the ICC about Najim. The court wants him for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, as well as alleged rape and murder committed at Mitiga.
Yambio said: “Almasri was in Italy, in my backyard … heaven knows if he was looking for me and all those who witnessed his [alleged] crimes. We already live in perpetual fear, but how can we be safe in a country that pretended to keep us safe and instead protects an [alleged] torturer? I’m struggling to reconcile what has happened. All we have left is our voice and even that is being attacked by people who want to deny our pain.”
Italy’s interior minister, Matteo Piantedosi, said Najim had been sent back because he “presented a profile of social dangerousness”. On Monday, the UN mission in Libya called for authorities there to arrest him. Libya does not recognise the ICC, but has cooperated with its prosecutor, Karim Khan, on some cases recently.
Yambio fled civil war in South Sudan and travelled to Libya in preparation for the journey across the Mediterranean, a perilous crossing that thousands of people risk each year in a desperate quest to reach Europe.
Since 2017, Italy has trained and funded the Libyan coastguard to capture people in the Mediterranean and bring them back to the north African country. The deal, approved by the European Council, has long been condemned by humanitarian groups for pushing people back to detention camps where they face torture and other abuses.
“This deal is a death sentence,” said Yambio. “Innumerable people have been killed by this process either by being taken back from the Mediterranean or by being put in detention centres or dumped in the desert. So the experience that me and others have experienced, or are still experiencing, is not the entire doing of the Libyans. Italy is complicit and has blood on its hands.”
Yambio said he first encountered Najim during his detention at al-Jadida prison in 2019 before being moved to Mitiga, a facility condemned by human rights organisations for its arbitrary detention, torture and abuse of political dissidents, migrants and refugees.
Yambio, who was used as forced labour on the construction of a new prison and to load heavy weaponry on to trucks, described systematic abuse against himself and other detainees allegedly at the hands of Najim and his guards.
Yambio claimed that Najim whipped him with a water pipe and ordered whippings or beatings by guards wielding AK-47s whenever he made an error on site, usually due to extreme tiredness and hunger. “It was his habit, anyone who he came across – maybe you were having a rest, maybe a brick fell on your feet – he would rush to you and whip you,” he alleged.
Yambio managed to escape from the prison in 2020, climbing over a 5-metre wall in the middle of the night and hiding out in Libya before successfully making it to Italy by boat in June 2022. Yambio, whose asylum application was accepted after he arrived in Italy, said several requests made by him while in Libya were rejected.
Apart from migration, Italy has other wide-ranging political and businesses interests in Libya, its former colony. The Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, has travelled to the country four times since coming to power in October 2022.
Italy has also signed several investment and development deals with Libya as part of Meloni’s much-touted Mattei plan, aimed at increasing European cooperation on the African continent in return for curbs on irregular migration.
Yambio, who is also an activist with the German NGO Sea-Watch, said the Refugees in Libya group was made up of about 200 people. “Most of us are in Europe, but many are still in Libya,” he said. “The idea is to challenge the narratives, and reveal what is really happening in Libya and who is responsible.”
The Guardian has called and written to Libya’s judicial police authority with a request for comment. The authority last week wrote in a Facebook post that Najim’s arrest was an “outrageous incident”.
