THE HAGUE: Judges at the International Criminal Court have officially asked Italy on Monday to explain why the country released a Libyan man suspected of torture, murder and rape rather than sending him to The Hague.
Italian police arrested Ossama Anjiem, also known as Ossama Al-Masri, last month but rather than extraditing him to the Netherlands, where the ICC is based, sent him back to Libya aboard an Italian military aircraft.
“The matter of state’s non-compliance with a request of cooperation for arrest and surrender by the court is before the competent chamber,” the court’s spokesperson Fadi El-Abdallah said in a statement.
Addressing parliament last week, Italian Justice Minister Carlo Nordio defended the decision to send Al-Masri home, claiming the ICC had issued a contradictory and flawed arrest warrant. The court, he said, “realized that an immense mess was made,” he told lawmakers.
Al-Masri was arrested in Turin on the ICC warrant on Jan. 19, the day after he arrived in the country from Germany to watch a soccer match. The Italian government has said Rome’s court of appeals ordered him released on Jan. 21 because of a technical problem in the way that the ICC warrant was transmitted, having initially bypassed the Italian justice ministry.
The ICC said it does not comment on national judicial proceedings.
Al-Masri’s arrest had posed a dilemma for Italy because it has close ties to the internationally recognized government in Tripoli as well as energy interests in the country.
According to the arrest warrant, Al-Masri heads the Tripoli branch of the Reform and Rehabilitation Institution, a notorious network of detention centers run by the government-backed Special Defense Force, which acts as a military police unit combating high-profile crimes including kidnappings, murders as well as illegal migration.
Like many other militias in western Libya, the SDF has been implicated in atrocities in the civil war that followed the overthrow and killing of the Libyan president Muammar Qaddafi in 2011.
Additionally, any trial in The Hague of Al-Masri could bring unwanted attention to Italy’s migration policies and its support of the Libyan coast guard, which it has financed to prevent migrants from leaving.
In October, the court unsealed arrest warrants for six men allegedly linked to a brutal Libyan militia blamed for multiple killings and other crimes in a strategically important western town where mass graves were discovered in 2020.
International Criminal Court opens inquiry into Italy over release of Libyan warlord
https://arab.news/n2964
International Criminal Court opens inquiry into Italy over release of Libyan warlord
- Italian Justice Minister Carlo Nordio defended the decision to send the suspect back to Libya
- The warlord was arrested in Turin on an ICC warrant on January 19 but was later released
Israel strikes Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor, other nuclear sites
- Israeli forces also struck nuclear sites in Bushehr, Isfahan and Natanz, and continue to target additional facilities
DUBAI: Israel has attacked Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor, Iranian state television said Thursday.
The report said there was “no radiation danger whatsoever” and that the facility had already been evacuated before the attack.
Israel had warned earlier it would attack the facility and urged the public to flee the area. The warning came in a social media post on X. It included a satellite image of the plant in a red circle like other warnings that preceded strikes.
The Israeli military said Thursday’s round of airstrikes targeted Tehran and other areas of Iran, without elaborating. It later said Iran fired a new salvo of missiles at Israel and told the public to take shelter.
A military spokesperson later said Israeli forces struck nuclear sites in Bushehr, Isfahan and Natanz, and continue to target additional facilities. Bushehr is Iran’s only operating nuclear power plant, which sits on the Gulf coast.
Israel’s seventh day of airstrikes on Iran came a day after Iran’s supreme leader rejected US calls for surrender and warned that any military involvement by the Americans would cause “irreparable damage to them.” Israel also lifted some restrictions on daily life, suggesting the missile threat from Iran on its territory was easing.
Already, Israel’s campaign has targeted Iran’s enrichment site at Natanz, centrifuge workshops around Tehran and a nuclear site in Isfahan. Its strikes have also killed top generals and nuclear scientists.
A Washington-based Iranian human rights group said at least 639 people, including 263 civilians, have been killed in Iran and more than 1,300 wounded. In retaliation, Iran has fired some 400 missiles and hundreds of drones, killing at least 24 people in Israel and wounding hundreds. Some have hit apartment buildings in central Israel, causing heavy damage.
The Arak heavy water reactor is 250 kilometers southwest of Tehran.
Heavy water helps cool nuclear reactors, but it produces plutonium as a byproduct that can potentially be used in nuclear weapons. That would provide Iran another path to the bomb beyond enriched uranium, should it choose to pursue the weapon.
Iran had agreed under its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers to redesign the facility to relieve proliferation concerns.
In 2019, Iran started up the heavy water reactor’s secondary circuit, which at the time did not violate Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
Britain at the time was helping Iran redesign the Arak reactor to limit the amount of plutonium it produces, stepping in for the US, which had withdrawn from the project after President Donald Trump’s decision in 2018 to unilaterally withdraw America from the nuclear deal.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, has been urging Israel not to strike Iranian nuclear sites. IAEA inspectors reportedly last visited Arak on May 14.
Due to restrictions Iran imposed on inspectors, the IAEA has said it lost “continuity of knowledge” about Iran’s heavy water production — meaning it could not absolutely verify Tehran’s production and stockpile.
As part of negotiations around the 2015 deal, Iran agreed to sell off its heavy water to the West to remain in compliance with the accord’s terms. Even the US purchased some 32 tons of heavy water for over $8 million in one deal. That was one issue that drew criticism from opponents to the deal.
Iran confirms meeting European officials on Friday, Iran state media says
DUBAI: Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi confirmed on Thursday he would meet his British, French and German counterparts as well as the European Union’s top diplomat on Friday in Geneva, Iranian state media reported.
He said the meeting had come at the request of the three European states.
Iranian official warns US against involvement in Israel-Iran conflict
- Kazem Gharibabadi: Iran has ‘all the necessary options on the table’
DUBAI: Iran’s deputy foreign minister warned against any direct US involvement in the conflict between Israel and Iran, saying Iran had “all the necessary options on the table,” in comments reported by Iranian state media on Thursday.
“If the US wants to actively intervene in support of Israel, Iran will have no other option but to use its tools to teach aggressors a lesson and defend itself ... our military decision-makers have all necessary options on the table,” Kazem Gharibabadi said, according to state media.
“Our recommendation to the US is to at least stand by if they do not wish to stop Israel’s aggression,” he said.
Governments scramble to evacuate citizens from Israel, Iran
- Foreigners have rushed to leave both countries after Israel launched an unprecedented bombing campaign last Friday
- Pakistan has shut its border crossings with neighboring Iran, except to Pakistanis wanting to return home
HONG KONG: Governments around the world are attempting to evacuate thousands of their nationals caught up in the rapidly spiraling Israel-Iran conflict, organizing buses and planes and in some cases assisting people crossing borders on foot.
Foreigners have rushed to leave both countries after Israel launched an unprecedented bombing campaign last Friday targeting Iran’s nuclear and military facilities, sparking retaliation from Tehran.
But with Israel’s air space closed and the two countries exchanging heavy missile fire, many people are being evacuated from third countries.
European countries have already repatriated hundreds of their citizens from Israel.
The Czech Republic and Slovakia said Tuesday they had taken 181 people home on government planes.
“It was not possible to send the army plane straight to Israel,” the Czech defense ministry said in a statement, citing the air space closure.
“The evacuees were taken to an airport in a neighboring country by buses. They crossed the border on foot.”
The German government said flights were scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday via Jordan, while Poland said the first of its citizens were due to arrive back on Wednesday.
Greece said it had repatriated 105 of its citizens plus a number of foreign nationals via Egypt, while a private plane with 148 people landed in the Bulgarian capital Sophia on Tuesday.
The US ambassador to Israel on Wednesday announced plans for evacuating Americans by air and sea.
The embassy is “working on evacuation flights & cruise ship departures” for “American citizens wanting to leave Israel,” Ambassador Mike Huckabee posted on X.
Australia has started evacuating around 1,500 citizens from Iran and more than 1,200 from Israel – but missile barrages have made it too risky for civilian aircraft to land in either country, it’s foreign minister said.
“There’s no capacity for people to get civilian aircraft in, it is too risky, and the airspace is closed,” Foreign Minister Penny Wong told national broadcaster ABC.
“We have taken the opportunity to get a small group of Australians out of Israel through a land border crossing.
“We are seeking to try and do more of that over the next 24 hours.”
Pakistan has shut its border crossings with neighboring Iran, except to Pakistanis wanting to return home.
Around 1,000 Pakistanis have fled so far, including at least 200 students.
The foreign ministry said the families of diplomats and some non-essential staff from Iran had been evacuated.
Around 110 Indian students have been evacuated from Iran on a special flight from Armenia, India’s foreign ministry said Thursday.
New Zealand said Thursday it had closed its embassy in Iran, evacuating two staff members and their family to Azerbaijan by land.
“If and when opportunities arise to assist the departure of other New Zealanders in Iran and Israel, we will pursue them with urgency,” Foreign Minister Winston Peters said in a statement.
Japan has ordered military planes to be on standby for around 1,000 Japanese nationals believed to live in Israel, and around 280 in Iran, according to government ministers.
The Japanese embassies in Iran and Israel are preparing to use buses to evacuate citizens to neighboring countries, a government spokesman said, as the war entered its seventh day.
US military move aircraft and ships from bases in the Middle East
- Senior US officials preparing for the possibility of a strike on Iran in the coming days – Bloomberg report
- Move of aircraft and ships a part of plans as ‘force protection is the priority’
WASHINGTON: The US military has moved some aircraft and ships from bases in the Middle East that may be vulnerable to any potential Iranian attack, two US officials said on Wednesday.
The moves come as President Donald Trump kept the world guessing whether the United States would join Israel’s bombardment of Iran’s nuclear and missile sites, as residents fled its capital on the sixth day of the air assault.
Senior US officials are preparing for the possibility of a strike on Iran in the coming days, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The report, citing the people, noted that the situation is still evolving and could change. Some of the people, according to Bloomberg, pointed to potential plans for a weekend strike.
Speaking to reporters earlier on Wednesday outside the White House, Trump declined to say if he had made any decision on whether to join Israel’s campaign. “I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do,” he said.
Separately, the US embassy in Qatar issued an alert on Thursday temporarily restricting its personnel from accessing the Al-Udeid Air Base, the largest US military installation in the Middle East, which is located in the desert outside Doha.
The embassy told personnel and US citizens in Qatar to step up vigilance in “an abundance of caution and in light of ongoing regional hostilities.”
The two US officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the move of aircraft and ships was a part of plans to protect US forces, but declined to say how many had been moved and where to.
One of the officials said aircraft that were not in hardened shelters had been moved from Al-Udeid base and naval vessels had been moved from a port in Bahrain, where the military’s 5th fleet is located.
“It is not an uncommon practice,” the official added. “Force protection is the priority.”
Reuters was first to report this week the movement of a large number of tanker aircraft to Europe and other military assets to the Middle East, including the deployment of more fighter jets.
An aircraft carrier in the Indo-Pacific is also heading to the Middle East.
Israel launched an air war on Friday after saying it had concluded Iran was on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon. Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons.
Iran has conveyed to Washington that it will respond firmly to the United States if the latter becomes directly involved in Israel’s military campaign, the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva said on Wednesday.
