Johannesburg – The International Criminal Court (ICC), based at the Hague in the Netherlands, has issued an arrest warrant for a senior Libyan military commander allied with the controversial military chief of the self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA), renegade Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar.
The ICC alleges that Mahmoud Mustafa Al Warfalli was involved in the deaths of 33 people in the eastern city of Benghazi, Al Jazeera reported Wednesday morning.
Following the overthrow of former dictator Muammar Gaddafi, and the subsequent civil war in 2011, the North African country split into rival governments and militias with the LNA controlling key Libyan oil ports in the east.
The internationally recognised Government of National Accord (GNA), headed by Prime Minister Fayez Al Serraj, is based in the west in the capital Tripoli.
Haftar is allied with the rival House of Representatives (HoR) Parliament which is based in Tobruk in the east.
The ICC document accuses Al Warfalli of being “responsible for murder as a war crime in the context of the non-international armed conflict in Libya”.
The murders were committed "in seven incidents, taking place from on or before June 3, 2016 until on or about July, 17 2017, in Benghazi or surrounding areas", the warrant says.
It is alleged that Warfalli personally shot or ordered the execution of either civilians or injured fighters.
"There is no information in the evidence to show that they have been afforded a trial by a legitimate court, whether military or otherwise, that would comport to any recognised standard of due process," the ICC's judges said.
Interviews with witnesses, video material and other evidence are being used by the ICC to back up its charges.
In one incident a video shows Warfalli shooting dead a hooded, unarmed man and afterwards stating he was misled by Satan.
In another video Warfalli is seen reading from a piece of papers before commanding a firing squad to open fire on 15 people wearing orange jumpsuits and black hoods. After the firing squad shot the men dead, Al Warfalli and two other men then executed three people, before ordering the execution of yet another two.
"The video depicting the incident, involving a total 20 executed persons, was posted on social media on July 23, 2017," the judges said.
Fatou Bensouda, the ICC's chief prosecutor, called on the Libyan authorities to arrest and hand over Warfalli to ensure his surrender to the ICC "without delay".
"Such egregious crimes, including the cruel and dehumanising manner by which they were perpetrated against helpless victims, must be stopped," she said.
Commending the ICC, Heba Morayef, the director of Amnesty International's North Africa Research, said the ICC's decision was "a significant step towards ending the rampant impunity for war crimes in Libya".
"The Libyan authorities must urgently comply with this arrest warrant and hand Warfalli over to the ICC to face his accusers in a fair trial," she said.
"This warrant sends a clear message that those who commit or order horrendous crimes are not above the law and will not go unpunished."
Warfalli, who was born in 1978, is a senior commander in the Special Forces Brigade, or Al Saiqa, which defected from the Libyan military after the 2011 uprising against Gaddafi.
Al Saiqa has been fighting alongside forces loyal to Haftar in Benghazi.
Haftar is a dominant figure for factions in eastern Libya which have rejected the UN-backed GNA, exacerbating the inability of the latter to exert its power in Tripoli and elsewhere in the country.