Serial torturer
“Everyone called him Osama, he had a gun and he shot. I saw him killed for no reason and he tortured me several times with a stick.” David Yambio is a refugee from South Sudan, he now lives in Rome where he founded an association for victims of torture in Libya. He himself was a prisoner for several months in the Mitiga and Jadida prisons where the head of the guards was none other than Osama Almasri. “They were all armed but he was the leader, they tortured us to entertain themselves and humiliate us,” explains this young man of twenty-seven years old, “I can’t believe Italy released him.”
Italian newspapers reconstructed the Libyan’s itinerary. On January 6, he landed in Rome to immediately take a flight to London. A week later, he arrived in Brussels by TGV and rented a car heading to Bonn where he would be identified during a routine check. The ICC is then informed that this individual, suspected of crimes against humanity, is in Europe, the judges meet urgently to issue a capture warrant.
In the meantime, the senior Libyan official has arrived in Turin where he is attending the Juventus-Milan match; Italian police officers arrested him at his hotel at dawn on Sunday January 19. The file is sent to the Court of Appeal of Rome responsible for obtaining confirmation of the arrest of the Minister of Justice, the latter does not respond. When Minister Nordio says he will analyze the file, it is too late. Osama Almasri has already been released and is on board an Italian secret service plane. “Almasri was urgently expelled for security reasons given the danger he posed to society,” explained, embarrassed, the Minister of the Interior, Matteo Piantedosi during parliamentary questions.
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The Italian government had no choice?
“If Osama Almasri Najim was able to return free and triumphant to his country, writes the daily La Stampa, “It’s because the Italian government had no other choice.” Almasri is in fact part of the RADA which is one of the many armed branches which control the Government of National Unity in Tripoli, a strategic support of Giorgia Meloni in her policy aimed at stopping the departures of migrants in the Mediterranean.
-In other words, he does the dirty work for Italy, says a diplomat who wishes to remain anonymous. During the two days that Almasri was incarcerated in Turin, nearly a thousand migrants landed in Lampedusa, a sort of warning of what could happen if Italy handed him over to the ICC judges.
From there to thinking that by releasing this man the Italian government wanted to avoid problems with Libya despite the crimes with which it is accused, there is only one step. “The judges of The Hague are not the mouth of truth”, Antonio Tajani, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, responded sourly to journalists. And to add: “There was a procedural flaw, that’s all.”
The International Criminal Court criticizes the Italian authorities for their lack of collaboration and recalls in a press release the duty of the States signatories to the Rome Statute to “cooperate fully with it in its investigation and prosecution of crimes.” The opposition parties are asking Giorgia Meloni to come and explain herself to Parliament, they want to know if their country is still a rule of law.
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