26/08/2026
Judges of the International Criminal Court (ICC) unanimously voted to confirm charges against former Libyan official Khaled Mohamed Ali El Hishri in late July, paving the way for his case to move to trial.
In an opinion piece for The New Humanitarian ECCHR’s and Viola Castellano, a senior researcher at Berlin’s Humboldt University explain that testimony from migrant and refugee victims in the El Hishri case exposes the links between detention crimes in Libya and European migration policy.
El Hishri stands accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes including imprisonment, torture, r**e, murder, enslavement, and persecution against Libyan and non-Libyan detainees – among them migrants and refugees – at the notorious Mitiga prison in Libya’s capital, Tripoli.
“While the El Hishri trial will focus on the individual criminal responsibility of one Libyan prison official, testimonies from migrant and refugee victims can help place before the court the wider system of migration containment, exploitation, and abuse across Libya and the central Mediterranean in which Mitiga is embedded. That wider context must prompt the ICC prosecutor to investigate the role and potential criminal responsibility of individual EU and member state officials as well.”