The Italian Job: How to Dodge Justice and Fly Home in Style
CHRIS STEPHEN REPORTS: Italy frees ICC suspect on technicality, flies him home to Libya and leaves The Hague fuming as global norms unravel
By Chris Stephen
The International Criminal Court has suffered a new blow to its authority after Italy released a key Libyan suspect in defiance of the court’s wishes.
Libyan police general Osama Njeem was accused by the ICC of murder, torture and sexual violence as alleged boss of a detention center in the capital Tripoli. His arrest and release have been dramatic, verging on bizarre.
Njeem had been in the court’s crosshairs for a while. He was accused of presiding over torture and murder at the site during a six-year civil war that ended in 2020. Last week, news reached the court that Njeem had travelled to Italy, reportedly to watch Saturday’s football clash between Juventus and AC Milan.
The judges sprang into action. They held an emergency session on Saturday to rattle out an indictment, accusing him of murder, torture, cruel treatment, rape and sexual violence. The indictment was stamped and sent off to police in Italy that night. In the early hours of Sunday morning Italian police arrested him in his hotel room in Turin.
Both Italy and the court kept quiet about the indictment over the weekend, the court saying in a statement: “At the request of, and acting out of full respect for, the Italian authorities, the Court deliberately refrained from publicly commenting on the arrest.”
But on Tuesday everything changed. A Rome appeals court ordered Njeem released on a technicality: Officially, because the ICC arrest order had been transmitted from The Hague directly to Turin authorities, bypassing the Italian justice ministry. Even as the appeals court was sitting, a secret service plane was dispatched to Turin to pick him up. The judges duly ordered his arrest cancelled and he was hustled aboard the plane and flown home to Tripoli.
That has left ICC officials fuming. “Without prior notice or consultation with the Court, Mr Osama Elmasry Njeem was reportedly released from custody and released back to Libya,” said the court statement.
And not just ICC officials. Opposition lawmakers in Rome are demanding answers from prime minister Giorgia Meloni about why such a high profile suspect was released. “You brought him home to Libya with a plane of the Italian secret services,” thundered opposition politician and former premier Matteo Renzi.
On the face of it, Renzi is correct. The ICC is not part of the UN, and depends on its member states to arrest its suspects. And for arrests, the rule is simple. Every country has to arrest ICC suspects – unless it has formally granted immunity in the case. Italy has no excuse not to, and should have known better - after all, the court’s rules, the Treaty of Rome, were crafted in the Italian capital in 1998.
However, Rome has other priorities. It funds Libyan coastal patrols that catch many migrants trying to make their way to Italy, and it is dependent on close ties with, and good will from, the Tripoli authorities. They were pleased to see their police general return home, with a small crowd of well-wishers welcoming his plane in Tripoli.
But ominously for the court, Italy is apparently unconcerned about breaking the most important rule the ICC has.
And Italy is not alone. In September, fellow ICC member Mongolia hosted Vladimir Putin, ignoring court rules that he should be arrested, having been indicted for alleged crimes in the Ukraine invasion two years ago.
The court decided at its annual meeting in December not to punish Mongolia. Just as they decided against punishing South Africa in 2017, when it refused to arrest Sudan’s then-president Omar al-Bashir, indicted by the ICC for genocide. Italian officials no doubt think The Hague can hardly make an example of them, having allowed other countries to get away with it for so long.
Making things worse, Italy’s brazen action comes with many ICC states already giving immunities to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu after he was charged with war crimes over the Gaza war. Earlier this month Poland joined France, Greece, Hungary, and Italy, in declaring he had arrest immunity.
In those cases, there is nothing The Hague can do, because the Rome Treaty contains a loophole - Article 98 - allowing member states to give immunity to officials of any other named country. The loophole has morphed into a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card being used by pro-Israeli governments.
And not just for Israel. Ninety-three states, as well as all EU countries, already give immunity to American officials, and more are likely to follow with Trump in the White House and the Republicans on a warpath against the ICC because it looks to them (not exactly correctly) like a version of the globalism they loathe.
Hours after taking office this week, he slapped sanctions on the ICC, and harsher measures are coming in legislation being prepared by the Republican-led Congress. All of which may leave the ICC high and dry: Still able to issue indictments, but with a dwindling number of countries willing to enforce them
In this case Italy was morally wrong, but acted rationally vis a vis its own interests.
As a very general statement, virtually every international body, including the UN, is corrupt and political. Political not in the good sense.
I have no sympathy for the antisemitic ICC.
I’ll go further: if an individual is not aware of the blatant biases of these organizations, they are not aware of the realities. Even further: most knowledgeable supporters are either dreamy eyed idealists or blatantly anti Israel and/or anti US.
As for Netanyahu, he should be dealt with by the Israeli public ( and I wish they would deal with him), but not the ICC.