A US court finds Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar guilty ‘in absentia’ of war crimes

July 30 (EUROPA PRESS) –

A federal court in Virginia has found the Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar guilty on Friday of committing war crimes during the conflict that entangled his forces with those of the then government recognized by the international community based in Tripoli.

The court, led by Magistrate Leonie Brinkema, had declared itself competent to try the head of the self-proclaimed Libyan National Army given that he is also a US citizen and has owned property in Virginia along with two of his sons, Saddam and Khalid, since 1987, the year in the one that carried out a confrontation with the then absolute leader of the country, Muammar Gaddafi.

Haftar has not appeared at any time or given a statement in court to answer for the three cases brought by relatives of the victims of the fighting in Tripoli in 2019 and 2020. The lawyers of Jaftar, who has simply defended himself by appealing to his immunity based on in his supposed capacity as a high official of the Libyan State, they have reacted by presenting their withdrawal from the case, which leaves the Libyan commander without legal representatives from now on unless he decides to choose another lawyer.

The families filed their lawsuits under the Torture Victims Protection Act of 1991, a law that allows non-US citizens to seek compensation from individuals who, acting in an official capacity for any foreign nation, allegedly committed torture or extrajudicial killings. .

The war crimes committed by Haftar’s forces and their allied militias during their failed assault on Tripoli have been under investigation for years by various groups, which point to him as ultimately responsible for hundreds of executions and subsequent burials in mass graves of enemies in towns such as Tarhuna .

The next step will be a hearing where the magistrate will assess what type of compensation the families should receive, taking into account that, according to US media such as the ‘Wall Street Journal’, Haftar has owned several properties in Virginia worth millions of dollars.

“Now we are moving towards the compensation phase,” confirmed the plaintiffs’ lawyer Mark Zaid, who has advanced that his team will investigate Haftar’s properties “wherever they are in any part of the world,” reports the Middle news portal. East Eye.

For the president of the Libyan-American Alliance, which advises the three lawsuits, the court’s verdict represents “the culmination of years of work with the victims of the conflict against the crimes that Haftar has committed in Libya for so many years” .