Marshal Khalifa Haftar, strongman of eastern Libya, lost Friday a battle in the judicial war which opposes him, in the United States, to nationals of his country accusing him of torture and extra executions -judicial. A federal judge considered that Marshal Haftar had not cooperated with justice and that he could therefore be sentenced “by defaultto pay damages to plaintiffs. He can still appeal this decision and it will take further hearings to determine the amount of compensation, but this decision represents a major setback for the marshal. “Justice has won, Haftar will have to answer for his war crimes“, estimated Faisal Gill, one of the lawyers at the origin of the procedure, in a press release sent to AFP.
In 2019 and 2020, Libyan families had filed a civil complaint against Marshal Haftar responsible, according to them, for the death of their relatives, killed in the bombings. At the head of the self-proclaimed Libyan National Army (ANL), “he engaged in an indiscriminate war against the Libyan population: he killed many men, women and children in bombardments and tortured other civilians“, they wrote.
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These families based their request on an American law of 1991, the “Torture Victim Protection Actwhich allows the civil prosecution of any person who, acting in an official capacity for a foreign nation, has committed acts of torture and/or extrajudicial executions. American justice had frozen the file before the elections scheduled for December 2021 so as not to influence the ballot. As these elections did not take place, the case had resumed, although Khalifa Haftar had tried, in vain, to invoke head of state immunity.
An oil country in northern Africa, Libya has been plunged into chaos since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in 2011, and finds itself undermined by divisions between the east and west of the country. Two governments are vying for power: one based in Tripoli and another supported by the camp of Marshal Khalifa Haftar. Born 78 years ago, this soldier trained in the Soviet Union took part in the coup that brought Gaddafi to power in 1969. Engaged in his army, he was taken prisoner in the war against Chad, and released by the leader. The Americans managed to free him from prison in an operation that remains an enigma today, and granted him political asylum. Installed for twenty years in the United States, he had joined the Libyan opposition and acquired, according to the Wall Street Journal, several properties worth millions of dollars.
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