Libyan warlord convicted in detention abuse case tied to ICC row

A Libyan warlord accused of running a brutal detention operation in western Libya has been sentenced to seven years and four months in prison, a ruling that pushes the case beyond one man’s abuses and back onto the system that held him in power. Ossama Anjiem, also known as Ossama al-Masri and Ossama Elmasry Njeem, was found guilty of violating inmates’ rights and subjecting detainees to torture, cruelty and degrading treatment.

The conviction centers on a detention center tied to the Tripoli branch of the Reform and Rehabilitation Institution, part of a network run by the government-backed Special Defense Force. That network has long been associated with Libya’s fragmented detention landscape, where prisons and holding sites have been accused of mistreating migrants, prisoners and other vulnerable people. Libya’s attorney general later ordered Anjiem’s detention over alleged abuses against inmates, and late-2025 reporting said investigators had found evidence involving at least 10 inmates and the death of one prisoner.

The case carries particular weight because Anjiem was already at the center of an international dispute over accountability. The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for him on January 18, 2025, saying he was alleged to have been in charge of prison facilities in Tripoli where thousands of people were detained for prolonged periods. The ICC said the allegations included crimes against humanity and war crimes, among them murder, torture, rape and sexual violence, tied to abuses at Tripoli’s Mitiga Prison from February 2015 onward.

Italy’s handling of Anjiem deepened the controversy. Police arrested him in Turin on January 19, 2025, then deported him to Libya on an Italian military aircraft on January 21, 2025. Human-rights groups and opposition politicians condemned the decision, arguing that returning him did not resolve the underlying abuses and instead left Libya’s detention system intact. The episode also raised broader questions about whether European governments, including Italy, were relying on Libyan authorities to curb migration while turning away from documented abuse inside the country’s detention network.

For Libya, the ruling is also a test of whether domestic justice institutions can address high-level abuses in a country still shaped by years of civil conflict and competing power centers. For the ICC, it underscores the difficulty of securing custody of suspects when states make their own political calculations. And for migrants still passing through Libya’s detention system, the sentence is a reminder that accountability remains incomplete as long as the network itself continues to function.