‘I saw him kill people:' Libya and Italy's shadowy migrant deals
His release two days later was for what the Italian government said on Wednesday were 'inaccuracies' in the warrant.
Njeem is accused by the ICC of crimes committed in his role overseeing the Tripoli branch of the Reform and Rehabilitation Institution, a network of detention centres run by the government-backed Special Defence Force (SDF).
Amnesty International identifies Njeem as a 'long-term member of Tripoli-based militia the Deterrence Apparatus for Combatting Terrorism and Organised Crime (DACTO)', one of several militias the internationally recognised Tripoli government relies on, and absorbs, to project power across the western parts of Libya, which it nominally controls.
The rights group 'has long documented horrific violations committed with total impunity at the Mitiga prison in Tripoli, under the control of DACTO', and says there is 'no prospect of domestic accountability in Libya of powerful commanders of militias'.
Al Jazeera has spoken to two people who were held in prisons overseen by Njeem about the atrocities they witnessed.
'I saw him commit war crimes. I saw him kill people,' David Yambio, president of the NGO Refugees in Libya, said.
The accusations against Njeem are numerous, ranging from murder to torture and people trafficking.
His release has been condemned as 'outrageous' by rights groups and 'hypocritical' by leading political figures within Italy. Shortly after Njeem was returned to Libya, Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi told the Italian senate he had been released, rather than handed over to prosecutors from the ICC, 'in view of the danger [he] posed [to Italian society]'. A little more than a week later, the justice minister announced that the release had been on a legal technicality.
Njeem is said by the ICC to control several prison facilities in Tripoli, including that at Mitiga, Ain Zara and al-Jadida, 'where thousands of persons were detained for prolonged periods'.
According to the ICC, Njeem 'is suspected of crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder, torture, rape and sexual violence, allegedly committed in Libya from February 2015 onwards'.
The human cost
Yambio, now 27, arrived in southern Libya in December 2018 after a long journey from his native South Sudan – where he had been forced to fight as a child soldier – through Africa and eventually to Libya.
After capture, torture and eventual escape, Yambio, along with dozens of other people, was trying to flee for Europe in November 2019 when he was captured by the Libyan Coastguard – itself largely funded by the Italian government - and bundled into a detention facility at Triq al-Sika.
Yambio says he was 'sold' into a network of prisons operated by Njeem and the Judicial Police in December 2019, initially held in the sprawling facility at al-Jadida in Tripoli.
Yambio described terrible conditions at al-Jadida, including beatings and ill-treatment, adding he was corralled into a prisoner slave army and forced to work on construction sites for the benefit of his captors.
But worst of all was when Njeem was there, he said, adding that everyone at al-Jadida knew who Njeem was.
'Every two days they would line us up in our thousands [for a head count] and, when he would visit, al-Masri would walk down the line, picking out people to beat, either with a metal tube or with the handle of his pistol. Sometimes he would enter the cells where people were sleeping and beat them with a metal or plastic pipe.'
'I saw him kill people'
In March 2020, months into an assault on Tripoli and the western government by eastern-based renegade commander Khalifa Haftar, Yambio was transferred to the combined prison, military base and airfield at Mitiga, near Tripoli.
The abuse meted out at Mitiga has been reported on by rights groups, including Amnesty , which described the 'horrific violations committed with total impunity at the Mitiga prison', such as 'torture and other ill-treatment, unlawful killings, enforced disappearances, and other crimes under international law'.
'Conditions were very, very bad,' 33-year-old Lam Magok, also from South Sudan, told Al Jazeera of his time alongside Yambio at al-Jadida and Mitiga.
The two had met at al-Jadida, thrown together in the same prison ward and bound together, Yambio said, by their shared ill fortune.
'We would stay up at night talking,' Yambio recalled, 'recalling our home and the country that had forsaken us.'
In March, Yambio was selected with some others to be transferred to Mitiga to fight in one of Njeem's fighter groups.
Magok, not realising that he would eventually follow in April, pressed some paper into Yambio's hand.
On it were the numbers of an activist and a journalist, with details of his legal asylum status, and the contact details of his uncle with a plea that, should he ever get the chance, Yambio at least try and tell his family that Magok was alive.
'If heaven permits, find them. Tell them I'm alive,' Yambio recalled him saying. While Magok was spared the fighting, conditions for him at Mitiga were no less severe.
'Every second day, they would call us for a [head] count,' he said, the smile in his voice at odds with the brutality he recalled. 'They would make us kneel and then beat us… If you did something they didn't like, they would take you away, lock you in a room and torture you.' Killings were not unknown, he added.
'We were held with Libyans and [foreign] migrants, but it was always migrants who were sent to clean up the rooms. They would be told to put the body in a bag and carry it to the ambulance. It was bad.'
Magok was forced to work in the military stores, loading ammunition onto vehicles, while Yambio says he was sent daily to the nearby front line where he was made to fight alongside other migrants, Libyan groups and Turkish and Syrian forces to repel Haftar's forces.
'We were used to carry munitions as well as fire the howitzers. I still have tinnitus. Conditions were really bad. There were prisoners, Libyans and migrants forced into holes in the ground,' he said, describing the underground cells at Mitiga where the smell of the sick and the dying would catch on him and follow him through the day.
'We watched them being escorted into the interrogation rooms, where they would be beaten, electroshocked, have their fingers cut off, or forced into barrels of water and held under,' he said of the methods being used against both Libyan and migrant prisoners at Mitiga.
'Al-Masri was a brutal person. When people knew he was coming, they would panic. I sometimes wondered if he was on drugs, but he wasn't. That was just who he was. He was purely evil.
'I saw him kill people,' Yambio added flatly. 'One time, two people tried to escape … Mitiga. Al-Masri had us line up as he shot one. I had the blood on my body. Another time, someone had given the people working the howitzer the wrong drone coordinates. Al-Masri killed him.
'It was wretched and cruel beyond description.'
Yambio's account is supported by other reports from prisoners, one of whom told Italian state television in January that he had witnessed Njeem kill prisoners 'to frighten the people inside. He kills a few people inside. Even using his hands. I saw this,' he claimed, 'more than once.'
Two young men, the man said, were killed in this manner in front of him by Njeem.
Al Jazeera contacted both Libya's Ministry of Justice and its Judicial Police for comment on the points raised in this article and the accusations against Njeem. Neither has responded by the time of publication.
Blowback
Releasing Njeem provoked anger across Italy's political establishment. Former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi told senators: 'The prime minister said she wants to hunt traffickers all over the world. Yesterday she had one … and you released him and sent him back to Tripoli on a government plane.
'Is it just me who thinks this is crazy or is this the behaviour of a hypocritical and indecent government?'
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni later revealed she is under judicial investigation over her role in Njeem's release.
'What was true yesterday is true today: I cannot be blackmailed and I will not be intimidated. Let's move forward with our heads held high!' Giorgia Meloni, Twitter
Meloni's office has been contacted about the points raised in this article but has not responded by the time of publication.
'It is outrageous that Italian authorities fully disregarded an [ICC] warrant in deciding to free Osama el-Masry,' Bassam Khawaja, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch told Al Jazeera.
He noted other examples of Italy flouting international norms, such as its announcement that it would not enforce an ICC warrant for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Njeem is the second Libyan accused of crimes to be set free by Italian authorities within six months.
In August last year, Khalifa Haftar's son Saddam – who met with senior Italian diplomats to discuss security, economic cooperation and migration at least four times last year – was briefly detained by Italian border authorities who questioned him concerning an arrest warrant issued by Spain for allegations of weapons smuggling.
Both Haftars have faced allegations from media outlets and rights groups, including Amnesty, of involvement in the kidnapping, torture, trafficking and extortion of migrants.
An August 2023 investigation by Al Jazeera and partners showed the Tariq Ben Zeyad Brigade, led by Saddam Haftar since its emergence in 2016, was tied to 'a catalogue of horrors including unlawful killings, torture, enforced disappearance, rape and forced displacement'.
Alongside the brigade's pullbacks and subsequent exploitation of people seeking shelter in Europe, Al Jazeera documented a series of high-level meetings between the Haftar regime in eastern Libya and European leaders, including Italy, aimed at limiting the number of people trying to reach safety.
Italy's migration obsession
'Migration has been a big issue in Italy for years,' Hamza Meddeb of the Carnegie Middle East Center, who has written extensively on the subject, told Al Jazeera.
'Meloni has played this card really well. She's used her position to give legitimacy to the militias and governments in Libya, as well as that of Tunisia's [President] Kais Saied – who would otherwise be completely shunned by the West – without asking them for change or reform,' he said. Libya's neighbour is also a key departure point for irregular migration.
In the 2022 election - against a background of some 105,000 irregular arrivals that year – Meloni and her hard-right Brothers of Italy party campaigned on undocumented migration, promising to deliver a 'solution' that countless politicians before them had not.
Meloni used her inaugural speech to announce the revival of the Mattei Plan, first suggested by the leader of the national electricity company in the 1950s.
Mattei would see Italy partnering with African states on energy development in return for them helping curb migration.
Meloni is not the first Italian leader accused of ignoring credible allegations of abuse by partner organisations in her determination to stop asylum seekers from reaching Italy at all costs.
Italy contributes undisclosed sums to support Libya's Coast Guard, which is routinely accused of human rights abuses, as well as the facilities where irregular migrants are held.
'There is no way that the Italian government can say it does not know about the murder, abuse and terrorism it is supporting,' Yambio said.
'I say terrorism deliberately because that's what it is. It's terror against migrants.'
Yambio escaped Mitiga in April 2020, making his way to Italy where he was granted asylum. Magok escaped to Italy in December of the same year.
Both now work to campaign for the rights of refugees and irregular migrants.
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