Prominent Rights Group Calls On LNA To Investigate War Crimes Posted On Social Media

A prominent rights group has called on the Libyan National Army (LNA), under the command of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, to urgently investigate and reprimand soldiers for evidence of war crimes

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 16th June, 2020) A prominent rights group has called on the Libyan National Army (LNA), under the command of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, to urgently investigate and reprimand soldiers for evidence of war crimes.

In a detailed report published Tuesday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) laid out evidence of what it says are videos and images posted to social media showing LNA soldiers partaking in torture, summary execution and the desecration of the corpses of captured fighters.

"Khalifa Hiftar needs to urgently hold his forces accountable for any war crimes they are committing and apparently advertising online. Senior LAAF [Libyan Arab Armed Forces] leadership has ignored these crimes, but they should be held accountable by domestic and international courts for complicity in abuses," Hanan Salah, senior Libya researcher at HRW, said.

HRW shared links to gruesome posts on Facebook and Twitter showing beatings of a tied up man and a group of armed men taking a blindfolded prisoner down a staircase. Replies to comments to the latter video suggest that the prisoner was killed.

Another video shows a soldier lifting the head of a dead man, hurling insults and warnings to enemies.

The organization identified the men in the video as belonging to Battalion 646 of the Libyan Arab Armed Forces, the official nomenclature of the LNA. The videos are believed to have taken place in Ain Zara on the outskirts of the capital city Tripoli.

HRW said it had directed a letter to Haftar on May 28 requesting further information on the incident and investigation into them but has yet to receive a response.

The outskirts of Tripoli were the frontline in LNA's fight with the UN-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) since at least April 2019, when Haftar announced a siege to take the city from the GNA.

LNA battalions have recently fallen back as the GNA won back large swathes of territory with Turkish, and allegedly Syrian mercenary, support.

Libya has been in the throes of civil war since the toppling of longtime strongman Mouammar Gaddafi in 2011. The country has been divided between the Tripoli-based GNA and the eastern elected parliament since 2015.