(AGENPARL) - Roma, 11 Novembre 2022 - (AGENPARL) – ven 11 novembre 2022 Statement of ICC Prosecutor, Karim A. A. Khan KC, to the United Nations Security Council on the Situation in Libya, pursuant to Resolution 1970 (2011)
Twenty-fourth report: [EN](https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/2022-11/2022-11-09-otp-report-unsc-libya-eng.pdf) | [FR](https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/2022-11/2022-11-09-otp-report-unsc-libya-fra.pdf) | [Arabic](https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/2022-11/2022-11-09-otp-report-unsc-libya-ara.pdf)
[KK 1]
Madam President, thank you so much for the opportunity of briefing the Security Council today and I wish here also to record my deep appreciation to the permanent representative of Libya, Ambassador Taher Al-Suni for being present.
Today is important because it’s the first time that a Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has addressed this council from the soil of Libya. And it is also the first time the Prosecutor of the ICC has been to Libya in a decade.
And I am really grateful for the support of United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSML), of the Special Representative of the Secretary General, Abdoulaye Bathily, for his wonderful hospitality and support during this mission.
My experiences over these last few days have reinforced something that has been clear for a while, that we need to do better, we need to be more relevant, and that justice can’t be a value, it can’t be an idea; it needs to be felt by the people of Libya.
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We have seen victims from all parts of Libya, from Benghazi, from Derna, victims of detention, from Tajura or Murzuk or Tawergha. And just two days ago, I went a couple of hours drive from Tripoli, to a place called Tarhuna. And there I saw a miserable site; boxes, metal boxes, almost like a workstation. And in these boxes, we have accounts of people that were forced to enter backwards and were kept in absolutely appalling conditions. Conditions that by any metric amounted to calculated inhumanity. And from there I took the same road where some of these poor souls were executed, to farms that became mass graves and to refuse tips, landfill sites in which bodies were thrown without ceremony. And I think it’s only right to applaud the really courageous work of the Libyan forensic experts, amongst that detritus, with that plastic, with every waste product known to mankind, along with dead dogs and dead goats that we saw, they had an extremely difficult technical task of clearing away mounts of rubbish to find these individuals that had been thrown in. As a result, it seems of crimes within the Court’s jurisdiction and 250 bodies have so far been recovered and far fewer have been identified. And I emphasised to the Attorney General’s office, to the Minister of Justice and to the Forensic Science Service that we are willing as the Office to work as partners, to provide further technical assistance and support to the forensic capacity in Libya, although I must say I have been impressed with the effort and the focus of work they’ve done. But the task is so great, assistance is certainly needed.
And from Tarhuna landfill sites, I went to another location, and I spoke to victims, survivors. And around the table were a sample of heartbreak. There was one gentleman that spoke, that had lost I think 24 members of his family. Another had lost 15. A mother gave a compelling account with the quiet dignity that is very often part of the Libyan character, that she had witnessed individuals break in, prise her sons from her, and she has not seen them again. And there was a father who very simply, and all the more powerfully for that, stated that he couldn’t bear to live in his own home because in that home his children were born. And the effect of that loss is something that means that home triggers trauma on a daily basis. This is the type of heartbreak, this is the type of suffering that survivors tell us. And this is why your referral of the Libya situation to the Office and the work, and the collective obligation to deliver on justice, is not some abstract idea, it really matters a very great deal.