International Criminal Court prosecutors said Tuesday that a Libyan suspect accused of running part of one of the country’s most notorious prisons was known among detainees as a brutal torturer nicknamed “the angel of death.”
Khaled Mohamed Ali Al Hishri, 47, is accused of overseeing the women’s wing at Mitiga prison, a detention facility in Tripoli run by the Special Deterrence Force, widely known as Rada.
Prosecutors told ICC judges that thousands of people were unlawfully detained at Mitiga without legal basis, held in inhumane conditions and subjected to systematic abuse and torture.
“Khaled Al Hishri was widely known as a notorious torturer at the helm of Mitiga prison,” deputy prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan said at the opening of three days of hearings in The Hague.
The prosecution alleges that Al Hishri personally abused and tortured detainees, including through rape and other forms of sexualised torture. Prosecutors are asking judges to confirm 17 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder, rape, persecution and enslavement, covering the period from February 2015 to early 2020.
Al Hishri’s lawyer, Yasser Hassan, told the court that his client denies the allegations. The defence also argued that the ICC does not have jurisdiction over the case.
The hearings are expected to conclude on Thursday, after which judges will have 60 days to decide whether to confirm the charges. If they do, Al Hishri’s case could become the first ICC trial focused on Libya.
Al Hishri was arrested in Germany in July last year.
The ICC has been investigating alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Libya since 2011, when the United Nations Security Council referred the situation to the court following the NATO-backed uprising that toppled longtime ruler Muammar Gaddafi.
In January 2025, Italy briefly detained another ICC suspect linked to Mitiga prison, but later released him and returned him to Libya, drawing condemnation from rights groups and international observers.