ROME — Italy’s justice minister strongly defended the government’s decision to repatriate a Libyan warlord wanted by the International Criminal Court, saying Wednesday that the court itself had made an “immense mess” of the case by issuing a contradictory and flawed arrest warrant.
Justice Minister Carlo Nordio told the lower chamber of parliament that he was right to proceed carefully with the Jan. 18 warrant against Ossama Anjiem, also known as Ossama al-Masri, who is accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
He said that The Hague-based court later “corrected, or rather completely overturned the previous warrant” by changing the timespan of al-Masri’s alleged crimes.
“The court itself detected them and tried to change them five days later, because it realized that an immense mess was made,” he told the Chamber of Deputies.
The Italian government has been under fire from the ICC, human rights groups and opposition lawmakers ever since it freed al-Masri from prison on Jan. 21 and sent him back to Libya aboard an Italian military aircraft. Al-Masri heads the Tripoli branch of the Reform and Rehabilitation Institution, a notorious network of detention centers run by the government-backed Special Defense Force.
The ICC warrant available on the court’s website accuses al-Masri of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the Mitiga prison in Libya starting in 2015 that are punishable with life in prison. The ICC said he was accused of murder, torture, rape and sexual violence.
Al-Masri was arrested in Turin on the ICC warrant on Jan. 19 at 9:30 a.m., the day after he arrived in the country from Germany to watch a soccer match. The Italian government has said Rome’s court of appeals ordered him released Jan. 21 because of a technical problem in the way that the ICC warrant was transmitted, having initially bypassed the Italian justice ministry.
Nordio repeated that argument Wednesday, saying that he only received an “informal email of a few lines” from Interpol three hours after al-Masri was arrested.
But he added that the text of the original Jan. 18 warrant itself was full of contradictions, specifically the timespan during which al-Masri allegedly committed his crimes. While the text of the warrant spoke of crimes allegedly occurring between 2015-2024, the conclusions referred to crimes allegedly committed from “2011 onwards.”
“An irreconcilable contradiction emerges regarding an essential element of the arrestee’s criminal conduct, regarding the time of the crime committed,” Nordio said.
When the court announced it was unsealing the warrant on Jan. 24, it said that it was issuing an updated warrant to “correct certain typographical and clerical errors.” The revised warrant speaks only of alleged crimes between 2015-2024.
Human rights groups have blasted Italy’s repatriation of al-Masri as a serious breach of its obligations as a founding member of the court. According to Article 89 of the Rome Statute, the 1998 treaty that gave birth to the ICC, member states must “comply with requests for arrest and surrender.”
And opposition lawmakers have seized on the case to attack Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni. They have demanded that Meloni herself brief parliament, and on Wednesday they held up signs saying “Meloni the patriot at large” in the chamber.
Italy has close ties to the internationally recognized government in Tripoli, on whom it relies to patrol its coasts and prevent migrants from leaving. Opposition politicians have accused the government of essentially caving to the threat that Libyan militias might have unleashed boatloads of migrants had al-Masri been handed over to the ICC.
Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi, who also briefed Parliament on Wednesday, denied al-Masri was ever an interlocutor with the government on the migration issue. And he denied that Italy had received any threats in connection with his arrest.
Opposition leader Elly Schlein of the Democratic Party blasted Nordio’s presentation, saying that his legalistic arguments about the ICC warrant were misplaced and that he had no role to evaluate an arrest warrant from the court.
“Minister Nordio, you didn’t speak to this chamber as a minister, but as the defense lawyer of a torturer,” Schlein said.
Nordio’s attack on the ICC warrant is in line with the government’s overall attempt to focus attention on the judiciary’s role in the al-Masri saga.
Last week, Rome’s chief prosecutor informed Meloni, Nordio, Piatendosi and another government official that they were being investigated for allegedly favoring irregular migration by repatriating al-Masri. Meloni has spent days complaining about Italy’s politicized judiciary, echoing a frequent line of attack taken by her onetime ally, the late former Premier Silvio Berlusconi.
But Meloni has also acknowledged that national security issues came into play in the al-Masri case: In an X post on Jan. 29, Meloni framed the issue as a matter of defending Italy.
“When the security of the national and the interests of Italians are in play, there is no room for backing down,” she wrote.
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Molly Quell contributed to this report from The Hague, Netherlands.