Libya Crimes Watch (LCW) has documented the arbitrary arrest of activist Al-Mahdi Abu Al-Qasim Abdulati (43 years old) by unidentified armed men in Misrata on Thursday, 19 March. He was taken to an unknown location, and his fate and whereabouts remain unknown at the time of publication. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Al-Mahdi\u2019s arrest came hours after he published a video on his official Facebook account in which he criticised the involvement of authorities in western Libya in corruption and oil smuggling activities linked to the Arkenu Oil company, owned by the families of Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, Prime Minister of the Government of National Unity (GNU), and Khalifa Haftar, Commander-in-Chief of the Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF). He also criticised the resulting economic crises and losses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
LCW holds the GNU fully legally responsible for Al-Mahdi\u2019s life and safety, and affirms that his detention outside the framework of the law, his deprivation of fundamental legal guarantees, and the concealment of his fate and place of detention constitute serious violations of Libya\u2019s obligations under international human rights law (IHRL), amounting to arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
LCW calls on the GNU to immediately disclose Al-Mahdi\u2019s fate and place of detention, to enable him to communicate freely with his family and lawyer, to ensure his protection from any torture or ill-treatment he may face, and to secure his immediate release, as there is no legal basis for his detention. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
LCW also calls on authorities in both eastern and western Libya to cease targeting activists for exercising their right to freedom of opinion and expression, to ensure respect for and protection of this right, and to take effective measures to prevent the recurrence of such violations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Furthermore, LCW calls on the Office of the Libyan Attorney General to open an urgent and independent investigation into the violations committed against Al-Mahdi, identify those responsible, hold them accountable, and ensure they do not enjoy impunity, in line with Libya\u2019s obligations under IHRL. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
UPDATE<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The activist Al-Mahdi Abdulati<\/strong> was released on Sunday, 29 March, after ten (10) days of arbitrary detention by the Libyan Internal Security Agency (ISA), affiliated with the Government of National Unity (GNU).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Libya Crimes Watch (LCW) has documented the arbitrary arrest of activist Al-Mahdi Abu Al-Qasim Abdulati (43 years old) by unidentified armed men in Misrata on Thursday, 19 March. He was taken to an unknown location, and his fate and whereabouts remain unknown at the time of publication. Al-Mahdi\u2019s arrest came hours after he published a video on his official Facebook […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":26236,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[654],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-posts"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lcw.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lcw.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lcw.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lcw.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lcw.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26235"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lcw.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26261,"href":"https:\/\/lcw.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26235\/revisions\/26261"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lcw.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lcw.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lcw.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lcw.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}