US blacklists Libya militia tied to murders, torture
US blacklisted Kaniyat militia and its leader ater Russia prevented a UN Security Council commitee from imposing sanctions over human rights abuses by the group
The United States unilaterally blacklisted Libya’s Kaniyat militia and its leader ater Russia last week prevented a UN Security Council committee from imposing sanctions over human rights abuses by the group.
The US sanctions were imposed under the Global Magnitsky Act, which allows the US government to target human rights violators worldwide by freezing assets and prohibiting Americans from doing business with them.
“Mohamed Al Kani and the Kaniyat militia have tortured and killed civilians during a cruel campaign of oppression in Libya,” US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement.
The United States and Germany earlier this month proposed that the UN Security Council’s 15-member Libya sanctions commitee impose an asset freeze and travel ban on Kaniyat militia and Al Kani.
However, such a move has to be agreed by consensus and Russia said on Friday it could not approve the sanctions because it wanted to see more evidence first that they had killed civilians.
The Libyan city of Tarhouna, which was recaptured in June by the internationally recognised Government of National Accord (GNA), had for years been controlled by the Kaniyat militia run by the local Kani family, which fought alongside Khalifa Hatar’s eastern-based Libyan National Army (LNA).
Last month Libyan authorities dug up 12 bodies from four unmarked graves in Tarhouna, adding to the scores of corpses already discovered since June.
Libya descended into chaos ater the Natobacked overthrow of leader Muammer Gaddafi in 2011. Last month the two major sides in the country’s war - the GNA and the LNA - agreed a ceasefire.
Those foreign powers have been cited in earlier UN documents as supplying weapons in defiance of the arms embargo.
On Nov.7 the government’s missing persons authority said it had unearthed 17 bodies from a newly-discovered mass grave near the town.
Government forces have blamed Al Kani’s militia, and have said that victims showed signs of being tortured and burned, and some buried alive, according to the Treasury.
“Mohamed Al Kani and the Kaniyat militia have tortured and killed civilians during a cruel campaign of oppression in Libya,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement.
The sanctions seek to freeze any property of those named under US jurisdiction and to block their access to the world trade and banking system.
Dozens of lawmakers from across war-torn Libya’s political spectrum are taking part in consultations in the Moroccan city of Tangiers as part of efforts to resolve the country’s political crisis. The meetings come as Libyan delegates on Monday resumed separate Un-led virtual talks on a selection mechanism for an executive to help lead the country out of conflict and prepare for elections.
A government resulting from previous UN talks in 2015 is based in the capital.
The east is dominated by the forces of strongman Khalifa Hatar, who backs a parliament elected in 2014 and based in the city of Tobruk.
The House of Representatives, which has refused to ratify the Tripoli administration, is deeply divided internally.
“We are working here to put in place a road map before an official session in Libya to... unify the House of Representatives and bring the country out of crisis,” Mohammed Raied, a member of the legislature who is based in the western city of Misrata, told AFP on Monday.
Asmahan Belaoun, another HOR member, said lawmakers were holding “consultative meetings to bring together points of view.”
The meetings, which were organised by HOR members themselves and will run until Wednesday, were welcomed by the United Nations’s Libya mission UNSMIL.
“That such a diverse range of Parliamentarians from Libya’s three regions is meeting under one roof is a positive and welcome step,” UNSMIL said on Twiter.
Earlier this month, 75 delegates selected by the UN held a week of talks in Tunisia, where they agreed to hold national elections on December 24 next year.