Boys aged 10 and 14 described being sexually abused after being
forced into religious and military training with Islamic State.
Armed
Libyan men wave their national flags in celebrations marking the fifth
anniversary of the Libyan revolution, in Benghazi, Libya February 17,
2016.
All sides in Libya
have committed war crimes and other human rights abuses in the past two
years and those responsible should face investigation and prosecution
by the International Criminal Court (ICC), a United Nations report said on Thursday.
An
investigation by six U.N. human rights officers compiled evidence of
executions of captives, assassinations of prominent women activists,
widespread torture, sexual crimes, abductions, indiscriminate military
attacks on civilian areas, and abuse of children since the start of
2014.
"One of the most striking
elements of this report lies in the complete impunity which continues to
prevail in Libya and the systemic failures of the justice system,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein said in a statement.
The U.N. had recorded names of those allegedly responsible and there was "a process for engagement with appropriate bodies”
such as the ICC, which has jurisdiction but not brought any
prosecutions, said Gurdip Sangha, Libya desk officer at the U.N. human
rights office.
He declined to say how many such
names there were, saying there were varying degrees of evidence and
corroboration in different cases.
The 95-page
report, based on interviews with 200 witnesses and victims and 900
individual complaints, catalogues atrocities in a country that dissolved
into chaos after the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
Since
2014 Libya has had two competing governments, both supported by loose
alliances of former rebels and armed brigades. A unity government has
been nominated under a U.N.-backed plan but has yet to win approval or
move to Libya.
Islamic State militants took
control of Gaddafi's home town of Sirte last year, and Libya's coast has
served as a major hub for migrants and refugees on their way to Europe.
The
investigators heard credible reports of women detained in migrant camps
being raped by guards and gathered evidence of torture in at least 22
places of detention.
Boys aged 10 and 14 described being sexually abused after being forced into religious and military training with Islamic State.
"I knew what I had to do, I had to take my clothes off and turn around and bend over facing the wall,” one boy said, describing most evenings in the service of an Islamist foreign fighter.
The other said he was raped by several fighters in order to “break me so that I will never say no”.
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