Mahmoud al-Werfalli, a senior Libyan military figure who owes allegiance to renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar and wanted for alleged war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC), has been shot dead by unidentified attackers in the eastern city of Benghazi.
According to reports, the gunmen on Wednesday opened fire on a vehicle carrying al-Werfalli, seriously wounding him and his cousin, Ayman.
The pair were pronounced dead on arrival at Benghazi Medical Centre, located near the scene of the shooting, another security source said.
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There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
Born in 1978, al-Werfalli was a commander in an elite unit attached to Haftar’s self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA), a coalition of forces that have dominated eastern Libya in recent years.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague has indicted al-Werfalli twice for the suspected killing of more than 40 captives, including in a 2018 incident in which photographs appeared to show him shooting 10 blindfolded prisoners.
‘Simply, he was a relentless and merciless killer,‘ Anas El Gomati, founder of director of Sadeq Institute, told Al Jazeera.
‘The testimony of not only those that have been documented the ICC, but the hundreds of families as documented by Human Rights Watch [HRW] and Amnesty International, and thousands more who live in Benghazi have lived in fear of al-Werfalli.’
In 2018, HRW said it had interviewed displaced people who said LNA-linked groups had seized their property and tortured, forcibly disappeared, and arrested family members who remained in the city.
Libya has been engulfed by chaos and repeated rounds of conflict in the wake of a NATO-backed uprising that overthrew its longtime ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, with the main rift in recent years pitting a Tripoli-based government against an administration in the east loyal to Haftar.
AFRICA DAILY NEWS, NEW YORK
