The International Criminal Court has begun hearings against former Libyan prison commander Mohammed Ali El Hishri, in a case that places Libya’s notorious Mitiga detention centre under rare international scrutiny. Prosecutors accuse El Hishri of directing and personally participating in a campaign of crimes against humanity targeting migrants and Libyan civilians held at the facility near Tripoli.

According to filings before the court, El Hishri was a central figure in the command structure at Mitiga between 2014 and 2020, a period marked by Libya’s fractured governance and the rise of powerful armed groups. Prosecutors say he wielded near-absolute authority over detainees, with particular control over the women’s section, where some of the worst abuses are alleged to have occurred.

The prosecution portrays Mitiga as operating under an “institutionalised system of violence,” in which torture, sexual assault and forced labour were not isolated incidents but part of a deliberate strategy to control and exploit detainees. At least 5,000 civilians are believed to have been subjected to systematic abuse over six years, including beatings, electric shocks, mock executions and prolonged solitary confinement.

Court documents allege that El Hishri was not merely a distant commander but an active participant in interrogations and punishment sessions. Witnesses describe women being tied with ropes, dragged across concrete floors and beaten, while others were allegedly subjected to rape and other forms of sexual violence by guards acting with impunity.

Fifty-four victims have been authorised to take part in the proceedings, many of them former detainees who later reached safety in Europe. Among them is South Sudanese refugee Lam Magok, who told judges that his five years trapped in Libya amounted to “a living hell,” marked by repeated imprisonment, violence and failed attempts to cross the Mediterranean.

Magok and other participants have framed the case as a test of whether international justice can reach those who profited from Libya’s chaotic detention system, which has long been condemned by human rights organisations for torture, extortion and arbitrary detention of migrants intercepted en route to Europe.

Mitiga prison, housed within a military complex near Tripoli’s airport, became one of the most feared sites in Libya’s network of official and unofficial detention centres after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi. The current hearings will determine whether the evidence against El Hishri is sufficient to commit him to a full trial before the ICC on charges including torture, rape, sexual violence, persecution and enslavement as crimes against humanity.