Human Rights Watch said Friday that the whereabouts of Siham Sergiwa, a member of Libya’s Tobruk-based House pf Representatives, remain unknown since gunmen apparently affiliated with Haftar’s militias abducted her from her home in the eastern city of Benghazi on July 17, 2019.
Human Rights Watch added in a statement that the east-based leadership, including Khalifa Haftar and the Interim Government of Al-Thinni, need to come clean about what they have been doing to find out who abducted Sergiwa and where she is.
The senior researcher on Libya at Human Rights Watch, Hanan Salah, said military and civilian authorities in eastern Libya need to know that if they fail to prevent or prosecute serious crimes by their subordinates, they too can be held responsible by domestic or international bodies.
Human Rights Watch indicated that the abduction of Sergiwa is among the crimes that could be investigated by the fact-finding body established on June 22, 2020 by the United Nations Human Rights Council with the objective of investigating violations by all sides in Libya.
“Further, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has a mandate to investigate war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Libya since 2011.” Human Rights Watch warned.
Meanwhile, the UNSMIL also called for revealing the whereabouts of the kidnapped female lawmaker in a statement made on Friday, and so did Amnesty International. They both called on pro-Haftar authorities to bring the criminals to justice for this heinous crime.
Earlier this week, the member of the House of Representatives (HoR) Essa Al-Araibi said in a leaked audio recording that the female lawmaker Siham Sergiwa, who has been kidnapped since July 2019, has been killed after being kidnapped from her house in Benghazi.
Essa Al-Araibi said in the audio recording that Sergiwa was killed and named the ones who killed her, thus calling out the lies of east-based Interior Minister Ibrahim Bushanaf whom he said was aware of the details.
The HoR member blamed the pro-Haftar criminals who are in control of Benghazi for the attack on Sergiwa’s house and then killing her.
The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Fatou Bensouda said last May that her office had gathered details about the identities of the people behind the kidnap of the female lawmaker, who was abducted from her house for criticizing the aggression by Haftar’s militias on Tripoli.
Masked men from Saddam Haftar’s Brigade 106 (A.K.A. Awliaa Al-Dam – Blood Avengers) kidnapped Sergiwa from her house in Benghazi on July 17 2019, shooting her husband and beating her son.
