Yesterday Saddam Haftar, accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity just as Almasri, was received with all honours by his “friend” Matteo Piantedosi

We who go to sea know well the son of General Khalifa Haftar, boss of Benghazi and Putin's great ally in Libya. Saddam Haftar, who is preparing for succession to command, heads the infamous "Tarek Ben Zayed" brigade, equipped among other things with a supply vessel of the same name, with which the militia of Haftar’s heir operates captures of refugees at sea and deports them to the concentration camps of Cyrenaica.

Saddam Haftar manages in particular the Sidi Faraij camp, located east of Benghazi, where torture and murder of detainees happen daily. A detailed 2022 Amnesty International report describes the activities of young Haftar as a “carousel of horrors”. U.S. justice has also been seeking him since May of this year: he is accused of kidnappings, murders, and mass deportations including against Libyan citizens. Saddam Haftar is identified by the United Nations as one of the most influential Libyan traffickers. Large quantities of silver and dollars are in the vaults of the Libyan Central Bank, profits from arms and oil sales, ransoms and human trafficking.

Once again, therefore, one of the world's greatest "traffickers" is flattered and praised by Giorgia Meloni's government. But that's not all. Haftar, like Almasri, enjoys "protection" in Italy. On July 22, 2022, Saddam Haftar with four bodyguards landed with a private jet in Genoa. They had false documents. Despite being pursued by an Interpol arrest warrant issued by Spanish judicial authorities, our secret services organized his "exfiltration" from Capodichino on August 2nd, to prevent his capture. It is no coincidence that Genoa was a stopover for Saddam, as it was for Almasri: contacts between Libyan mafia bosses and our domestic organized crime would often occur in the Ligurian city, using the stadium as cover. Haftar's militia has collaborated extensively with the Russian Wagner group, particularly for its expansion from Cyrenaica to Tripolitania. Various U.S. State Department reports highlight this circumstance. Today, at 34 years old and with his father, the strongman of Cyrenaica having reached 80 years old, the dynastic succession is being prepared. The clans, like the Trebelsi clan, powerful interior minister, are reorganizing. In a Libya increasingly prey to the criminal dominance of militias, with ever more marked Turkish and Russian influence in defining internal power balances, Italy, despite the millions of euros lavished on criminals as an anti-migration strategy, seems to count for less and less.

And from informed sources we know that even Eni, which is considering a strategic partnership with NOC, Libya’s state oil company, experiences a certain "unease" with the Italian government's entirely political obsession with migrants, which requires borderline relationships with these criminals.

While the Italian Interior Minister, without any shame, poses for selfies and handshakes with one of the worst criminals in the Mediterranean, we reiterate that the international community is called upon to modify its approach to Libya, prioritizing human rights over short-sighted political interests. Thousands of people living at the mercy of the TBZ militias risk being kidnapped, killed, tortured or disappeared.

Libya, far from being stabilized, is delivered into the hands of these mafia bosses by unscrupulous governments that, in order to achieve the "blocking of disembarkations" to sell in their permanent electoral campaign, are willing to sacrifice the principles and values of respect for human rights and dignity.

The hands that Piantedosi shook are stained with innocent blood.