A US judge in the Virginia Federal Court has acknowledged that retired Libyan Major General Khalifa Haftar is responsible for the crimes he was accused of committing in Libya.
Judge Leonie Brinkema said that Haftar is civilly responsible for paying compensation to the plaintiffs, and added that a date will be set for the next session, to discuss compensation for the families of the victims.
Libyan families had filed a lawsuit against Haftar before courts in Virginia, accusing his forces of carrying out attacks that killed 6 members of those families, and the lawsuit demanded financial compensation of up to one billion dollars.
In August 2020, the American lawyer of Palestinian origin, Akram Abu Sharara, filed a lawsuit before the Public Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, in which he demanded that Haftar be prosecuted and verified that he had committed war crimes, especially after the discovery of mass graves in Libya.
In April 2019, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, said that she would not tolerate the prosecution of individuals accused of war crimes over the attack launched by Haftar's forces on the Libyan capital, Tripoli.