Lawyers ask ICC to investigate 122 European officials for crimes against humanity in Mediterranean

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — The European Union's cooperation on migration with the fractured North African nation of Libya is in the spotlight again after human rights lawyers filed the names of some 120 European leaders - including French President Emmanuel Macron and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel - to the International Criminal Court, accusing them of committing crimes against humanity with migrants in the Mediterranean Sea.

The group led by lawyers Omer Shatz and Juan Branco filed a 700-page legal brief on Thursday. The Associated Press has obtained a copy of the brief.

Their case is based on six years of investigation, interviews with more than 70 senior European officials, minutes of high-level European Council meetings and other confidential documents. It follows a previous request to the ICC's prosecutor’s office to investigate European officials for migration policies they argued led to the interception, detention, torture, killing and drowning of tens of thousands of people trying to reach European shores.

That request, filed in 2019 and admitted in 2020 as part of the ICC's Libya investigation, did not cite any specific suspects by name.

Now, lawyers say they have identified dozens of European individuals, from high-level heads of state to lower-level bureaucrats, as “co-perpetrators” alongside Libyan suspects for the death of 25,000 asylum seekers and abuses against some 150,000 survivors who were “abducted and forcibly transferred to Libya, where they were detained, tortured, raped, and enslaved.”

“We did the work of the office of the prosecutor, we managed to get to the inside of this apparatus of power and deconstruct it to see which offices, which ministries and which individuals (are responsible),” Shatz said. “We feel confident to say that at least 122 are criminally liable.”

ICC's prosecutor Karim Khan stepped aside earlier this year pending the outcome of a sexual misconduct investigation against him.

Lawyers published an online database with parts of their case and their “suspect list” naming each of the 122 individuals, their roles and why they believe the person to be liable. Among them is NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, who was then prime minister of the Netherlands, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, then former president of the European Council, European former foreign policy chief Frederica Mogherini and former Frontex chief Fabrice Leggeri, to cite a few.

Shatz and Branco are not the only ones to have urged the ICC to investigate abuses committed against migrants in Libya and the Mediterranean Sea. In 2023, a U.N.-backed investigation also concluded the EU's support to Libyan forces contributed to crimes against migrants and called on EU authorities to review their policies with Libya.

“The law of the ICC was born out of European crimes but only applied so far to crimes committed outside of Europe,” Shatz told the Associated Press. “Our request is simple: to apply the law impartially, also upon European nationals.”

Despite repeated calls from human rights experts for Europe to refrain from supporting Libyan forces in stopping migrants from crossing the Mediterranean, European officials remain determined to continue doing just that.

Libya plunged into chaos after a NATO-backed uprising toppled and killed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011. In the chaos that followed, the country split, with rival administrations in the east and west backed by rogue militias and foreign governments. In recent months, there has been an increase in migrant departures from eastern Libya to Greece, which European officials have been trying to address.

The EU says it has been working with Libyan authorities “to protect migrants and refugees” in Libya, “while taking action to reduce irregular departures through border management and anti-smuggling and trafficking in human beings.”

It has repeatedly defended its cooperation with Libya and its migration policy and blames migrant deaths on people smugglers and human traffickers who profit off their misery.

“The situation in Libya is critical,” EU Commission spokesperson Markus Lammert told journalists last week. “We will continue our engagement with all actors involved."

Just yesterday, the EU hosted both eastern and western Libyan officials for a technical visit of the bloc's border and coast guard agency's headquarters in Warsaw. The visit was remarkable for bringing both sides of Libya's rival governments into the same room.

“The atmosphere was open and constructive, and the Libyan side showed real curiosity about how Frontex and the EU work,” Chris Borowski, a spokesperson for Frontex told AP in writing. “It was a good first step toward building mutual understanding.”

Human rights groups, including non-governmental organizations that rescue migrants in the Mediterranean, criticized the visit. In the past few months, Libyan patrols have been caught on camera in several incidents of aggression, including shooting at both rescue ships and migrants themselves.

“With the support of the EU and its member states, the Libyan militias have turned into a brutal border force that acts with aggression and impunity at sea,” said a statement issued this week by Alarm Phone, a network of activists who operate a hotline for migrants in distress.

Questioned last week about the recent incidents at sea and the scheduled Libyan visit to Frontex, Lammert, the EU commission spokesperson, insisted border cooperation with Libya would be “in line with human rights standards.”

There was no immediate reaction to the ICC filing.

AP journalist Samuel McNeil in Brussels contributed to this report.

Follow AP’s global migration coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/migration

FILE - A general view of the exterior of the International Criminal Court is seen in The Hague, Netherlands, March 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Omar Havana, File)

FILE - France's President Emmanuel Macron, right, welcomes German Chancellor Angela Merkel prior to a meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris, Sept. 16, 2021. (AP Photo/Michel Euler, File)

FILE - Lawyer Juan Branco, who co-authored a legal document alleging crimes against humanity by the European Union, speaks during an interview with The Associated Press, April 11 2019, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Michel Euler, File)

FILE - Omer Shatz the lawyer of the French-Turkish woman imprisoned in Turkey speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Paris, Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2022. (AP Photo/Michel Euler, File)

FILE - Migrants who fell in the water struggle to cling on to a a float before being rescued by a humanitarian rescuers, around 35 miles away from Libya, in the Mediterranean Sea, Oct. 18, 2021. (AP Photo/Valeria Mongelli, File) (AP Photo/Valeria Mongelli, File)

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Myanmar insisted Friday that its deadly military campaign against the Rohingya ethnic minority was a legitimate counter-terrorism operation and did not amount to genocide, as it defended itself at the top United Nations court against an allegation of breaching the genocide convention.

Myanmar launched the campaign in Rakhine state in 2017 after an attack by a Rohingya insurgent group. Security forces were accused of mass rapes, killings and torching thousands of homes as more than 700,000 Rohingya fled into neighboring Bangladesh.

“Myanmar was not obliged to remain idle and allow terrorists to have free reign of northern Rakhine state,” the country’s representative Ko Ko Hlaing told black-robed judges at the International Court of Justice.

African nation Gambia brought a case at the court in 2019 alleging that Myanmar's military actions amount to a breach of the Genocide Convention that was drawn up in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust.

Some 1.2 million members of the Rohingya minority are still languishing in chaotic, overcrowded camps in Bangladesh, where armed groups recruit children and girls as young as 12 are forced into prostitution. The sudden and severe foreign aid cuts imposed last year by U.S. President Donald Trump shuttered thousands of the camps’ schools and have caused children to starve to death.

Buddhist-majority Myanmar has long considered the Rohingya Muslim minority to be “Bengalis” from Bangladesh even though their families have lived in the country for generations. Nearly all have been denied citizenship since 1982.

As hearings opened Monday, Gambian Justice Minister Dawda Jallow said his nation filed the case after the Rohingya “endured decades of appalling persecution, and years of dehumanizing propaganda. This culminated in the savage, genocidal ‘clearance operations’ of 2016 and 2017, which were followed by continued genocidal policies meant to erase their existence in Myanmar.”

Hlaing disputed the evidence Gambia cited in its case, including the findings of an international fact-finding mission set up by the U.N.'s Human Rights Council.

“Myanmar’s position is that the Gambia has failed to meet its burden of proof," he said. "This case will be decided on the basis of proven facts, not unsubstantiated allegations. Emotional anguish and blurry factual pictures are not a substitute for rigorous presentation of facts.”

Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi represented her country at jurisdiction hearings in the case in 2019, denying that Myanmar armed forces committed genocide and instead casting the mass exodus of Rohingya people from the country she led as an unfortunate result of a battle with insurgents.

The pro-democracy icon is now in prison after being convicted of what her supporters call trumped-up charges after a military takeover of power.

Myanmar contested the court’s jurisdiction, saying Gambia was not directly involved in the conflict and therefore could not initiate a case. Both countries are signatories to the genocide convention, and in 2022, judges rejected the argument, allowing the case to move forward.

Gambia rejects Myanmar's claims that it was combating terrorism, with Jallow telling judges on Monday that “genocidal intent is the only reasonable inference that can be drawn from Myanmar’s pattern of conduct.”

In late 2024, prosecutors at another Hague-based tribunal, the International Criminal Court, requested an arrest warrant for the head of Myanmar’s military regime for crimes committed against the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority. Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, who seized power from Suu Kyi in 2021, is accused of crimes against humanity for the persecution of the Rohingya. The request is still pending.

FILE - In this Sept. 7, 2017, file photo, smoke rises from a burned house in Gawdu Zara village, northern Rakhine state, where the vast majority of the country's 1.1 million Rohingya lived, Myanmar. (AP Photo, File)