by Giovanni Giacalone
On January 19th, 2025, Libyan police chief and director of Tripoli’s infamous Mitiga detention center, Najeem Almasri, was arrested by Italian authorities on a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Libya from February 2015 onwards.
On January 21st, three judges of Rome’s Appeal Court (IV Sez. Penale) released Almasri who was immediately flown back to Libya on board an Italian government flight. The Interior Minister, Matteo Piantedosi, explained that Almasri was expelled from Italy because he is considered a dangerous individual.
Almasri’s release led to an investigation initiated by a prosecutor in Rome against Italian PM Giorgia Meloni, Justice Minister Carlo Nordio, Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi and Undersecretary to the Prime Minister Alfredo Mantovano.
However, in response to it, lawyer Luigi Mele filed a complaint against the prosecutor (Francesco Lo Voi and against lawyer Luigi Li Gotti), hypothesizing the crimes of aggravated slander, attack against the constitutional bodies and contempt of the institutions.
The Almasri affair is particularly chaotic and shows signs of a possible feud within the Italian political-institutional apparatus. According to a reconstruction of the issue by Massimo Solari on the news site Italia Oggi, the Italian authorities did not release Almasri from prison, but it was rather the Appeal Court that released him while waiting for Justice Minister, Carlo Nordio, to decide. However, the Minister procrastinated because he did not receive an official request from the Court in The Hague but only a communication from the Italian ambassador to the Netherlands. As the Court decided for Almasri’s release, Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi, aware of Al-Masri’s dangerousness, ordered his removal from the national territory.
The court papers ordering Almasri’s release indicate that the decision was taken, at the request of the Attorney General, due to the fact that “the arrest was not in conformity with the procedures since it was not preceded by discussions with the Minister of Justice, in charge of relations with the International Criminal Court”.
It is also important to remember that Almasri is an old acquaintance of the Italian institutional apparatus, with which the subject in question has maintained long-term relations and with different governments.
As explained by the Italian new site Quotidiano Nazionale, Almasri, in this context, is the number two of Mohammed al-Khoja, a Salafist leader of the pro-Turkish militia Special Deterrence Force (RADA), a Madkhali radical Islamist special operations military police unit formed in Tripoli Libya around 2012.
Francesca Musacchio, chief editor of the Italian analysis website OFCS Report, who knows the Libyan context, explained in an article for newspaper Il Tempo, that RADA played a crucial role in various operations to free Italian citizens kidnapped in Libya. Among these is the case of the technicians Bruno Cacace and Danilo Colonego, in 2016; the release took place on November 5th, 2016, during the Renzi government (Democratic Party) and the operational support of the Rada force was indicated as decisive in unblocking negotiations that were otherwise at a standstill. A similar situation occurred with the same Renzi government, when Rada once again would have played a key role in freeing two Italian workers kidnapped by an ISIS-affiliated group.
On January 31st, 2025, Italian journalist and war reporter, Fausto Biloslavo, exposed the activity of a Sweden-based Libyan opposition member named Husan El Gomati who shared on his Telegram channel the IDs of Italian intelligence agents and other documents released by the Libyan Attorney General’s Office, which would reveal unmentionable relationships between the Italian secret services, dating back to 2017 at the time of the center-left Gentiloni government, and human traffickers.
El Gomati replied to Biloslavo’s article on X and depicted it as an attempt to present the Italian intelligence narrative and “justify the scandal exposed to provide cover for the Italian authorities on their collaboration with the militias”.
However, El Gomati did not reveal any specific “scandal” since the Italian support for the Islamist-led GNA was well known to all. In late November 2020, Israeli analyst Oded Berkowitz had shared on X a chart, coming from US Africom, indicating countries supporting the GNA and the Tobruk-based LNA. The chart indicates how Italy and Turkey both provided intelligence support to Tripoli’s GNA, while Qatar and Turkey provided military support as well.
It is therefore no secret that Italy’s intelligence had been supporting Tripoli’s Muslim Brotherhood leadership, side to side with Doha and Erdogan, and way before Meloni won the elections, when the left-wing was still in power; just as it is not secret that the Italy relied on Turkey to obtain the release of humanitarian worker Silvia Romano in 2020, who had been kidnapped by an al-Shabab linked group in Kenya and taken to Somalia. According to Italian news site Dagospia, the outcome was a consequence of the great relations between the Italian Foreign Intel agency, Aise, and the Turkish Mit: “At the intelligence level, things are going swimmingly between AISE and MIT. Outgoing director Luciano Carta has cultivated the relationship with his colleague Hakan Fidan in the name of their common membership in NATO, aware that the Turks have significantly extended their network in the Middle East and the Horn of Africa”.
It is also worth highlighting the rumors that, for Romano’s release, Italy paid the alleged sum of 2 million euros.
As if that were not enough, following Romano’s release, controversy arose between Italy and Turkey following a photo by Anadolu Agency that circulated immediately after her release, of the girl wearing a protective vest with the Turkish logo. The Italian authorities branded the photo as fake, but in Ankara they see it differently.
The point is not Italy’s intelligence support for the GNA Ikhwani/Islamist militias in Tripoli, which is well known. Instead, it would be useful to ponder if Italy’s intelligence apparatus should rather be more careful when picking its “allies” and “partners” in Africa and the Middle East, given the outcome. As a matter of fact, governments in Italy come and go, but the underground partnerships remain the same, because that is an imprint that is not political, but most likely rooted within the intelligence apparatus. The governments simply find themselves playing with the available cards.
Going back to the Almasri case, former Corriere della Sera chief editor and journalist Paolo Mieli made one important observation on Liberoquotidiano: “The real mystery is why the secret services didn’t take him and send him silently back to Libya. The issue lies with the secret services… Why in this circumstance didn’t the secret services do what they normally do?”
A very similar situation occurred with the case involving Mohammad Abedini, the Iranian engineer who was arrested on December 16th,2024, in Milan’s Malpensa airport. Did the intelligence fail to see the mess coming and preventively intervene? This will be examined in the next “Italy file” regarding the Abedini/Sala case.