The war in Libya has destroyed more than its political system, national security and infrastructure. The rebel commander of the Libyan National Army, Khalifa Haftar — backed by foreign powers such as Egypt and the United Arab Emirates — has been responsible for taking hundreds of innocent civilian lives and leaving about 200,000 of those alive, in miserable conditions and displaced. In October 2020, another proof of the military leader’s humanitarian abuse surfaced when a second batch of UAE Libya mass graves were discovered by the UN-recognized Libyan government.
As long as mass graves are concerned — since being driven out of western Libya — offences committed by the LNA leader Khalifa Haftar have been uncovered on almost a daily basis. On 12 October 2020, a similar incident took place when the UN-recognized Government of National Accord stated that it discovered two UAE-Libya mass graves in Tarhuna, a city 90 kilometres northeast from the capital of Tripoli.
According to the General Authority for Research and Identification of Missing Persons the first grave consisted of a total of four dead bodies. Meanwhile, their team continued working to unearth the corpses.
After exhuming both the discovered graves, a total of twelve unidentified dead bodies were recovered.
Official sources from Libya claim that the UAE-backed LNA committed multiple war crimes and genocidal activities between the period of April 2019 and June 2020. Following which, the GNA discovered 226 dead bodies buried in UAE-Haftar mass graves in Tarhuna and south of Tripoli.
After GNA discovered UAE-LNA mass grave for the first time in Libya, the top rights body of the United Nations established a fact-finding mission to Libya. The action was taken in follow up of the International Criminal Court prosecutors claiming that the mass graves could constitute to war crimes.
The GNA discovered a total of eight UAE-Libya mass graves at the time, from an area retaken from the forces of the UAE-backed military leader Khalifa Haftar. Tarhuna is known as the last held refuge by Haftar in western Libya.
Both the discoveries of UAE-Libya mass graves — in June and October — have been done in the Tarhuna region, which proves that the graves belonged to the notorious military commander, Khalifa Haftar.
Despite committing countless acts of war crime, the commander and his loyal forces of LNA are being supported by a rich gulf nation like the United Arab Emirates. The Arab superpower has been a complicit of many war criminals in some of the most fragile proxy wars, like the Libyan Civil War and the Yemen Civil War. Will innocent Libyan civilians ever see the dawn of a new day or continue to suffer an abusive fate under the UAE-Haftar coalition?
