U.S. judge tosses out lawsuits against Libyan commander accused of war crimes
A U.S. judge has tossed out a series of civil lawsuits against a Libyan military commander who used to live in Virginia and was accused of killing innocent civilians in that country’s civil war.
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A U.S. judge has tossed out a series of civil lawsuits against a Libyan military commander who used to live in Virginia and was accused of killing innocent civilians in that country’s civil war.
At a court hearing Friday, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said she had no jurisdiction to preside over a case alleging war crimes committed in Libya, even though the defendant, Khalifa Hifter, has U.S. citizenship and lived for more than 20 years in the northern Virginia suburbs of the nation’s capital as an exile from the regime of Moammar Gadhafi.
The ruling was a significant reversal of fortune for Hifter. In 2022, Brinkema entered a default judgment against Hifter after he refused to sit for scheduled depositions about his role in the fighting that has plagued the country over the last decade.
But Hifter retained new lawyers who persuaded the judge to reopen the case and made Hifter available to be deposed. He sat for two separate depositions in 2022 and 2023 and denied orchestrating attacks against civilians.
Once a lieutenant to Gadhafi, Hifter defected to the U.S. during the 1980s. He is widely believed to have worked with the CIA during his time in exile.
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