I. Background
Between 2015 and 2025, more than 25,000 civilians were killed by drowning on the Central Mediterranean route. Around 150,000 survivors were abducted, forcibly transferred to Libya, and subjected to imprisonment, torture, rape, and enslavement in detention facilities described by a German diplomat in a confidential cable to Chancellor Angela Merkel as “concentration camps”.
In 2017, the ICC Prosecutor reported to the UN Security Council (UNSC) that “serious and widespread” Crimes Against Humanity – including killings, rape, and torture – were being committed against “thousands of vulnerable migrants, including women and children.” The Prosecutor indicated that the Office was considering “opening an investigation into migrant-related crimes,” stressing: “We must act.” Since 2017, every year the ICC Prosecutor reports to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on ongoing crimes against migrants.
In 2019, ICC Counsels Dr. Omer Shatz and Dr. Juan Branco submitted a Communication under Article 15 of the Rome Statute to the Prosecutor. The 245-page case provided substantial evidence demonstrating that widespread, systematic, and ongoing crimes against ‘migrants’ were being committed pursuant to EU policies on the Central Mediterranean route, whose objective was to prevent asylum seekers from reaching European shores at all costs.
The First Communication legally substantiated two deterrence-based policies pursuant to which the crimes were committed. The first was a policy of mass killings by drowning, marked by the termination of Operation Mare Nostrum and its replacement with Frontex’s Operation Triton in 2014, constituting the crime against humanity of murder. Civil society organizations sought to fill the lethal gap internationally created by the EU. In response, the EU adopted a second policy of mass refoulement by proxy, marked by the conclusion of the Italian-Libyan Memorandum of Understanding and the EU’s Malta Declaration in 2017, which led to the reconstruction and contracting of the so-called “Libyan Coast Guard.” Pursuant to this second policy, the Crimes Against Humanity of deportation, enforced disappearance, murder, torture, rape, enslavement, imprisonment, and other inhumane acts were directed against the targeted civilian population.
In 2020, the Prosecutor confirmed to the European Parliament that the case is under review, and later that year notified the undersigned of her decision to admit the case as part of the Situation in Libya. The admission of the case, a rare occurrence, reflects that the Office of the Prosecutor considered to have jurisdiction and that there was a reasonable basis to believe the alleged crimes were committed.
In 2023, a UN Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) mandated by the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) determined that EU and Member State officials are participating in crimes against humanity against migrants on the Central Mediterranean route, corroborating the allegations in the present case.
A year before, in 2022, the Prosecutor had joined a “Task Force” mandated to investigate crimes against humanity against ‘migrants’. Yet the members of the Prosecutor’s “Task Force” include the EU and Italy, namely the alleged co-perpetrators in the case submitted to the Prosecutor.
In 2025, the ICC issued its first arrest warrant against a person suspected of committing crimes against humanity against ‘migrants’: a Libyan national known as ‘Al-Masri’. AL-Masri was arrested in Italy, but instead of surrendering him to The Hague, however, the Italian government – a member of the Prosecutor’s Task Force whose leaders are key suspects in this case – smuggled him back to Libya on a government plane, where he remains at large.
The undersigned submitted a Communication to the Office of the Prosecutor in the Al-Masri case, alleging that several Italian Ministers committed offenses against the administration of justice and requesting their prosecution pursuant to Article 70 of the Rome Statute. In Italy, the Tribunal of Ministers has already corroborated these allegations, decided to prosecute some of the implicated officials, and requested the lifting of their immunities. But the ICC Prosecutor remains idle.
The ICC investigation in Libya was launched in 2011. It has not led to any trial so far. According to the ICC Prosecutor, crimes against ‘migrants’ under his jurisdiction are still ongoing. According to the ICC Prosecutor, the perpetrators are at large. Yet the ICC Prosecutor reported the UN Security Council of his intention to close the investigations into the Situation in Libya by 2026.
II. The Project and the Case
Although the commission of ongoing ICC crimes has been acknowledged by the Prosecutor in 2017, the alleged perpetrators identified since 2019, the case admitted by the Prosecutor in 2020 and its allegations were corroborated by the Human Rights Council in 2023 – the ICC Prosecutor has not undertaken a single investigative or prosecutorial action.
On the contrary, as described above, the Prosecutor has deviated from the Court’s rules and regulations, shielding nationals of States Parties to the Rome Statute from investigation and prosecution, providing them carte blanche to continue perpetrating the crimes and victimizing thousands of people.
In light of this colossal failure to enforce the Rule of Law, an NGO, a law firm and a legal clinic have undertaken the work that the Prosecutor was legally bound but politically unwilling to perform:
Dr. Omer Shatz, Adv., an international lawyer working pro bono on this case until 2021, after which he was appointed the legal director of front-LEX;
Dr. Juan Branco, Adv., an international lawyer working with his legal team pro bono during the entire period (2019-2025);
front-LEX, an NGO using strategic litigation to challenge EU migration policies before international courts, which provided human, financial and technical support in this case from 2021 to date.
Sciences Po’s “International Law in Action” capstone clinic, part of the Master Program in Human Rights and Humanitarian Action, which supported the research this project has relied on.
The First Communication focused on the external consequences of this Joint Criminal Enterprise, namely, the mass killings by drowning in the Mediterranean and the crimes committed against survivors abducted to Libya. The present case, by contrast, is focused on the internal apparatus of power that designed and implemented these crimes. It is, in essence, a project of reverse engineering: tracing the chain from policies, attacks, and crimes – which were established in the first Communication – to the individual suspects who designed, ordered, and executed them.
This constitutes the typical prosecutorial work the ICC undertakes following the admission of a case such as the first Communication. Such deconstruction, however, is particularly challenging in the present case, given the unprecedented complexity of the apparatus of power orchestrating the alleged crimes: twenty-eight countries with virtually unlimited resources, collectively acting in concert with numerous EU organs and agencies, a consortium of militias and mercenaries, as well as intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations.
To overcome these challenges, over the past six years the project succeeded in:
Mapping each and every organ and agency involved in the design and execution of migration policies, at both the EU and Member State levels (see the Legal Brief);
Extracting the names of all officials who worked in these organs and agencies during the period in which the alleged crimes were committed (see the Officials’ Database);
Assessing the potential individual criminal responsibility of these hundreds of officials, identifying 122 nationals of States Parties allegedly implicated in the commission of the crimes, and determining the extent of their involvement (see the List of Suspects).
This work hinges on documented interviews with 77 witnesses and potential suspects – from a Heads of State down the chain of command – a first analysis of internal protocols documenting confidential meetings of high-level EU and Member States’ officials, and the collection and review of confidential and publicly accessible documents.
These three categories of evidence – first-person accounts of policymakers and implementers, documentation of their internal deliberations, and independent reports corroborating the execution of their decisions – form a consolidated body of evidence indicating that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the suspects participated in the commission of the alleged crimes. This is consistent with the findings of the UN Fact-Finding Mission and meets the ICC’s evidentiary threshold for opening an investigation, prosecuting those involved, and, where necessary, issuing arrest warrants.
This project portrays a decade-long, widespread, and systematic campaign targeting the most vulnerable civilian population on earth, at their most vulnerable moment: asylum seekers, fleeing armed conflict, in distress at sea. It exposes the identities of those behind what constitutes the most serious criminal enterprise outside an armed-conflict context ever to fall under ICC jurisdiction: the commission of countless crimes against humanity of murder pursuant to the EU’s policy of mass killings by drowning; and the commission of countless crimes against humanity of deportation, enforced disappearance, torture, rape, enslavement, imprisonment, and other inhuman acts, pursuant to the EU’s policy of refoulement by proxy. Both policies sharing the same goal: to prevent the arrival of asylum seekers to European shores at all costs.
III. Remedy Sought
Based on the evidence provided in this filing, the Prosecutor is requested:
To open a preliminary examination on the European Union Situation in relation to the commission of Crimes Against Humanity in the Central Mediterranean route between 2014 and 2019;
Consequently, to request the Pre-Trial Chamber to authorise the opening of an investigation into the Situation in the Member States of the European Union in accordance with Article 53 of the Rome Statute;
To launch an investigation on the alleged facts, examining the criminal liability of the 122 Suspects listed in the present submission;
To examine the potential criminal liability of all other nationals of States Parties listed in the annexed Database, as well as the commission of crimes posterior to 2019;
To correctly re-characterize the targeted civilian population as ‘asylum seekers of multiple nationalities transiting through the Central Mediterranean route’ (and not as ‘Libyan migrants’);
To coordinate with the Victim’s legal representatives the submission of additional evidence in their possession further incriminating the Suspects.