In Libya, Toothless U.N. Embargo Lets Foreign States Meddle With Impunity
In Libya, Toothless U.N. Embargo Lets Foreign States Meddle With Impunity by Declan Walsh – New York Times
It was one of the most shocking episodes of recent fighting in Libya, and the United Nations seemed determined to get to the bottom of it.
A 13-page report published last week described in stark detail the bombing in July of a detention center in the town of Tajoura, near Tripoli, which killed 53 people, mostly African migrants. The United Nations report featured testimony from survivors, measured the bomb crater and called for an investigation into a possible war crime.
What it conspicuously failed to do, though, was identify the perpetrator. “A foreign state,” investigators concluded.
The United Nations’ reluctance to identify or even hint at who was behind the bombing is symptomatic, analysts say, of the weakness of its nine-year-old arms embargo on Libya, one so widely flouted that the body’s envoy to Libya last year said that it risked becoming a “cynical joke.”…