Prosecutor v. Al-Senussi
Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court
ICC-01/11-01/11-565 (July 24, 2014)
After the UN Security Council referred the 2011 Libyan rebellion to the ICC, the Court issued an arrest warrant for intelligence official Al-Senussi (defendant) for crimes against humanity; Libya sought to prosecute him domestically instead and challenged the ICC case's admissibility under Article 17, and the Pre-Trial Chamber accepted Libya's challenge. Al-Senussi appealed, arguing his case remained admissible at the ICC because Libya's domestic proceedings would not meet international due-process standards, showing Libya was unwilling to genuinely prosecute.
Whether a violation of a suspect's due process rights by a domestic court, by itself, constitutes an unwillingness to prosecute within the meaning of the Rome Statute.