When the European Union launched Operation IRINI in 2020, it presented the naval mission as a serious instrument of multilateral law enforcement, tasked with monitoring compliance with the UN arms embargo on Libya and interdicting the weapons flows that have sustained the country’s fragmentation since the 2011 NATO intervention. Six years later, a report from the United Nations Security Council Panel of Experts has confirmed what investigative journalists at the Italian newspaper Il Foglio had already documented: IRINI did not merely fail to stop an illegal arms shipment. It actively facilitated one, then provided false legal justification for doing so.

The episode centers on a cargo vessel called the Aya 1, owned by Ahmed Alushibe, also known as Ahmed Gadalla, a Benghazi-based businessman with documented ties to Saddam Haftar, son and deputy commander of eastern Libya’s strongman General Khalifa Haftar. The ship departed the Emirati port of Jebel Ali carrying, among other items, 240 Toyota pickup trucks, 86 of them armored. These are not civilian goods. They constitute the standard platform for crew-served weapons across Libyan and Sudanese militias and were classified explicitly as military equipment by the UN Panel, the transfer of which violates the embargo established under Resolution 1970.

Acting on U.S. intelligence, IRINI frigates intercepted the Aya 1 in the Mediterranean and escorted it to the Greek port of Astakos for inspection. The captain declared the manifest consisted of cosmetics,........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)