ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — A Libyan military commander who once lived in Virginia sat for a deposition Sunday in a U.S. lawsuit in which he is accused of orchestrating indiscriminate attacks on civilians and torturing and killing political opponents, according to an advocacy group that supports the lawsuit. Hifter, commander of the self-styled Libyan National Army, is a defendant in three separate federal lawsuits in Virginia accusing him of killings and torture in that country’s civil war. Once a lieutenant to Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, Hifter defected to the U.S. during the 1980s and spent many years living in northern Virginia. Hifter's U.S. lawyer had asked the judge to reconsider the default judgment, saying Hifter's duties as a military commander made it difficult for him to schedule a deposition. “The false charges in this lawsuit have been used by my political opponents to undermine my candidacy and disrupt the peace process,” Khalifa said in the affidavit.

Source: Libya Today November 07, 2022 17:59 UTC