2nd LD Writethru: Military commander wanted by int'l court agrees to surrender to Libyan army

TRIPOLI, Feb. 6 (Xinhua) -- General Mahmoud al-Werfalli, a senior military commander of the Libyan eastern-based army who is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC), on Tuesday announced that he would surrender himself to the army's military police.

"After instructions (being given) from the (army's) General Command and the Commander-in-chief Khalifa Haftar about my arrest, I immediately received the instructions and I will hand myself over to the military police in Al-Marj city (the army's headquarters) to complete the ICC investigations with me," al-Werfalli said in a video online, wearing his military uniform.

Al-Werfalli is a general in the special forces attached to Haftar's Libyan National Army (LNA) that controls Libya's northeastern city of Benghazi.

The international community has demanded several times legal prosecutions against Haftar as his forces kept gaining ground on the battlefield.

In August 2017, the ICC, which is based in The Hague, issued an arrest warrant for al-Werfalli and demanded his extradition over suspicion of committing war crimes in eastern Libya.

Immediately after the warrant was issued, the LNA announced that al-Werfalli was under arrest and being investigated, although his whereabouts were unknown.

In January, images surfaced online showing al-Werfalli carrying out field executions of 10 people at the site of a terrorist attack in Benghazi.

A few hours later, the United Nations Support Mission in Libya demanded the immediate extradition of al-Werfalli. Enditem