Die Zeit: ‘An Arrest Warrant for Angela Merkel?’

I’m all in favour of doing so—but what the mind-numbingly stupid op-ed below proposes is very far removed from anything that’s needed.

I’m reproducing it here to connect to the admission by one of the architects traitors of 2015 who at least had the courage to admit that the Open Borders™ and Refugees Welcome™ nonsense was, in fact, a bad mistake.

So, while reading on, ask yourself: who funds these clowns and what may be the ulterior motives lurking behind this nonsense? (ER: See our introduction)

Translation, emphases, and [snark] mine. As is the anger over this treason.

An Arrest Warrant for Angela Merkel?

Two international law experts want to see the former Chancellor and many other European politicians in the dock at The Hague. Sounds crazy? Unfortunately, it isn’t.

By Andrea Böhm, Die Zeit, 23 Oct 2025 [source; archived]

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has tried 70 defendants since its opening in 2002. Not exactly a large number. If Omer Shatz has his way, Angela Merkel will soon be added to that list. And Emmanuel Macron. And 120 other former or current top European politicians and EU officials [sounds too good to be true, eh?]

Omer Shatz is a French-Israeli lawyer and the director of Front-Lex, an organisation that represents refugees and migrants before international and national courts. Back in 2019, he and his colleague Juan Branco filed a lawsuit against EU politicians at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

The accusation: crimes against humanity perpetrated against thousands of predominantly African migrants and refugees who drowned while attempting to cross the Mediterranean from Libya to Europe [that’s because it is too good to be true: the EU politicos™ may be indicted because they didn’t help]. Or who were intercepted and returned to Libya, where they are subjected to torture, rape, and forced labor in detention camps. Shatz and Branco argue that European politicians are complicit because they halted the rescue of shipwrecked migrants and refugees at sea at the end of 2014 and, in the following years, expanded cooperation with Libyan militia leaders to deter migration [you know, illegally attacking a foreign country—which is what toppled the Libyan gov’t in 2011—is fine; the alleged ‘mismanagement’ of the fallout is what should get them into trouble…].

In their 2019 lawsuit, Shatz and Branco did not name any suspects. They rectified this last week. According to Shatz, this is based on years of research within EU agencies, access to confidential files and meeting minutes, and numerous interviews with EU officials [so, fine, you spent some time on this; who paid you to do so, by the way? And here’s directly from their website:

Got any questions? Here are the funders of DFF, by the way, to give you one example:

DFF is currently supported by Open Society Foundations, Adessium Foundation, Luminate, Oak Foundation, Ford Foundation, Fondation Nicolas Puech, and the Limelight Foundation. Previously, DFF received support from Robert Bosch Stiftung, Mercator Stiftung, Renewable Freedom Foundation and the Sigrid Rausing Trust, and project funding from the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) programme of the European Union and the Democracy and Media Foundation (Stichting Democratie en Media).

The Heinrich Böll and Rosa Luxemburg Foundations are the political action ‘non-profits’ of the German Green and Left (Die Linke) parties, respectively; ENAR is ‘the voice of anti-racism in Europe’, funded by ‘Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values Programme of the European Union, the Open Society Foundations, the Sigrid Rausing Trust, and the Robert Bosch Foundation’.

The Cobler Stiftung is a bit different, for it doesn’t have the same high-profile supporters; the Safe Passage Fund is a self-identifying ‘intermediary fund’ that ‘redistributes’ money for ‘collective’ purposes based in Germany; and the Sandrose Stiftung is based in Switzerland, but it looks like the only genuine such aid association.

All told: nothing new here—but I’d point out that this entire thing is a collection of very strange bedfellows: leftoid™ and far-left™ political action committees, the Soros-funded Open Societies and other such philanthropathic NGOs™, incl. Adessium (known to give freely to left™ causes), Luminate (the brainchild of oligarch Pierre Omidyar), and the Ford Foundation. Go figure. And now back to the piece]

Shatz and Branco did not name any suspects in their lawsuit [o.k., we could stop reading here for that lawsuit™ is about the same quality as the one that landed Ghilaine Maxwell behind bars™: no traffickers or clients were named]. On their list [what kind of ‘list’ is this? Some post-its on the office fridge? If they’re not in the lawsuit, this is irrelevant to the case as these legal experts™ surely know; yes, it’s a glossy, if odd-looking website, but last time I checked, that’s not how the justice™ system works™—you gotta name those people you wish to indict in your suit], alongside Merkel and Macron, are former Dutch Prime Minister and current NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, former EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Federica Mogherini, and former head of the European border agency Frontex, Fabrice Leggeri.

All of them are politicians and heads of authorities who, at the time, helped negotiate, approve, or support the key agreements on so-called migration control with Libya [ah, now I see: this is their wish-list, as in, people they wish to indict while being funded by the above-listed non-European philanthropaths, aided and abetted by leftoid™ and far-left™ NGOs—make it make sense, eh?].

From the EU’s perspective, a successful strategy.

And yet: Angela Merkel in the dock? Aren’t two activist lawyers going too far? [personally, I don’t think so, but I’d point out that if that would come to pass, these politicos™ would be there for the entirely wrong reasons]

A brief recap: in 2011, Libya’s dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi was overthrown in the wake of the Arab Spring by mass protests, an armed uprising, and its military support from NATO states [this was, under int’l law, an illegal military assault on a sovereign country, which is, by the way, actionable in legal terms—ask yourself: why aren’t these politicos™ in the dock for the allegedly ‘supreme crime’ of preparing and waging a war of aggression?]. For a few months [after the NATO-led assault], a democratic awakening seemed possible, then a power struggle broke out between various revolutionary brigades and militias.

Amidst the fighting, increasing numbers of people fled across the Mediterranean in boats. Migrants who had lost their jobs in collapsing Libya and were now subjected to racist attacks [let’s not forget why: because NATO had attacked Gaddhafi]. And refugees for whom Libya was a transit country. When around 600 people drowned off Lampedusa within a few days in October 2013, the EU reacted with horror, empathy, and a rescue mission called ‘Operation Mare Nostrum’ [end of this thread of ‘the story’, which is relevant because these antecedents, if you will, informed what comes next—which has nothing to do with Libya].

When Angela Merkel allowed several hundred thousand predominantly Syrian refugees into Germany in 2015, the willingness to accept them on the Mediterranean coast was already dwindling. Italy found itself left alone with the rescued migrants [so much for the EU’s much-vaunted solidatiry™]; a regulated distribution to other EU countries never materialised. Sea rescue operations were increasingly outsourced to the Libyan coast guard—with the stipulation that the rescued migrants be taken to camps in Libya. From the EU’s perspective, this was a successful strategy. Fewer people now reached Europe via the central Mediterranean route.

The ICC has been investigating crimes committed in connection with the Libyan civil war since March 2011. They are now also investigating human rights violations against migrants and refugees in the detention camps [never mind that they could—should, actually—investigate the illegal war of aggression waged vs. Libya]. German diplomats described the conditions there as ‘concentration camp-like’ in a confidential 2017 report to the Chancellor’s Office1.

However problematic such analogies may be, little has changed in the Libyan camps since then [because the report didn’t mention gas chambers?]. UN experts, Amnesty International, and the various chief prosecutors of the ICC have repeatedly emphasised that these are potential crimes against humanity.

The EU is making itself vulnerable to blackmail.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) declared Shatz and Branco’s 2019 complaint admissible and added it to its Libya dossier. However, the Office of the Prosecutor has so far only investigated Libyan suspects. Shatz refuses to accept this [on this, I’m with Mr. Shatz: do add Barack Obama to that list, though]. ‘The actors from the EU are, of course, not acting directly as perpetrators. They are using the Libyans as accomplices’, he said in a 2019 interview with Die Zeit [I’d call them, with Daniel Goldhagen, ‘willing executioners’].

The coast guard’s practices are well documented—and without a doubt, all those involved, past and present, in Brussels, Paris, Rome, and Berlin were and are aware of them [because they ordered them]. There are documented cases in which members of the coast guard watched as capsized migrants and refugees drowned. They repeatedly obstruct rescue operations by ships of international NGOs using force [paid for by roughly the same NGOs as listed above].

Nevertheless, the EU border agency Frontex, the Italian authorities, and the Maltese authorities regularly forward the coordinates of refugee boats to the Libyan coast guard. The shipwrecked migrants, if they have survived, are handed over to the Department for Countering Illegal Migration (DCIM) in Libya. This agency is responsible for the detention centres. Libya expert Wolfram Lacher describes their methods as follows:

DCIM units are usually closely linked to individual militias, for whom detention centres serve as a source of income. Their business models range from embezzling state funds intended for the operation of the centres to releasing prisoners in exchange for payment, as well as exploiting them through forced labor and forced prostitution.

The embezzled state funds also include money that the EU pays to improve conditions in the camps. Lacher continues, writing that European migration policy in Libya is essentially based ‘on the detention centres and the acceptance of the crimes committed within them’ [nothing new under the sun].

Now, the complaint by Omer Shatz and Juan Branco against European decision-makers responsible for this policy no longer sounds so far-fetched [it does, I’m on board with the reasoning here—but the problem is that this avenue of legal action is stupid for two main reasons: Mr. Shatz and Branco seek to create a new case-precedent under so-called humanitarian law while real-world precedent exists via the Nuremberg Military Tribunal’s judgement vs. leaders who commit the ‘supreme crime’ of preparing and waging wars of aggression; this is enshrined in the UN Charter and transposed into national legislation; on a secondary plane, we might discuss issues of jurisdiction, for the obligation to help shipwrecked people is also enshrined in international maritime law, also overseen by the UN body of the Int’l Maritime Organisation, specifically the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS), Chapter V, Regulation 33, which legally binds a ship’s commander to help2]. 

One might still consider it excessive or futile [I actually don’t; my problem is that what’s required would be consistent enforcement of the laws and conventions that exist, as opposed to the attempt to create a new case-precedent deriving from moral claims]. More interesting is the question of how the EU—and thus Germany—could have reached this point. Because with its dogma of migration control, Europe is not only becoming complicit in the most serious human rights violations, it has also made itself vulnerable to blackmail [and this is the Trojan Horse-style give-away here: the attempted legal action is about un-doing anything that reeks of borders and ‘migration control’].

EU Aids and Abets Serious Crimes [no: it orders them]

Libya is now a divided country.

The government of the western region, with its capital Tripoli, is internationally recognised. The eastern part, including the major city of Benghazi, is under the control of the self-proclaimed Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar. Haftar is considered an ally of Russia [would that ‘int’l recognition’ be of the same kind as the authority of the gov’t of Cyprus? Speaking of which, let’s do a thought experiment and replace ‘Libya’ with ‘Cyprus’ whose ‘recognised’ gov’t in Nicosia is a member-state of the EU (and hence complicit in the Libyan affair) while the Türkiye-aligned North Cypriote gov’t is ‘considered an ally of Türkiye’—you can clearly see the double standards as Ankara is similarly instrumental in this dehumanising, deadly migration control régime orchestrated by Ms. Merkel, yet for some reason or another (/irony), this is the baddie that must not be named]. He is also alleged to be supplying weapons to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in the Sudanese war [we’ll talk about this in a future posting].

When Greek authorities discovered armoured vehicles on a container ship bound for Benghazi at the end of July, they did not detain the vessel. Despite the UN arms embargo on Libya [yet another one of these violations of so-called ‘int’l law’ and the UN Charter in particular], it was allowed to continue its voyage. Apparently, the government in Athens, like officials in Brussels, feared that Haftar might retaliate for the seizure of the ship by allowing more migrants and refugees to cross to Crete.

Presumably out of fear of such blackmail by the government in Tripoli, Italy released the suspected Libyan war criminal and human trafficker Osama Almasri Njeem in January of this year. Instead of informing the International Criminal Court, which had issued an arrest warrant for Njeem, after his capture, Italian authorities put him on a plane back to Tripoli, where his supporters greeted him with jubilation.

What does this mean for European refugee and migration policy? Firstly, it clearly constitutes complicity in crimes against humanity [that’s a strong claim, and while I tend to theoretically agree, the bigger issue, I’d argue, is that these shenanigans violate domestic law, yet no-one brings this up]. Secondly, it is a betrayal of international law [what do we call a ‘betrayal’—orig. Verrat, i.e., treason] and multilateral principles, which the EU likes to see itself as upholding in these times. These principles include adherence to UN arms embargoes and cooperation with the ICC [no-one should care about ‘principles’, what matters in int’l relations is—existing law].

And it is, not least, the opposite of what its representatives claim: it is not the case that the EU that has gained control over migration across the Mediterranean. It is its highly criminal ‘gatekeepers’ in Libya and elsewhere who are increasingly gaining control over European foreign policy. Until this colossal failure is acknowledged in Europe’s capitals, alternatives cannot be considered.