All war crimes allegations against NATO, National Transitional Council (NTC), and pro-Qaddafi forces committed during the recent conflict will be investigated "impartially and independently" according to a statement (PDF) by the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC), Luis Moreno-Ocampo. In his statement to the UN Security Council, Ocampo gave an update on the events in Libya regarding the ICC investigation. According to the statement, after obtaining the required documents confirming Moammar Qaddafi's death, the case against him (PDF) will likely be dropped. The statement continued by detailing the cases against Saif al-Islam Qaddafi (PDF), Moammar Qaddafi's son, and Abdullah al-Senussi (PDF), Libya's head of intelligence, and what is being done to secure their capture.

Two days after two Spanish aid workers and one Italian were abducted by suspected al-Qaeda militants at the Sahrawi refugee camps of Tindouf in western Algeria, Spain on Nov. 1 called for a UN investigation to evaluate the security situation in the camps, and to probe possible corruption in the distribution of international aid there. "We have asked the United Nations to send a mission to Algeria to assess the security situation in the camps of Tindouf," Spanish Foreign Minister Trinidad Jimenez told reporter after talks in Rabat with her Moroccan counterpart Taieb Fassi Fihri. The camps are under the control of the Polisario Front, which seeks the independence of neighboring Western Sahara from Morocco. Algeria, which traditionally backs the Polisario Front, has reportedly deployed both ground and air forces in an "urgent" operation in the remote Saharan region to prevent the escape of the kidnappers. (Al-Arabiya, Oct. 25)

Abdurraheem el-Keib, a dual US-Libyan citizen, was elected prime minister of Libya by leaders of the National Transitional Council who voted in a televised event Oct. 31, dropping ballots into a transparent box. Keib, described favorably as a "technocrat" by the Washington Post, attended the University of Tripoli in 1973, earned his MS at the University of Southern California in 1976, and his Ph.d. at North Carolina State University in 1984. He has taught at the University of Alabama and the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Most recently, he served as chair of the Electrical Engineering Department at the UAE's Petroleum Institute before joining Libya's interim council in the spring. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), the US Department of Energy (DoE), Southern Company Services (SC), and the Alabama Power Company (APCO). (AntiWar.com, Nov. 1; WP, Oct. 31; The Petroleum Institute)

The UN Security Council voted unanimously Oct. 27 to lift the no-fly zone over Libya, bringing to a close the seven-month international military action in the country. But the war on the ground may not be over. Following demands by Human Rights Watch, the NTC says it will investigate allegations of reprisal attacks against residents of Tawergha and Sirte—towns said to have supported Moammar Qaddafi and sheltered his forces. HRW reports that militias from Misrata are terrorizing the displaced residents of outlying Tawergha, accusing them of having collaborated in the Qaddafi forces' long and bloody siege of the city. The entire town of 30,000 people is abandoned—some of it ransacked and burned, according to HRW investigators. (CNN, HRW via AllAfrica.com, Oct. 30; WSJ, Oct. 28)

Swiss Federal Judicial Police on Oct. 19 arrested Algeria's former defense minister Khaled Nezzar for questioning by prosecutors on "suspicion of war crimes." Nezzar, 73, was detained while in Geneva for medical treatment. The Swiss group Track Impunity Always (TRIAL) said the investigation was prompted by complaints by two victims stemming from Algeria's 1990s civil war pitting Islamist extremists against government forces, in which some 100,000 were killed. "The winds of the Arab Spring have reached Switzerland," said TRIAL's director Philip Grant. However, TRIAL criticized the Swiss prosecutor for releasing Nezzar "on the basis of a promise to attend" future hearings. TRIAL said he should have been kept in protective custody as he presented a high flight risk. (El Watan, Algeria, Oct. 24; AFP, Reuters, Oct. 22)

Jubilation erupted in Tripoli as news broke that Moammar Qaddafi had died after being captured in Sirte Oct. 20. But the circumstances of his death are greatly disputed. Initial reports said he was found hiding in a drainage tunnel after having been injured in a NATO airstrike on a convoy fleeing the town. Other reports indicated he was caught in crossfire after his capture. Images first showed him alive; other images then emerged of his gruesome corpse. "Keep him alive, keep him alive!" someone shouts in one video clip—just before gunshots ring out and the camera veers off. One National Transitional Council official speculated to the BBC that he was shot by own colleagues. By some reports, he died in a hospital in Misrata; by other accounts he was already dead upon arrival in the city. His son Mutassim is reported to have been killed alongside him. His other son Saif escaped from Sirte and remains at large.

Striking workers at Libya's Waha Oil firm have agreed to return to work after a company official said the government supports the dismissal of chairman Bashir Elshahab (also rendered Alashhab). Sources in the National Oil Corporation confirmed the decision. Workers went on strike last month to protest against Elshahab, who is accused of being a supporter of ousted dictator Moammar Qaddafi. Waha Oil, Libya's largest operation with foreign partners, is a joint venture with the US companies ConocoPhillips, Marathon and Amerada Hess. Its oilfields were used as bases by Qaddafi's fighters, bombed by NATO and then sabotaged by fleeing Qaddafi-loyalist forces. Before the conflict, it pumped nearly half a million barrels of oil per day but it is now producing no crude. The chairman of the Sirte Oil company has already been dismissed and replaced. (Reuters, WSJ, Oct. 14; Reuters, Oct. 2)

In some of the worst political violence since the fall of Moammar Qaddafi two months ago, a gun battle broke out in Tripoli Oct. 14 between supporters and opponents of the ousted dictator. The Washington Post says "truckloads of revolutionary gunmen clutching automatic rifles roared off to the Tripoli neighborhood of Abu Salim after reports emerged of a group of armed people there waving the green flag of Gaddafi's government." In the ambiguity of this lengthy transition period, it is necessary to glean from context which side are the "revolutionaries." (It's almost as bad as the lack of any consistency in the spelling of "Qaddafi.") There were no reports of casualties, but Col. Ahmed Bani, spokesman for Libya's new Defense Ministry, said: "Qaddafi's still alive, so the world is still in danger." Note the implicit play to aid from Western imperialism—Qaddafi is not just a risk to Libyans, but to "the world" (read: the West), as if he were Saddam Hussein. Never mind that for nearly the past 10 years, the West had been happy to embrace the despot as a GWOT ally and proxy.