[JURIST] The Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) [official website] issued an arrest warrant for former prime minister Al Baghdadi Ali Al-Mahmoudi on Wednesday. Al-Mahmoudi was arrested in Tunisia [JURIST report] last week and sentenced to six months in prison for illegally entering the country. The conviction was overturned [BBC report] by a Tunisian appeals court, however. Al-Mahmoudi has since gone on hunger strike [AFP report] in response to his detention by Tunisian authorities who are holding him based on a request from INTERPOL [official website].

Last month Al-Mahmoudi requested that the UN create a “high-level commission” to investigate alleged human rights abuses [JURIST report] by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) [official website]. Although NATO was mandated by the UN to use force in order to stop Muammar Gaddafi from fomenting violence upon Libyan citizens, the campaign has allegedly gone beyond the scope of protecting civilians and recently led to the death of 85 civilians in one night after NATO forces bombed a residential area supposedly housing a rebel command center. In June, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) [official website] decided to extend a mandate to an investigative panel instructing it to continue its investigation of human rights abuses in Libya, after it published a 92-page report [JURIST reports]. The report claims Libyan authorities have committed crimes against humanity such as acts constituting murder, imprisonment and other severe deprivations of physical liberties, torture, forced disappearances and rape “as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population with knowledge of the attack.”