Social-media platforms are destroying evidence of war crimes

“PUT YOURICC hands up! Put your hands up!” shouts a gunman at his hooded captive, who already has two hands in the air and shuffles about, seemingly unsure what more to do. The gunman then shoots his victim to the ground before firing more bullets into the body and saying: “You have been misled by Satan.”Until fairly recently, brutal acts such as this might never have come to light. But a video showing this murder was posted on Facebook in 2016. A year later the International Criminal Court () issued its first-ever warrant that relied, in large part, on videos posted on social media by the perpetrators of war crimes themselves. It called for the arrest of Mahmoud al-Werfalli, a Libyan warlord (pictured). It accused him of being the gunman in the killing described above and of being responsible for murdering 33 people in seven incidents captured in videos on Facebook.