guardian.co.uk,
Peter Beaumont and Chris Stephen, Saturday 19 November 2011
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| Saif al-Islam Gaddafi sitting in a plane in Zintan, concealing his right hand which was injured in a Nato bombing. Photograph by Ismail Zitouni/Reuters Photograph: Ismail Zitouni/Reuters |
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the last remaining member of the Gaddafi family still at large
in Libya, has been arrested in the southern desert and taken to the town of
Zintan. He was caught while apparently attempting to flee the country.
Video
footage, shown on Libyan television and distributed by the country's
transitional authority, pictured him wrapped in a brown blanket and lying on a
mattress. He was holding up three heavily bandaged fingers from injuries
sustained in a Nato bombing raid a month ago as he fled the town of Bani Walid
the day before his father's death.
The late
Muammar Gaddafi's heir-apparent was looking thinner and had allowed the hair to
grow on his usually shaven head; he had also grown a beard. News of his capture
was greeted by celebratory gunfire in Tripoli.
"This
is the final chapter of the Libyan drama," information minister Mahmoud
Shammam said. "We will put him on trial in Libya and he will be judged by
Libyan law for his crimes."
Saif will
be put on trial in Libya for serious crimes that carry the death penalty,
Libya's interim justice minister said on Saturday. "He has instigated
others to kill, has misused public funds, threatened and instigated and even
took part in recruiting and bringing in mercenaries," Mohammed al-Alagi
said. He added that the charges against Saif carried the death penalty.
The foreign
secretary, William Hague, said: "I welcome the arrest of Saif al-Islam.
This represents another significant step forward in the transition to a new,
democratic Libya. He must now be held to account for his actions, and face
trial on the charges brought against him, including by the International Criminal Court."
Ahmed
Ammar, one of Saif's captors, said that his unit of 15 men in three vehicles,
acting on a tip-off, had intercepted two cars carrying Saif and four others
near the small oil town of Obari at about 1.30am on Friday.
After the
fighters fired into the air and ground in order to halt the cars, they asked
the identity of the travellers. The man in charge replied that he was
"Abdelsalam" – meaning "servant of peace". But the fighters
quickly recognised him as Saif and seized him without a fight.
"At
the beginning he was very scared. He thought we would kill him," Ammar
said. Bashir Thaelba, a Zintan commander, told reporters in the capital that
Saif would be held in Zintan until there was a government – due to be formed
within days – to whom he could be handed over.
Marek
Marczynski of Amnesty International urged the Libyans to transfer Saif to the
ICC base in the Netherlands as soon as possible. "The ICC has an arrest
warrant out for him and that is the correct thing to do. He must be brought
before a judge as soon as possible," he said.
Saif, who
studied at the London School of Economics, was once regarded as the
reform-minded and pro-western face of the regime. He gained notoriety early in
the war when he delivered a bloodthirsty 40-minute television statement to Libyans
warning that the regime planned to "eradicate" its enemies."
He was
wanted on an international warrant from the ICC for crimes against humanity,
including his indirect involvement in the deaths of opponents of his father's
regime, charges he rejected through an intermediary who contacted the court
last month.
Following
the death of his father and brother Mutassim last month, Saif, aged 39, and
former intelligence chief, Abdullah Senussi were the last two senior figures to
be sought by the new government.
A spokesman
for the Zintan brigades, Bashir al-Tlayeb, who first announced the capture in
Tripoli, said the National Transitional Council would decide where Saif would
be tried. He also said that there was still no information about Senussi's
whereabouts.
An ICC
spokesman stressed that Libya had a legal obligation to co-operate with the
international arrest warrant. "First we have to verify if it really is him
and that he's actually been arrested this time," Fadi El Abdallah, said.
"If they decide they want to try the suspect in Libya instead of at the
ICC, there's a necessary process."
He said the
Libyans could formally request that the case be transferred, then ICC judges
would make a decision. "The main criteria is that he generally be
prosecuted for the same crimes," the spokesman said. "For us there's
an obligation, a legal obligation under international law, for the national
government to co-operate with the ICC."
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