Thread: Saif Gaddafi arrested

At least according to the NTC Justice minister.

Details follow.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

At least according to the NTC Justice minister.

Details follow.

So, who is that bloke in the kebab house in Albany Road ?

Gaddafi son Saif seized in Libya - officials
Alastair Macdonald
Sat Nov 19, 2011



Muammar Gaddafi's son and heir apparent Saif al-Islam has been detained in the southern desert, Libya's interim justice minister and other officials said on Saturday.

They said Saif al-Islam and several bodyguards, but no other senior figures from the ousted administration, had been taken near the town of Obari by fighters based in the western mountain town of Zintan

"We have arrested Saif al-Islam Gaddafi in the Obari area," Justice Minister Mohammed al-Alagy told Reuters, adding that the 39-year-old who is wanted for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court at The Hague was not injured.

Another senior official in the executive of the National Transitional Council (NTC) told Reuters that the interim government was still checking the details of what had happened.

There was no word of the other official wanted by the ICC, former intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi.

The news broke as fighters from Zintan, a powerful faction among the many armed groups currently dominating Libya while the NTC tries to form a new government, started celebrating in Tripoli.

Bashir Thaelba, a Zintan field commander who had called a news conference on another issue, told reporters in the capital that Gaddafi would be held in Zintan until there was a government to hand him over to. The government is due to be formed within days.

"The rebels of Zintan announce that Saif al-Islam Gaddafi has been arrested along with three of his aides today," Thaelba said in remarks carried on Libyan television. "We hope at this historical moment that the future of Libya will be bright."

Gaddafi's father was killed a month ago on Sunday after being captured in his hometown of Sirte on the coast.

uk.reuters.com

I wonder what's getting shoved up his arse at the moment if it's true?

Halal sausage?

have just heard an almighty scream.

Libya's National Transitional Council is to vote on whether Saif al Islam Gaddafi is to be tried in Libya or handed over to the ICC at The Hague.

Sky sources understand that the vote could take place today.
However, the Libyan fighters who caught Saif have said they will not hand him over to the NTC unless they are guaranteed he will be tried in Libya.
The group, known as the Zintan brigade, reiterated their intention to hold Saif - who was captured on Saturday - until an elected government has been set up in the country.
The detention and subsequent trial will be a stern test of the National Transitional Council's influence over its regional factions.
They have given assurances that the 39-year-old will be tried in accordance with international guidelines amid fears he would meet the same fate as his father.
"I reassure our people and the world that Saif, and those with him, will be given a fair trial in which international rights and norms will be guaranteed," interim Prime Minister Abdel Rahim al Kib told a news conference in Zintan.
Saif al Islam pictured on a plane to Zintan after his arrest

"The judicial authorities will communicate with the International Criminal Court to examine where Saif al Islam must be tried," he said.
Saif was taken in southern Libya along with two aides who were trying to smuggle him out to neighbouring Niger.
His arrest after months on the run sparked a wave of celebrations among jubilant citizens across newly liberated Libya.
However, there is pressure on the NTC to ensure a civilized trial takes place for the former heir apparent who is charged with crimes against humanity.
International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo will travel to Tripoli in the next few days to discuss arrangements for the trial, including where it will be staged.
A spokesman for the ICC on Saturday said the NTC has an obligation to surrender Saif to the court in accordance with the UN resolution.
This image, reportedly showing Saif moments after his detention, was circulated by the Free Libya group

"The Libyan authorities have an obligation to cooperate with the court, including with respect to the arrest and surrender of Seif al-Islam to the court as indicated in the UN's resolution," Fadi El-Abdallah said.
But he added: "If Libyan authorities believe that a trial at national level is a better solution, they can ask that the case not be admitted in The Hague, based on the court's complementary principle.
"If they want a trial in Libya, they must submit a request for dismissal and procedures in Libya must be conducted on the same charges as those contained in the warrant of the ICC."
In the UK, Prime Minister David Cameron has offered support to the ICC and the NTC to ensure Saif al Islam faces justice for his role in the "barbaric" reign of terror.
Mr Cameron said: "The Libyan government's announcement of Saif al Islam's arrest shows we are near the end of the final chapter of the Gaddafi regime.
"It is a great achievement for the Libyan people and must now become a victory for international justice too.
Military Council Guarantees Saif Al Islam's Safety



"He could have contributed to a more open and decent future for his country, but instead chose to lead a bloody and barbaric campaign against his own people. The fate of the Gaddafis should act as a warning to brutal dictators everywhere.
"Britain will offer every assistance to the Libyan government and the International Criminal Court to bring him to face full accountability and justice for what he has done."
Foreign Office minister Alistair Burt added that while it is important for the UK government to offer support to Libya, it must not interfere with the judicial process.
He told Dermot Murnaghan on Sky News: "We have got confidence in both the ICC and what we have heard from the Libyan authorities that between them they will be able to work out where a trial will be held and then it will be held under international standards and conditions.
"It's very important that Saif al-Islam does have a fair trial, that he answers the charges that have been levelled against him by the Libyan people and we will support that process.
"I think the new Libyan government does understand what is at stake here. They want to show that their government is different from the regime and this trial, this opportunity to demonstrate that, is very important for them.
"I honestly think at this stage that it is much too early and rather presumptuous for all of us to be telling them what to do."
Saif al Islam was a key member of his father's inner circle and proved to be following in his footsteps in February he told Libyans on state-run television that "rivers of blood" would flow with "thousands" of deaths if the uprising did not stop.
His PhD from the London School of Economics was shrouded in controversy, even prompting the British ambassador to the US to deny claims that he helped the dictator's son with his thesis.

Libya’s brutal security chief follows Saif into captivity

A mobile phone picture taken by one of his guards shows Saif al-Islam Gaddafi sitting with his captors in Obari airport

By Chris Stephen in Zintan, Libya
Published on Monday 21 November 2011 03:00

FINALLY netting the last of those responsible for inflicting such violence upon the Libyan people, militia fighters yesterday captured the country’s former intelligence chief, Abdullah al-Senussi, flushing him from his sister’s house 40 miles south of the desert city of Sabha.
Senussi played a prime role in attempting to put down the rebellion against Muammar al-Gaddafi – but he had already built up a reputation as the brutal enforcer of Gaddafi’s will when he was the chief of internal security during a deadly purge of opponents in the early 1980s.
Many Libyans held Senussi responsible for the 1996 killing of some 1,200 inmates at Abu Salim prison in Tripoli.
The news of his capture came as Libyans in the dusty market town of Zintan were still digesting the arrival there of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the most prominent son of the former dictator.
Saif is being kept in a private house on the outskirts of this little town set in the rolling foothills of the Nafusa mountains, 100 miles south-west of Tripoli.
The rebel commander of the Zintan unit who captured him, apparently while he was trying to flee to Niger on Friday, yesterday said Saif had tried to escape arrest with the improbable declaration that he was a “camel keeper”.
“He said: ‘My name is Abdul Salem, a camel keeper,” said Ahmed Amur, a barrel-chested, grey-bearded commander still clad in the green camouflage jacket he was wearing when Saif was apprehended.
Saif’s deception was unlikely to work, given that his two-car convoy had just been intercepted and blocked by rebel jeeps tipped off about the suspect’s break for the border. “It was a VIP target, we did not know who,” said Mr Amur, who swapped his job as a professor of marine biology in February to become one of Zintan’s most effective commanders.
Saif also tried a second ruse, jumping from his jeep and throwing himself into the sand, emerging with a dirt-caked face he clearly hoped would add to his camel-keeping disguise.
The fact that he now languishes in Zintan and not in Tripoli, says much about the fractured state of post-war Libya and about the continuing role played by tribal politics.
The Nafusa rebels were, along with their comrades in Misrata, the most effective fighting formations of the seven-month war, and paid a high price in casualties. Zintan’s units advancing from the west and Misrata’s from the east captured Tripoli.
With Misrata getting the honour of capturing – and apparently executing – Col Gaddafi, Zintanis were keen to get a trophy of their own.
That trophy, in the shape of the dictator’s former son, duly arrived because the National Transitional Council (NTC) has no army of its own and relies on militia units, with their own particular tribal affiliations, for security.
Thus Zintani units were on patrol on the border, 800 miles to the south, when the chance came for an arrest.
Saif and Senussi are both wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for war crimes and crimes against humanity, but Zintanis are keen that Gaddafi’s son is not only tried in Libya, rather than overseas, but that this trial take place in Zintan itself.
“We captured him, so I think we have the right to try him,” said the town council president, Dr Omran Eturki, who gained his PhD in engineering last year at Leicester’s De Montfort University.
“The judicial authorities can appoint the judges and the lawyers, but the trial must be here.”
The NTC, which is due to approve a cabinet this week, may disagree, but it is in little shape to object, not least because Zintan has kept a powerful army in the field.
The government is facing its own problems in declaring Saif will be tried in Libya rather than The Hague: The ICC says it has no problem with this, providing the Libyan justice system is up to the task.
Many international lawyers remember the circus that was Iraq’s trial of Saddam Hussein, and fear justice will not be served unless a properly constituted court system can be formed.
Saif himself is surprisingly cheerful in captivity, given that a Libyan trial means an almost certain death sentence, with Zintan’s Ukrainian surgeon, Dr Andre Morokovsky, reporting that he is fit and in good spirits, despite missing most of the thumb and forefinger of his right hand.
A video made by Saif’s captors a showed the dictator’s son saying he was injured in a Nato air strike near Wadi Zamzam, about 90 miles south-east of Tripoli.
“He’s very nice,” said the doctor of the man accused of responsibilty for the torture, murder, bombardment and terror inflicted on thousands of Libyans. “He’s not down, he’s not scared.”
Zintan’s courthouse is a ruin and the town has no hotel, which may not make it the ideal place to hold an international war crimes trial, the conduct of which will affect how the outside world thinks of Libya for years to come.
But Zintanis, having seen off Gaddafi’s tanks with little more than raw courage, are optimistic. “I can assure you that Zintan is safe and secure enough [for a trial],” Osama Jewli, head of Misrata’s Military Council, told The Scotsman.
“Definitely I would like to see the trial here, we want to show the world that we believe in justice. If it is a fair trial I will accept the verdict, even if it means Saif walks free.”
From another man’s lips, in a town that had not fought and suffered as Zintan has, that might seem an idle boast. But from Mr Jewli, I am inclined to believe he means it.