Rebels to hold Gaddafi son until court set up

The rebels who captured Muammar Gaddafi’s son and one-time heir apparent say they will hold him until a court system is set up in Libya and are demanding that he be tried inside the country.

Rebels from the western mountain town of Zintan captured Saif al-Islam in the southern Libyan desert, raising questions about whether they will turn him over to the new transitional government in Tripoli that took power after Gaddafi fell or to the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands, which wants to try him on charges of crimes against humanity.

The head of Zintan’s military council, Colonel Mohammed al-Khabash, said today that Seif al-Islam will be held in Zintan until a court system is established in Libya.

Thunderous celebratory gunfire shook the Libyan capital of Tripoli and other cities yesterday after Libyan officials said Saif al-Islam, who has been charged by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, had been detained about 30 miles west of the town of Obari in an area that borders Niger, Mali and Algeria.

A photograph was widely circulated showing the 39-year-old son in custody, sitting by a bed and holding up three bandaged fingers as a guard looks on, although Osama Juwaid, a spokesman for the fighters from Zintan who made the arrest, said it was an old injury caused by a Nato airstrike and the detainee was otherwise in good health.

“I am hopeful that the capture of Gaddafi’s son is the beginning of a chapter of transparency and democracy and freedom,” Libya’s interim prime minister Abdurrahim el-Keib said at a news conference in the mountain town of Zintan, where Seif al-Islam was taken after his capture.

ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo said that he will travel to Libya for talks with the country’s transitional government on where the trial will take place.

Mr Ocampo said that while national governments have the first right to try their own citizens for war crimes, his primary goal was to ensure Seif al-Islam has a fair trial.

“The good news is that Seif al-Islam is arrested, he is alive, and now he will face justice,” Mr Ocampo. “Where and how, we will discuss it.”

Saif al-Islam’s capture leaves only former intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senoussi wanted by the ICC, which indicted the two men along with Gaddafi in June for unleashing a campaign of murder and torture to suppress the uprising against the Gaddafi regime that broke out in mid-February.

Protests inspired by the so-called Arab Spring sweeping the region soon escalated into a civil war, with Nato launching airstrikes under a UN-mandate to protect civilians.

Other photos and video clips showed Saif al-Islam wearing glasses and a beard, clothed in brown robes and a turban in the style of ethnic Tuaregs, a nomadic community that spans the desert border area of Niger, Mali, Libya, Algeria and Chad and long fought for his father’s regime.

In some, he was bundled onto an airplane that apparently carried him to Zintan, 85 miles south west of Tripoli.