Gadhafi’s son faces ICC trial
GENEVA: Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, the son of Libya’s ousted dictator, should be turned over to the International Criminal Court to be tried on war crimes charges, the United Nations said on Tuesday, adding that he did not get a fair trial in Libya.
But the question is, who will hand him over?
A court in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, convicted Gadhafi in July 2015 and condemned him to death, but he was not in the court’s custody. Gadhafi had been detained by a militia in the northwestern city of Zintan and took part in the proceedings only by video link. The militia refused to hand him over to the Tripoli authorities, citing security issues.
A year after the verdict, the commander of the militia announced Gadhafi had been released under an amnesty decree issued by the Libyan government. Gadhafi has not been seen in public since, the UN said, and his status is unclear. He may still be held by the militia.
In the Tripoli trial, Gadhafi and 36 other defendants were charged with indiscriminate attacks on civilians and other crimes committed during the 2011 revolution that toppled Gadhafi’s father, Moammar Gadhafi. Nine of the defendants were sentenced to death, including Seif Gadhafi and Abdullah al-Senussi, his father’s intelligence chief.
Although the trial was the first significant effort to bring members of the former government to justice, UN human rights officials said in their report on Tuesday, the proceedings fell far short of international standards.
Defendants were held incommunicado for long periods, the report said, and there was no proper investigation of allegations that they were tortured. Defence lawyers complained frequently of obstacles to meeting with their clients and were given little opportunity to challenge the prosecution, which presented no witnesses at the trial, the report said.
The convictions in Tripoli and sentences are being reviewed by an appeals court in Libya, a process that UN officials said could take years. Those proceedings put Libya in conflict with the ICC in The Hague.
Senussi’s lawyer, Rodney Dixon, said on Tuesday “many qualified people have criticised these trials” conducted by the Libyan courts, including advocacy groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. “Hopefully, this UN report may now make a difference and at the very least, the death sentences should be suspended,” Mr Dixon said.
The purpose of the court is to try cases of war crimes and crimes against humanity when national courts are unwilling or unable to do so.
Libya, a member of the court, has insisted on trying t he cases itself, before the international court gets involved. But the UN Security Council referred the matter to the court in 2011 and the court issued warrants for Seif Gadhafi later that year.
Senussi was also indicted by the international court, but the court’s judges decided that he could be tried in Libya, while maintaining that Gadhafi should be tried in The Hague.
The UN said on Tuesday Libya needed to hand Gadhafi over to comply with its international obligations.
UN officials last saw Gadhafi in person in June 2014 in Zintan, where he was held in a cage for a hearing in a makeshift courtroom, Claudio Cordone of the UN human rights office told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday.
The international court’s prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, told the Security Council in November that Libyan authorities disputed the reports of Gadhafi’s release, saying he was still being held by the Zintan militia.