TRIPOLI – Saif al-Islam Gadafy wants to turn himself in to the Hague war crimes court, a senior Libyan official said yesterday.
On the run in the desert, fearing for his life after his father was captured and slain and despairing of any safe haven across an African border, the 39-year-old, who many once assumed would inherit dynastic power from Muammar Gadafy, now saw a Dutch jail cell as his best option, the official said.
With him was his relative, former intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi, the third man indicted along with the two Gadafys by the International Criminal Court (ICC) after their crackdown on the popular revolt that began in February. “They are proposing a way to hand themselves over to The Hague,” said Abdel Majid Mlegta, a senior military official for the National Transitional Council. Council forces toppled Muammar Gadafy in August and overran his hometown and final bastion of Sirte a week ago, capturing and killing the dictator.
An ICC spokesman said it had no confirmation of any talks with his son. Mr Mlegta said Saif al-Islam, whose British education and talk of liberal reforms once put him at the heart of a rapprochement between his father and the West, was somewhere in the Libyan Sahara far to the south, trying to get an unnamed country to broker a deal with the ICC.
With Senussi he had contemplated escape into either Algeria, which has taken in his mother, sister and two brothers, or to Niger, where another brother has found refuge. However, Mr Mlegta said: “They feel that it is not safe for them to stay where they are, or to go anywhere.”
Further confirmation of the fugitives’ situation was not available. Mr Mlegta said that, despite the Gadafy family being assumed to have great wealth hidden away, Saif al-Islam lacked the funds to buy safe passage into Niger.
An account of his last days in Bani Walid suggest a degree of panic as his enemies closed in.
“He was nervous. He had a Thuraya (satellite phone) and he called his father many times,” said al-Senussi Sharif al-Senussi, an officer who was part of Saif al-Islam’s personal security team until Bani Walid fell to the council on October 17th. “He repeated to us: ‘don’t tell anyone where I am. Don’t let them spot me’. He was afraid of mortars. He seemed confused.” – (Reuters)