INTERNATIONAL COURT:CHIEF PROSECUTOR at the International Criminal Court Luis Moreno-Ocampo has said there is an obligation on Libyan rebels to surrender Muammar Gadafy's captured son into custody to face charges of crimes against humanity.
However, despite his insistence that Saif al-Islam be handed over, in accordance with last February’s UN Security Council resolution, the court also acknowledged that he could be tried in Libya – if judges in The Hague believed the case could be conducted there.
The court was in initial contact last night with the rebels’ National Transitional Council to open discussions on how best to handle the capture of al-Islam, who acted as the country’s de facto prime minister.
“We hope that he can be in The Hague soon to face judgment,” said Mr Moreno-Ocampo.
An International Criminal Court spokesman, Fadi el-Abdallah, said the UN-sponsored court could not rule out the possibility that al-Islam might not be extradited to The Hague, but instead could face charges in Libya, if the conditions were right.
A national prosecution, he said, would require a challenge to the admissibility of the case already before the international court, based on the principle of complementarity – in other words, the principle that the court was intended to complement rather than replace a country’s judicial system. The possibility of this happening was given weight by rebel envoy in Paris, Mansour al-Nasr: “Everything is possible. It is up to the [transitional council] to decide. It is possible he’ll be handed over to the ICC, but it’s also possible that he won’t.”
In June, judges at The Hague issued arrest warrants for Col Gadafy, Saif al-Islam and Abdullah al-Sanoussi, Gadafy’s brother-in- law and security chief, known as “the executioner”, for murder and persecution in Tripoli, Benghazi and Misurata.
