TRIPOLI: Abdullah Al-Senussi, Libya's feared former intelligence chief, was cornered and captured at a remote desert homestead on Sunday, a day after Muammar Qaddafi's son was seized by Libyan fighters in the same region.A commander of former rebel forces nominally loyal to the National Transitional Council (NTC), General Ahmed Al-Hamdouni, told Reuters that his men, acting on a tip, had found and surrounded Senussi at a house belonging to his sister near the town of Birak, about 500 km (300 miles) south of Tripoli and in the same general area as Seif Al-Islam was seized on Saturday.
NTC spokesman Abdul Hafez Ghoga later confirmed that Senussi, who is Seif Al-Islam's uncle by marriage, had been captured. It was not immediately clear if the arrests were linked, though there has been speculation since the fall of Tripoli three months ago that the pair were hiding together.
Fighters who intercepted Seif Al-Islam on a desert road in the early hours of Saturday said they believed one of his companions was also a nephew of Senussi, whose wife is a sister of Muammar Qaddafi's second wife Safiya.
Like Muammar Qaddafi, who was captured and killed on the coast a month ago on Sunday, Seif Al-Islam and Senussi were indicted this year by the International Criminal Court for alleged plans to kill protesters after the Arab Spring revolt erupted in February.
But NTC officials have said they can convince the ICC to let them try both men in Libya. Ghoga said NTC members meeting on Sunday had confirmed that preference, as did the current justice minister -- although legal experts point out that international law demands Tripoli make a strong case for the right to try anyone who has already been indicted by the ICC.
| Possession is 9/10ths, folks. The accused are Libyan nationals and the new Libyan government is internationally recognized as such. It's their business unless they choose to involve the ICC. |
| Can you say, 'persona non grata'? |
| And that's exactly why the Euros want them--hanging is icky, you see. |
The case of Senussi, long the elder Qaddafi's right-hand man and enforcer, may also revive interest in international incidents long shrouded in mystery, from the days in the 1980s and 90s when Qaddafi's Libya waged undercover war on the West. Senussi's name has been linked with the Lockerbie bombing of 1988. He was among six Libyans convicted in absentia in Paris of bringing down a French UTA airliner a year later.