Gaddafi's son, intelligence chief and PM among defendants in crucial trial

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/19/gaddafi-son-pm-trial

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Libya embarks on its most important trial in the post-Gaddafi era on Thursday as the former ruler's son, his intelligence chief and his prime minister face charges that could see them executed.

They are among a total of 38 defendants, representing much of the former regime's upper echelon, who face accusations ranging from murder and incitement to rape to kidnapping, torture and theft of state assets.

Fears of violence from Gaddafi loyalists saw the authorities switch the trial venue at the eleventh hour, with the case to open within Tripoli's maximum security Hadba prison, where most are incarcerated.

"We have to take precautions," said the secretary of the indictment hearing, who declined to give his name on security grounds. "Libyan society has strong [tribal] relationships – there are loyalties to some of these men, no matter that bad things happened."

The exception is Saif al-Islam, 41, Muammar Gaddafi's son, who remains in the mountain town of Zintan with the powerful militia which captured him two years ago refusing to hand him over to government custody.

For the moment, say officials, Gaddafi will stay where he is. "Saif is the first defendant on the list. He is still there in Zintan, the problem of being brought here has not been solved," said prosecution official Siddiq Ahmed Issour.

Of the others. Abdullah al-Senussi, the regime's former intelligence chief, is accused of masterminding decades of terror, at home and abroad.

Gaddafi's former prime minister Baghdadi Mahmuti, 68, extradited from Tunisia last year, faces accusations of massive fraud at the helm of the Libyan Investment Authority, one of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds.

On Wednesday evening prosecutors displayed the evidence against the men packed into innocuous cardboard photocopy paper boxes stacked by a desk in the attorney general's office. Inside, say officials, are four thousand separate statements detailing alleged crimes from Libya's Arab spring uprising and the decades of oppression that went before.

A single prosecutor will outline the case before the judge, with the defendants represented by 12 court-appointed lawyers, each responsible for three or four of the accused.

Officials say if the indictments are confirmed each man will get his own lawyer. The defendants have been promised a transparent process.

"It's a single judge who will examine the evidence and will decide whether they should go to trial," justice minister Salah Marghani told the Guardian. "What is good about all this – if I may use the world 'good' – is that we're trying things [accusations], we're doing things on the ground."

Senussi, 63, was chief hatchet-man to one of the world's most brutal and idiosyncratic regimes. Married to Muammar Gaddafi's sister-in-law, Senussi oversaw an oppression that revelled in public displays of brutality.

Sport stadiums were used to stage mass executions that were broadcast on live television. Senussi is most reviled for one particular crime, the massacre of 1,200 political prisoners at Tripoli's Abu Salim prison in 1996, which witnesses say he personally supervised.

Abroad, Senussi is linked to a wave of killings, including the 1984 shooting of British PC Yvonne Fletcher and the Lockerbie bombing; France has already convicted him in absentia over the destruction of a French airliner over the Sahara in 1989.

The case against Saif al-Islam Gaddafi explores the excesses and wild years of the former ruler's children.

Gaddafi was an intermediary in his father's foreign dealings, arranging with British authorities the return in 2008 of the convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and giving big oil concessions to BP shortly afterwards.

In the early days, Gaddafi portrayed himself as a reformer. That vanished with the coming of war, when he famously wagged his finger at rebels on state television. When he was presented to the world in November 2011, after being captured in the Sahara trying to flee Libya, that finger was missing.

The trial puts Libya in violation of demands by the international criminal court that Gaddafi and Senussi be handed over to the Hague where they are accused of crimes against humanity.

And it takes place with much of the country in chaos, with striking army units blockading oil ports, militia violence common and jihadists blamed for a wave of bombings and kidnappings.

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