Victor’s justice? Zintani rebels pledge to try Saif al-Islam

The leaders of Libya’s mountain town of Zintan say they will hold the war crimes trial of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi at home, posing a further complication to a tug-of-war for the suspect being fought by Libya and the International Criminal Court (ICC).
By Chris Stephen, Tripoli
[related-articles]The leaders of Libya’s mountain town of Zintan say they will hold the war crimes trial of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi at home, posing a further complication to the tug-of-war over the suspect between Libya and the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The ICC last Wednesday threw out an appeal filed by Libya on April 6 against the court’s demand that Muammar Gaddafi’s jailed son be transferred to The Hague to face charges of crimes against humanity. “The Appeals Chamber … dismisses the appeal as inadmissible,” judges said. Despite Libya’s refusal to hand Gaddafi over to the ICC, there are signs the impasse could be resolved, after Libya’s National Transitional Council submitted a formal request to the ICC to host the trial in Tripoli.
However, Zintan, which controls one of the most powerful militias in Libya, insists that any trial will be held on its territory. Town officials cite security concerns. “It is not safe in Tripoli,” Zintan city council leader Dr Attaher Eturki told Radio Netherlands. “If you just sit down to think about it, the government is very weak, they can’t control their country.”
Zintan has almost completed work on rebuilding its courthouse, gutted in last year’s civil war, and says it is happy for the trial to be conducted by government agencies. Dr Eturki said there was no constitutional obstacle to the trial being held in the town, 90 miles southwest of Tripoli. “Zintan is a part of Libya, so it doesn’t matter where [the trial is held],” he said.
Following its declaration that it would submit to scrutiny from the ICC over its demands to hold Gaddafi’s trial on home soil, Libya has hired high profile British lawyer Phillipe Sands to represent it. Zintan is one of a number of towns where militias accuse the central government of secrecy. The government, for its part, has failed to convince Libyans there to join a new state-controlled security force.
Good security
Zintan can boast of good security in its mountain town, where well-organised militias control all entry points - a vivid contrast to much of the rest of Libya, where sporadic tribal warfare continues. Tripoli sees nightly gunfire, and last week a local militia stole a US embassy vehicle at gunpoint in the east of the city. Libya’s own handling of the Gaddafi case has come under further scrutiny after claims by the ICC’s court-appointed defence lawyer that only female ICC staff were allowed to meet Gaddafi during an official visit in March.
“The ICC delegation would only be approved if it was composed of females,” writes ICC principle defence council Xavier-Jean Keïta in a recent report to Hague judges. “They would only allow female representatives from Registry and OPCD (Office of the Public Council for the Defence). These were the final conditions, and if the ICC did not agree, the visit would not occur.”
Keita, who last month called on The Hague to report Libya to the UN Security Council for non-compliance with the court, said he and the registry delegation agreed to send female representatives because the meeting was their “overarching objective.” This report follows another by Keita in which he claims Libyan officials told him Gaddafi was being investigated not for war crimes, but for “failure to license two camels.”
Fair trial?
Libya has made no comment on these reports. But if ICC judges take them into account, it may complicate Tripoli’s application to try Gaddafi, given that The Hague must be satisfied that a fair trial can be guaranteed. Zintani officials made no mention of the ICC demands for Gaddafi to be handed over for trial, nor did they give a trial date, saying it would depend on justice officials in Tripoli.
Last month Libya’s justice ministry said Gaddafi’s trial would be completed before elections, expected by June 23, but the ICC will not issue a formal decision on any challenge in time for such a trial. The Libyan justice ministry has no press office and has not clarified what its position will now be.
Separately, Libya and the ICC are also calling on Mauritania to hand over a second Hague indictee, Libya’s former intelligence chief Abdullah Sanussi, arrested there in March and also wanted by France, which has convicted him in absentia for the destruction of an airliner in 1989.