Criminal court plays cat and mouse to talk to Gaddafi’s son

DETAILS of an extraordinary cat-and-mouse game played in Libya by International Criminal Court officials as they tried to talk freely to war crimes suspect Saif Gaddafi were inadvertently released yesterday.

The ICC published a report on its website chronicling a prison visit to Libya that reads like a thriller, as court officials tried to outfox local officials to find out whether Gaddafi was being mistreated in captivity.

In her report, court registrar Silvana Arbia reveals that she was allowed only five minutes alone with Gaddafi, who then indicated he had had his fingers cut off, a tooth knocked out, was denied a proper bed and had no idea if it was day or night as he was not allowed to see the sun.

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The extraordinary report comes as Libya this week announced it will defy the ICC, and with it the United Nations, by holding Gaddafi’s war crimes trial at home in violation of orders to surrender the suspect to The Hague.

Hours after the document was released yesterday, the court realised it had made a mistake, sending a second e-mail announcing: “reclassify as confidential, please destroy”.

However, the document had by then received wide circulation, and is likely to add to the anger building among ICC judges after Libya confirmed this week it will try, and possibly execute Gaddafi, before elections in June.

The ICC was instructed last year by the UN Security Council to investigate the Libyan conflict, and has charged Gaddafi with war crimes and crimes against humanity.

London-educated Gaddafi, 39, was once seen as the designated successor of his executed father, Muammar. He was captured by a rebel unit fleeing through the Sahara in November, and his confinement by that unit, in the mountain town of Zintan, proved the first problem when ICC officers tried to visit him in March.

The report reveals that the Libyan authorities cancelled the visit at short notice, complaining that the militia were first demanding payment of “salaries” before allowing Hague officers to visit. Only when the officers indicated they would complain to the UN Security Council did Tripoli have a change of heart.

But when the officials arrived at the fortified building in Zintan, 90 miles south of Tripoli, they were told they could not be alone with Gaddafi.

Anxious to discover whether he was being mistreated, the official records resorting to an interview with Gaddafi in English, with the court translator only giving segments for the Libyan prosecutor present in the room.

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Only when the prosecutor excused himself was it possible to ask Gaddafi direct questions.

The official wrote: “The registry representative quickly asked the suspect how he was and whether he was mistreated. His [Gaddafi’s] attitude changed from relaxed to intense and without saying a word he waived [sic] the hand where two fingers were missing and pointed to a missing tooth in the upper front of his dentition. He then said that he was kept in total isolation, that he had not seen the sunlight.”

The report comes after a damning verdict from Gaddafi’s ICC-appointed defence lawyer who last week accused the Libyan authorities of keeping Gaddafi in isolation and misleading ICC officials by claiming he is being charged only with owning camels without a licence and failing to clean a fish farm.

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