Gaddafi’s son Saif ‘in talks over his possible surrender’

The International Criminal Court is in indirect negotiations with Muammar al-Gaddafi’s son about his possible surrender for trial, the chief prosecutor said yesterday.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo said talks were being held through intermediaries.

He said they wanted to assure Saif al-Islam Gaddafi that he would receive a fair trial and that he could be helped to find a new country of residence if acquitted, adding he did not know where the son of the former Libyan leader was.

The 39-year-old was reported to be heading through the desert to Mali, where the former Libyan intelligence chief Abdullah al- Senoussi fled on Wednesday.

Saif Gaddafi and al-Senoussi were indicted in June for unleashing a campaign of murder and torture to suppress the uprising against the Gaddafi regime that broke out in February.

The news comes as Muammar al-Gaddafi’s home town of Sirte counts the heavy cost of sheltering him in the final battle of Libya’s civil war.

Much of the Mediterranean city of palm tree-lined boulevards has been destroyed. Whole neighbourhoods are uninhabitable, with shells punching huge holes through homes blackened with soot. There is no electricity or water. Debris-filled streets are flooded from broken pipes.

“It used to be a beautiful city, one of the most beautiful in Libya,” said Zarouk Abdullah, 42, a university professor, standing outside his badly damaged family home. “Today it looks like [post-war] Leningrad, Gaza or Beirut.”

Sirte once was favoured by the old regime with investment and jobs. Now, six weeks of fighting has left many of the 140,000 residents seething over what they believe was wanton destruction by vengeful anti-Gaddafi fighters.

Although some blame Gaddafi for bringing the war home by hiding here in his final days, residents feel overwhelmed by the task of reconstruction and expect little help from Libya’s interim government.

Most of the dead appear to have been removed or hastily buried, but there is still a stubborn stench of decay that remains – even a week after Gaddafi’s death, which ended the eight-month battle to oust him.

On Thursday, shovel-wielding volunteers wearing surgical or gas masks dug up shallow graves to identify and rebury bodies.

The battle for Sirte began in mid-September, or about a month after revolutionary forces had already taken control of most of Libya, including the capital of Tripoli. Sirte was one of the last holdouts, along with two other loyalist areas.

Resistance in Sirte was fierce, and three weeks into the battle, anti-Gaddafi forces had advanced only a few hundred yards into the city.

With fighting intensifying, most civilians fled, and only die-hard loyalists remained behind in the city some 250 miles southeast of Tripoli.

Yesterday, Nato confirmed it would end its Libyan mission on Monday, seven months after launching air and sea operations that helped bring the overthrow and death of Gaddafi.