Niger returns Gadhafi’s son to face prosecution
Print Edition
MOammar Gadhafi’s son Saadi, his special forces commander who fled abroad during Libya’s 2011 revolution, was imprisoned in Tripoli yesterday, after Niger agreed to send him back from house arrest there.
Saadi, who had a brief career as a soccer player in Italy and often lived the playboy life during his father’s rule, is the first of Gadhafi’s sons the central government has managed to arrest since the dictator was overthrown.
Gadhafi’s more prominent son Saif al-Islam has been held captive by fighters in western Libya who refuse to hand him over to a government they deem too weak to secure and try him.
Eager to close another chapter from the four-decade Gadhafi rule, Tripoli had long been seeking the extradition of Saadi, who had fled to the southern neighbor by slipping over the sub-Saharan border after the uprising.
“The Libyan government received today Saadi Gadhafi and he arrived in Tripoli,” Prime Minister Ali Zeidan’s cabinet said in a statement that thanked Niger’s government for its help.
The government said Saadi, 40, would be treated according to international law.
Since escaping Libya, he had been held under house arrest in the Niger capital Niamey. Libyan authorities believe he was active from there in fomenting unrest in southern Libyan.
Within an hour of the news of his arrival, a militia on the Libyan state payroll published photographs of an uncomfortable looking Saadi in a blue prison jumpsuit, kneeling while a guard shaved his beard and head with an electric razor.
Libyan state prosecutors are investigating Saadi for crimes in suppressing the eight-month uprising against his father, state news agency LANA said.
Tripoli also wants to try him for allegedly misappropriating property by force and for alleged armed intimidation when he headed the Libyan Football Federation.
Niger sources said Saadi was spirited into Libya on board a Libyan plane overnight, accompanied by Libyan security agents.
Saadi is not wanted by the International Criminal Court.
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