ADVERTISEMENT

Life on the Run No Bar to Qaddafi Son Leading Libya, Russia Says

Life on the Run No Bar to Qaddafi Son Leading Libya, Russia Says

(Bloomberg) -- The son of deposed Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi has the right to run for president next year despite facing charges of crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court, a top Russian official said.

Saif al-Islam, a one-time heir apparent to his father who has leadership ambitions, could become a unifying figure in the oil-rich but chaotic North African state, said Mikhail Bogdanov, the Middle East envoy of President Vladimir Putin. “I think it will depend on their political will” in Libya, he said in an interview in Moscow this week. “The country has practically fallen apart, Libyans find it very hard to talk to each other.”

Life on the Run No Bar to Qaddafi Son Leading Libya, Russia Says

Qaddafi’s son is wanted by The Hague-based tribunal for crimes against humanity relating to a violent crackdown on demonstrations against his father’s rule in 2011. The Libyan autocrat was overthrown and killed later that year, ending more than four decades in power. The court’s chief prosecutor in October rejected a bid by Saif al-Islam to have the charges dropped, with his defense arguing he’d been convicted of the same offenses in Libya.

Saif al-Islam, who was held by the Zintan militia in western Libya after his capture in 2011, was tried in a Tripoli court in absentia and convicted in 2015. The rebels holding him decided to free him in 2016 after Libya’s eastern-based parliament declared a general amnesty. He hasn’t been seen in public since. Bogdanov said he is in touch by phone with Saif al-Islam, who’s assured him that he’s safe. “Where is he? I don’t want to know.”

Arrest Sought

Tripoli prosecutors continue to seek the arrest of Saif al-Islam, saying he needs to be re-tried because he wasn’t present for the original hearings.

“The local Libyan legislature and judicial authorities have already delivered a verdict that he shouldn’t be pursued and has the right to participate in the political life of the country like any other Libyan citizen,” said Bogdanov, who is also deputy foreign minister. He noted that neither Russia nor the U.S. recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC.

Still, the outstanding charges mean Qaddafi’s son can’t make a comeback unless they are resolved through a “wider national reconciliation process,” said Mohamed Eljarh, co-founder of Libya Outlook for Research and Consulting, a Tobruk-based think tank.

In addition to Saif al-Islam, eastern military strongman Khalifa Haftar also has presidential ambitions, and other rival centers of power include the United Nations-backed government in Tripoli led by Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj and the western Misrata region.

Russia’s Bogdanov said the only way out of the crisis in Libya, where UN-supervised elections are planned for spring 2019, is for the rival Libyan factions to agree among themselves on power-sharing and Moscow is working to convince them.

To contact the reporters on this story: Henry Meyer in Moscow at hmeyer4@bloomberg.net;Stepan Kravchenko in Moscow at skravchenko@bloomberg.net;Samer Khalil Al-Atrush in Cairo at skhalilalatr@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Gregory L. White at gwhite64@bloomberg.net, Torrey Clark

©2018 Bloomberg L.P.