@1954candangapetra
9:15PM GMT 21 Nov 2011
1 CommentOsama Jueili, head of the military council in Zintan, the town where the son of the former Libyan dictator is being held, said the issue of where he would be imprisoned might not be an issue if the punishment handed down by a court "was worse than jail".
Asked whether he hoped to see his prisoner executed, he said: "Whatever the law allows."
Mr Jueili is directly responsible for Saif al-Islam's imprisonment and has promised he is being well treated. He said yesterday he would grant the request for a lawyer, and he also took him to see a Ukrainian doctor for treatment to his injured hand.
Saif al-Islam was also filmed by a crew from the local council's media office, as the authorities reacted to claims circulating that his injuries were inflicted deliberately by his captors.
In a notorious television broadcast at the start of the uprising, Saif al-Islam wagged his fingers at the camera while calling the rebels "rats".
In response, rebel militias threatened to "cut off his fingers".
When filmed on board the plane taking him to Zintan, he was wearing bandages over the part-missing thumb and forefinger of his right hand.
In the video, he said the injuries had been caused by a Nato air-strike a month before. "We had nothing to do with it," Mr Jueili said. "We allowed the media centre to interview him to show the world he was in safe hands."
The head of the Zintan civilian council, Taher al-Tourki, also denied the story. "I have received a lot of calls saying we cut his fingers off," he said. "It is not true but no one believes us."
Mr Jueili also denied a report on Libyan television saying that Saif al-Islam had provided the information that led to the capture of Col Gaddafi's brother-in-law and right-hand man, Abdullah Senussi, as part of a "deal".
"That is completely untrue," he said.
In fact, some senior officials last night cast doubt on the story of Senussi's capture. General Ahmed al-Hamdouni, a senior military official, said he was in the hands of the Fazzan Brigade in the southern town of Sabha, but the interim prime minister, Abdulrahim Al-Keib, said the information was still being checked and another military spokesman told The Daily Telegraph that it had not been confirmed.
Saif al-Islam is likely to stay in Zintan at least until he has been interrogated by a committee put together by the Libyan attorney-general's office. A clear decision on his future will depend on the formation of a new government, due to be announced on Tuesday.
The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, is also due in Tripoli to discuss whether Libya's justice system, after 42 years of capricious Gaddafi rule, has the technical competence to conduct what is expected to be a complex and contested trial.
The ICC said it would not demand Saif al-Islam's extradition to The Hague if it agreed Libya could conduct a fair trial itself. But first, the national government will have to decide where that trial would be.
Mr Jueili relented on the Zintan council's tough line on Sunday, when it insisted Saif al-Islam should stay in the town and be put on trial there.
He said that he would follow government orders if it demanded he be handed over.
But he and the head of the civilian council, Taher al-Tourki, both said it was safer to keep him in Zintan. They said they were less worried that pro-Gaddafi remnants in Tripoli might try to release him than they were about the difficulty of keeping him safe in a city where a number of rival militias are competing and sometimes fighting for influence.
"Here we are one body," Mr Al-Tourki said. "Tripoli is our capital but who would we hand him over to? There are 20 military councils in Tripoli.
"When Tripoli is controlled by a national government then this will became a national matter."
He said he still favoured a trial in Zintan, which has been seeking greater recognition for its role in the uprising. After holding out for months when besieged by Gaddafi forces, its forces led the charge on Tripoli in August, but it now feels the government is being dominated by politicians from the eastern city of Benghazi.
Mr al-Tourki said he personally did not favour harsh punishment for Saif al-Islam. "To be honest he has been punished enough already for me," he said.
"I know he has done a lot of things, but to me it doesn't matter if he's dead or not."
The doctor who treated Saif al-Islam on Sunday said he had lost the top joint of his right forefinger and half his thumb.
Dr Andrey Murakovsky, a Ukrainian who has been living and working in Zintan for eight years, said the injuries were in a poor state and needed surgery to make a clean amputation.
He said he saw Saif al-Islam in a "private home" in the town, and that he seemed "a little scared" but otherwise in good health. "There was no sign of depression," he said.
Meanwhile, the Islamist leader who was extradited secretly to Col Gaddafi's Libya by the CIA and MI6 in 2004, Abdulhakim Belhaj, was offered but turned down a post as defence minister, The Daily Telegraph has learned.
Mr Belhaj, who is now head of the Tripoli Military Council and is still seeking an apology from Britain, has become one of the country's most divisive political figures. Secular politicians distrust him, saying he exaggerated his role in the rebellion and is too heavily supported by Qatar.
Following reports that he was about to be named defence minister, a spokesman, Ramadan Belhaj, said he had been offered the job on Sunday night but turned it down in the hope of a more senior political role after the interim government's term has expired in eight months, suggesting a run for the presidency.
"Last night he said that he would not take the offer," he said. "He might have changed his mind, I have not spoken to him about it today."
