Libya government furious over Saif al-Islam Gaddafi's court absence

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/19/libya-saif-islam-gaddafi-court-absence

Version 0 of 1.

The son of Libya's former dictator Muammar Gaddafi has missed a court hearing after the militia holding him refused to send him to the capital, underscoring the continued weakness of the central government after the country's civil war.

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the most prominent figure of his father's regime, appeared for a separate hearing instead in the western town of Zintan, where a militia has held him since the end of the war. The slim, bearded Gaddafi stood and sat at times in a cage inside the courtroom, wearing a blue prison uniform.

The judge adjourned the trial until 12 December over a lack of evidence. Al-Seddik al-Sur of the state prosecutor's office told reporters that authorities have asked for "justification" as to why Gaddafi was not transferred from Zintan as planned.

The Tripoli trial involves 38 former regime officials, including notorious spymaster Abdullah Senussi, but only 36 were in attendance. Thursday's hearing was to present the prosecutors' case to the judge who will then evaluate its merits and possibly order more investigations before setting the official charges. The charges are expected to revolve around the killings during the eight-month civil war in 2011.

At least a dozen men sat in prison uniforms in a row behind bars surrounded by baseball cap-wearing security guards in the Tripoli courtroom. The court itself was otherwise empty.

A few dozen people protested outside, mostly family members of those who died during the war as well as during the years of Muammar Gaddafi's rule. Women dressed in black plastered the prison wall with photographs of their dead loved ones. "Senussi killed our sons, our fathers, our brothers," said Naziha Gamary, wearing a black shawl. "Now we want him to hear our voices."

Beyond the heavy steel gate, in a dull sand-coloured building, a single judge sitting in a closed hearing heard not guilty pleas from Senussi and the other accused, adjourning the trial until October.

Gamary lost her brother Muhammad, her uncle Masoud and brother-in-law Falem in the former regime's most notorious crime, the 1996 massacre of 1,270 prisoners in Tripoli's Abu Salem prison. That killing, in a prison yard, took two hours, reportedly because the killers broke off to allow gun barrels to cool. Some mourners said they were protesting that Abu Salem is not included in the official charge sheet, reports not possible to immediately confirm.

"We heard that among the charges, they are not going to ask [charge] Sennusi about Abu Salem," said Gamary, a pharmacist from Tripoli. "We are here to make sure they hear us. I thank God that there is a trial."

Others were less forgiving. "They should kill Senussi immediately, no mercy," said Muhammad Ali Jalil, sporting a long beard, long white coat and black hat, holding a wooden framed photograph of his son, Hari, killed at Abu Salem. "He does not deserve to be in the court, he should be judged by God."

Abdul Salem Yunis, 33, whose brother died in Abu Salem, affixed a cartoon he had drawn to the gate, showing Senussi with blood pouring from his neck. Asking to borrow the Guardian's pen, he drew two horns on the caricature's head. "Senussi is the enemy of God. People are upset here, but it is right that there should be a court."

Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning.