DUBAI: Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, fearing for his life if captured in Libya, has tried to arrange for an aircraft to fly him out of his desert refuge and into the custody of the Hague war crimes court, a Libyan official said on Sunday.
Details were sketchy and confirmation not available but a picture has built up since his father’s grisly killing while in the hands of vengeful rebel fighters a week ago that suggests Muammar Gaddafi’s 39-year-old heir-apparent has taken refuge among Sahara nomads and is seeking a safe haven abroad.
Even if he can still draw on some of the vast fortune the Gaddafi clan built up abroad during 42 years in control of North Africa’s main oilfields, his indictment by the International Criminal Court at The Hague over his efforts to crush the revolt limits the options open to Saif al-Islam.
That may explain an apparent willingness, in communications monitored by intelligence services and shared with Libya’s interim rulers, to discuss a surrender to the ICC, whereas his mother and surviving siblings simply fled to Algeria and Niger.
The Court, which relies on signatory states to hand over suspects, said it was trying to confirm the whereabouts and intentions of Saif al-Islam and ex-intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi, the third man indicted along with the elder Gaddafi.
A source with Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC), which drove the Gaddafis from power in Tripoli in August, told Reuters the two surviving indictees were together, protected by Tuareg nomads, in the rugged wilderness of the ”Triangle”, close to the borders of Algeria and Niger. (UNI)
