ICC lawyer arrested after meeting Qaddafi's son

TRIPOLI: A lawyer for the International Criminal Court has been detained in Libya after she was found to be carrying suspicious letters for Muammar Qaddafi’s captured son Seif Al-Islam, a Libyan lawyer said yesterday.
The Australian lawyer, named as Melinda Taylor, was part of a four-member ICC delegation that had traveled to the small western mountain town of Zintan where Seif Al-Islam has been detained since his capture in the desert in November.
“During a visit (to Seif Al-Islam), the lawyer tried to deliver documents to him, letters that represent a danger to the security of Libya,” said Ahmed Al-Jehani, the Libyan lawyer in charge of the Seif Al-Islam case on behalf of Libya, and who liaises between the government and the Hague-based ICC.“She is not in jail. She is being detained in a guesthouse, her colleagues are with her,” he told Reuters.
He did not say what was in the documents but said they were from several people including Seif Al-Islam’s former right-hand man, Mohammed Ismail.
Jehani said the ICC team, which arrived in Libya this week and had received permission from Libya’s prosecutor-general to visit Seif Al-Islam in the secret location where he has been kept, had been searched before the meeting.
Without giving details, he said a pen with a camera as well as a watch with a recorder were found during the search. Asked whether she would be released soon, Jehani said: “I hope today.”
An ICC spokesman was not immediately reachable for comment.
Western-educated Seif Al-Islam, Qaddafi’s one-time heir apparent, was captured by fighters from Zintan in Libya’s southern desert in November, dressed as a Bedouin tribesman, and taken to their home town.
The ICC issued a warrant for him last year after prosecutors accused him of involvement in the killing of protesters during the revolt that toppled his father, who ruled Libya with an iron fist for 42 years.
Libya has resisted handing him over, saying he should be tried at home. In May, it filed a legal challenge, contesting the Hague-based court’s right to try the case.
The ICC ruled this month that he could stay in detention in the North African country while the court decides if it has the jurisdiction to try him.
Separately, two people were killed and several injured in clashes between Libyan soldiers and tribesmen in the remote southeast, a local doctor and tribal representative said, underlining the unrest still raging seven months after Gaddafi's overthrow.
Violence erupted in the early hours yesterday in the city of Al-Kufra, near Libya's borders with Chad and Sudan, where armed forces were sent to in February to quell fighting in a long-standing rivalry between the Tibu and Zwai tribes.
Bouts of violence in the southern Sahara and in the mountainous west have shown how volatile Libya remains following the demise of Gaddafi, who had long played off one tribe or clan against the other to weaken their power.
"The Tibu launched an attack on the city, the army responded and fighting is continuing," Muftah Abukhalil, a member of the local council, said by phone, without giving details. He said two people were injured in the violence.