By Chris Stephen
Jubilant Libyans in the western town of Zintan may be eager to stage the trial of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi in their town. But the Zintan courthouse is not exactly equipped to hold an international war crimes trial – not least because it is a burned-out ruin.
The declaration by Zintan council leader Omran Eturki that “the trial must be here” raises a host of problems, legal and practical, beginning with the wrecked condition of the only venue.
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi with his captors, he is now a prisoner in Zintan. Photograph: Reuters
Zintan was one of the first Libyan towns to declare itself for the February revolution, and the courthouse, next to the police station, was an early target. Today it is a ruin, its whitewashed walls blackened by smoke from fires that have gutted the insides. Those walls, and the handsome green columns marking the now boarded-up front entrance, are covered in graffiti sprayed in red and blue paint by revolutionaries, mostly in Arabic, but with one slogan proclaiming Vive Libya.
The town has no hotel and only a handful of offices that could support a war crimes trial with its judges, lawyers and press. Phone lines work but email is slow, and, should the trial take place here, attendees will probably need a two-hour daily commute from Tripoli, 90 miles north.
Yet Saif is Zintan’s prisoner, because Zintan’s militia, one of the hardest fighting of the war, were the ones that arrested him, and the town’s determination to hold the trial is a mark both of civic pride and lingering suspicions about whether Libya’s ruling National Transitional Council can be trusted to do the job itself.
The NTC has its own problems. Having declared it will not hand its most high-profile detainee over to the international criminal court in The Hague, it must convince judges that it can cobble together the necessary trial mechanisms to do the job itself, or face criticism from the international community.
Nearly a month after the country was declared officially liberated, the NTC is struggling to convince many ordinary Libyans, and more importantly their militia leaders, that they are truly a government of all Libyans. Get that right, and Zintanis may drop their suspicions and allow Saif to be tried, if not in The Hague, at least in Libya’s capital. Failing that, Zintan’s courthouse will be needing a lick of paint.
Source: Guardian
Le philosophe Bernard-Henri Lévy a déclaré aujourd’hui que “c’est en tant que juif” qu’il avait “participé à l’aventure politique en Libye”, lors de la première Convention nationale organisé par le Conseil représentation des organisations juives de France (Crif). “J’ai porté en étendard ma fidélité à mon nom et ma fidélité au sionisme et à Israël”, a-t-il déclaré.
Le Crif tenait à Paris sa première convention nationale, intitulée “Demain les Juifs de France”, à laquelle participaient de nombreux intellectuels, politologues, sociologues, chercheurs. Près de 900 personnes ont ainsi assisté à des débats, très ouverts, souvent animés, sur les défis communautaires, les nouveaux visages de l’antisémitisme, ou les nouveaux défis pour les juifs de France.
Bernard-Henri Lévy, invité à s’exprimer sur ce thème a déclaré: “C’est en tant que juif que j’ai participé à cette aventure politique, que j’ai contribué à définir des fronts militants, que j’ai contribué à élaborer pour mon pays et pour un autre pays une stratégie et des tactiques”. “Je ne l’aurais pas fait si je n’avais pas été juif”, a poursuivi le philosophe. “Ce que je vous dis là, je l’ai dit à Tripoli, à Bengazi, devant des foules arabes, je l’ai dit lors d’une allocution prononcée le 13 avril dernier sur la grand place de Benghazi devant 30.000 jeunes combattants représentatifs de toutes les tribus de Libye”, a-t-il ajouté.
Keep him there , the trial, in his case does not need to be so speedy that evidence is ignored……Keep him in Zintan, all that want to put him on trial should consume themselves with gathwering evidence, not Habeas corpus……….his trial should come i time, and the venue should relate to the evidence so that the most fruitful justice may be pursued…….(but noones handing him over to the bankers just yet…Hmmmmm)