Tripoli, 9 September
Niger and South Africa have both refuted claims that Saadi Qaddafi is going to be allowed to leave Niger and that the South African government may allow him to move to a new life of exile there. The story was completely untrue, South African and Niger government spokesmen have separately said.
Earlier, Saadi’s Israeli lawyer Nicke Kaufman, who submitted a request to the UN Security Council to revoke its travel ban on him, had said that Niger had agreed to allow him to leave. His statement that he was “checking options to see where he could possibly go” coincided with reports that South Africa was prepared to welcome him.
The reports have caused considerable anger in Libya.
A Niger government spokesman Marou Amadou, however, told Reuters on Saturday that the issue of Qaddafi leaving had not been decided.
“We never made a decision like this and I have no idea where this lawyer came up with this,” he said.
A South African government spokesman, Clayson Monyela, likewise denied that his country had received an asylum application from Saadi. “We don’t have such a request,” he said,
According to the South African ambassador in Tripoli, Mohammed Dangor, South Africa had in fact acted to ensure that Saadi’s request for the travel ban to be lifted was blocked.
Dangor told the Libya Herald said that South Africa and Germany, both members of the UN Security Council, had raised objections to Kaufman’s application, thus putting a block on it.
Without them removing what is in effect a veto, the block on Qaddafi’s travel remains in place – whatever Niger decides.
Dangor said that he had been to see the president of the General National Congress, Mohammed Magarief, this morning, Sunday, “to give him a full brief on the matter and correct misperceptions” about South Africa’s position on this.
Qaddafi is wanted in Libya on a number of charges including armed intimidation, when he was head of the Libyan Football Federation, and of misappropriation of properties by force. Niger has consistently refused to extradite Qaddafi, citing concerns that if handed back to Libya, he would not receive a fair trial.
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