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By Tom Westcott.
14 November 2014:
A team from the UN Special Mission in Libya visited Saadi Qaddafi at Tripoli’s Hadba prison in . . .[restrict]October but did not conduct a planned interview because a private meeting was not allowed.
The visit has only come to public attention after the head of the investigation department for the General Attorney’s office, Sadiq Al-Sour, cited the UN’s visit as evidence that Saadi was in good health.
“On 22 October, UNSMIL went to Hadba prison in Tripoli in order to visit a number of detainees including al-Saadi Qaddafi,” director of the human rights, transitional justice and rule of law division of UNSMIL Claudio Cordone told the Libya Herald. “The prison authorities brought him to the presence of the UNSMIL team together with other detainees. However, the UNSMIL team declined to interview him or any of the other detainees as conditions for a meeting in private were not met.”
Sour insisted that Saadi was “fine and in very good health” and had seen doctors. He said he did not know whether Saadi yet had a lawyer.
No international human rights organisations appear to have been granted a private meeting with Saadi since his extradition from Niger in March this year. Human Rights Watch (HRW) said it was unable to confirm any details about Saadi’s detention conditions, treatment or access to legal representation because HRW representatives had been unable to visit Saadi since his detention in Libya.
“While the general prosecutor did grant HRW access after repeated requests, it was not possible to date to coordinate a private visit with the prison authorities at Hadba,” the international human rights NGO said.
Saadi could face ten separate charges in court, Sour said, but confirmed that the investigations into only two of these cases had been completed so far. The first charge relates to the killing of Bashir Al-Rayani, an Al-Ittihad football player and coach in Tripoli in 2006, which is being brought by the State of Libya. The second case is being brought by a private citizen who has accused Saadi of being responsible for his imprisonment.
A date for Saadi to stand trial for these two charges is expected to be announced by the Tripoli Appeals Court in the next two weeks, according to Al-Sour. Eight further charges Saadi may face, details of which have not yet been made public, were still under investigation, he added.
Saadi was transferred to Hadba prison after his extradition from Niger in March this year. He is being held in the same prison facility in eastern Tripoli as a number of senior Qaddafi-regime figures are held.
Sour confirmed that Saadi’s trial would be conducted separately to the cases already underway of regime-era officials held in Tripoli and Misrata jails, and that of his brother Saif Qaddafi who is still being held in the mountain town of Zintan. [/restrict]
