Wednesday 5 September 2012

Gaddafi intelligence chief Senoussi returned to Libya

[The following are excerpts from a report just published by The Associated Press news agency:]

Mauritania has extradited to Libya Moammar Gadhafi's former spy chief, according to a government statement read on national radio on Wednesday.

The statement says that Libya's former spy chief Abdullah al-Senoussi, was sent back to Libya on Wednesday morning, giving no further details. (...)

Libya, the International Criminal Court as well as France had all asked to try the former intelligence chief, who is accused of having helped orchestrate some of Gadhafi's worst crimes, including the Lockerbie bombing in 1988 (...)

Oriane Maillet, a spokeswoman for the ICC in The Hague, said the court has received no information yet from Libyan authorities on the transfer of al-Senoussi, but stressed that an international arrest warrant has been issued for him based on ICC charges.

[US] House [of Representatives] Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who led a delegation to the region, told reporters in Tripoli earlier this year that the US had a "particular interest (in seeing him arrested) because of his role with the Lockerbie bombing." (...)

France also quickly lobbied to get custody of al-Senoussi. He was one of six Libyans convicted in absentia and sentenced to life in prison in France for the 1989 bombing of a passenger jet over Niger that killed all 170 people on board, including 54 French people.

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