PARIS — In the extended legal
dispute over who has the right to prosecute a son of the former Libyan dictator
Muammar el-Qaddafi, an
appeals court ruled on Wednesday that the case should be tried, as planned, at
the International Criminal
Court in The Hague.
The 4-to-1 decision may well find a place in the legal
footnotes of postrevolutionary Libya. But lawyers familiar
with the case agreed that it would have little bearing on the fate of the son, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi.
The Libyan authorities have always insisted that Mr.
Qaddafi, a man of considerable authority as well as his father’s heir apparent,
must be tried in his own country by Libyan judges.
His case has already been joined
to a trial that recently opened in Tripoli, Libya’s capital. More than 30
defendants, most of them former officials in the Qaddafi government, face an
array of charges including murder, torture, violence against peaceful demonstrators
and economic crimes. Mr. Qaddafi’s younger brother Saadi and the former
intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi are among
the other defendants.
At issue in Wednesday’s ruling was not whether they would
receive a fair trial under the country’s fledgling justice system, something
many observers believe is nearly impossible. Security for judges, witnesses and
defense lawyers has been further threatened by renewed violence.
The complication that led to the appeals court’s decision
was that Seif el-Qaddafi’s dossier remains open at the international court,
which the United Nations Security Council granted jurisdiction over the 2011
Libyan conflict. Soon after, the court indicted Mr. Qaddafi and Mr. Senussi for
crimes against humanity.
Libya soon hired a team of international lawyers to
defend its claim to conduct its own trials. According to the court’s statute,
national courts will prevail if they show that they can and will prosecute the
international crimes charged in The Hague.
In the case of Mr. Senussi, Libya has presented large
volumes of its own investigations — enough to convince pretrial judges, who
ruled that Libya was free to prosecute him. But when the country put in its
application to try Mr. Qaddafi, its investigations were found to be scanty, and
the judges ordered that Libya hand Mr. Qaddafi over to The Hague. The appeals
court upheld that decision on Wednesday.
A lawyer familiar with the Libyan position called the
ruling inadequate and outdated. “It was based on the case as it stood 18 months
ago,” the lawyer said. “It has not taken into account all the investigations
Libya has done since. This will not be the end of the road.”
Libya can file another bid to claim jurisdiction with
special permission from the court.
Yet another factor complicating Mr. Qaddafi’s possible
extradition or trial is that the Libyan government does not have him in
custody. For more than two years, he has been detained by a militia in Zintan,
Libya.
Last month, Mr. Qaddafi answered questions at the Tripoli
trial through a video link from a secret location.
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