ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo also said his office has had “informal contact” with the fugitive son, once regarded as the reformist face of his father’s regime.
Mercenaries have offered to aid the son escape to an African nation that does not recognize the court’s jurisdiction, Moreno-Ocampo said. The prosecutor did not identify the nation.
Prosecutors are “exploring the possibility” of intercepting any aircraft carrying Qaddafi’s son in order to make an arrest, Moreno-Ocampo said in a statement issued in The Hague, Netherlands, where the court is based. He did not say how the ICC could intercept a plane, other than to note that such a move would have to be done in the airspace of a nation that accepted the court’s jurisdiction.
Meanwhile, Nato said on Friday that, as expected, it will end its controversial Libya operations as of Monday. That will mark the end of a momentous seven-month air and sea campaign that played a central role in the ouster of Qaddafi after more than four decades in power.
“We have fully complied with the historic mandate of the United Nations to protect the people of Libya,” Nato Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in a statement.
The ICC has issued a warrant against Seif Islam Qaddafi for crimes against humanity allegedly committed this year as his father’s security forces cracked down on protesters. The London-educated son, who once mingled with European high society, publicly threatened dissidents. Muammar Qaddafi’s second-eldest son has remained at large despite a manhunt. The senior Qaddafi and his younger son, Mutassim, were killed last week during the climactic battle for the coastal city of Sirte, their clan’s ancestral home.
Reports indicated that Seif Islam Qaddafi escaped earlier this month from Bani Walid, another stronghold of the former regime, before opposition forces overran the town. He has since been variously reported to be in southern Libya’s Saharan expanses and in the neighboring nation of Niger, by some accounts under the protection of Tuareg tribesmen, beneficiaries of his father’s largesse.
There has been speculation that the Qaddafis may have spirited vast amounts of cash, gold and other valuables out of Libya, but no proof has emerged.
(MCT-Los Angeles Times)
