It is reported from Tunisia that Qaddafi’s last prime minister, Baghdadi Al-Mahmoudi, has been on higher strike for the past six . . .[restrict]days and that his health is deteriorating.
Al-Mahmoudi, who fled to Tunisia last August, has been held in a Tunisian prison since an attempt to cross the Tunisian border into Algeria.
Last month, a court in the southern Tunisian town of Tozeur acquitted him on charges that he had illegally entered Tunisia last year. However, he has been kept in jail pending a presidential decision on Libya’s request that he be extradited. Judges have agreed the extradition but President Moncef Marzouki has refused to approve it on the grounds that Al-Mahmoudi could be executed if he were returned to Libya.
Following the Tozeur court decision, Baghdadi’s laywer has been demanding his immediate release but without success. “There is no legal reason to keep him in prison,” Mabrouk Kourchid saidat the time of the decision. “His detention is illegal and the reasons are purely political.”
This is at least the fourth time Al-Mahmoudi had gone on hunger strike while in jail in Tunisia. [/restrict]
