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By George Grant.
London, 1 November:
Amnesty International has expressed concern for the safety of Anoud Abdallah Al-Senussi, daughter of Muammar Qaddafi’s former . . .[restrict]intelligence chief, following her arrest in a Tripoli hotel on 6 October. She had entered Libya earlier in the day on a forged passport.
Senussi has not had any contact with relatives since 20 October and has been denied access to a lawyer, “raising concerns for her safety”, Amnesty said.
“She is understood to have been accused of using a forged passport and entering the country on a forged document, a crime under Article 350 of the Libyan Penal Code”, the rights group continued. “If convicted, she would face up to five years in prison.” The passport in question is understood not to have included her last name.
Senussi was due to appear before a Tripoli court on 21 October, but was not taken there by the prison authorities.
Amnesty wrote to the General Prosecutor, the Minister of Interior and the Minister of Justice on 8 October, around the time reports of her arrest went public, requesting them to clarify her legal status and to protect her from torture or other ill-treatment.
The organisation received no response, although there is no evidence that Senussi has suffered any mistreatment to date.
Reports that Anoud Senussi had entered Libya and been arrested were greeted with some skepticism at the time, given the risks such a move would entail when her father is facing trial and the possible death penalty for alleged crimes committed under the former regime. Abdullah Senussi is also wanted by the International Criminal Court on two charges of Crimes Against Humanity committed during the revolution.
Senussi was extradited to Libya from Mauritania on 5 September. He had been under house arrest there since March, having previously fled to Morocco following the collapse of the Qaddafi regime last year.
Libya has accused him of various crimes committed both before and during last year’s pro-democracy uprising. Most notoriously, he has been held responsible 1996 Abu Salim prison massacre, in which some 1,200 inmates were killed following an attempted breakout.
The former intelligence chief has also been implicated in various international crimes including the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988, which killed 270 people, and the downing of a UTA airliner over Niger the following year, in which 170 died.
France, which also has a warrant outstanding for Senussi’s arrest, convicted him in absentia to life imprisonment in 1999 in connection with the Niger bombing.
Earlier this year, Adel Almansouri, one of the Libyan students shot outside the Libyan Embassy in London in 1984, told this paper that Senussi may well hold answers to the killing of WPC Yvonne Fletcher. [/restrict]
