By Michel Cousins
Tripoli, 2 June:
The Attorney General, Abdel-Aziz Abdel-Hamid, has announced that the trials of senior Libyan officials will start on Tuesday, 5June.
First in the dock will be Abu Zaid Omar Dorda who was General Secretary of the People’s Committee (i.e Prime Minister) between October 1990 and January 1994. He was later the Libyan ambassador to the United Nations, from 1997 to 2003. Following that he was Libya’s foreign intelligence chief. He was arrested in Tripoli last September.
Others expected to appear in court in the following few days are Abdurrahman Al-Sayed, who ended up as head of Qaddafi’s army and was captured last August at his farm outside Tripoli; Abdulati Obeidi who served as prime minister from 1977 to 1979, then as nominal head of state from 1979 to 1981 and most recently as Qaddafi’s final foreign minister after Musa Kusa defected in March last year; and Mohammed Al-Zway, the close friend of Qaddafi from schooldays in Sebha who later became Libya’s ambassador to the UK and who in 2010 was chosen by the late dictator to be Secretary-General of his General People’s Congress.
The Attorney General has said that these trials will demonstrate the ability of the new government to prosecute senior figures from the Qaddafi era such as Saif al-Islam.
The government is keen to demonstrate to the international community and human rights activists concerned about the fragility of law and the widely perceived weakness of central government to control the country that Libya can carry out fair trials. [/restrict]
