Traverse City Record-Eagle

Nation & World

November 19, 2011

Gadhafi son captured

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TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) — Moammar Gadhafi's son Seif al-Islam — the only wanted member of the ousted ruling family to remain at large — was captured as he traveled with aides in a convoy in Libya's southern desert, Libyan officials said Saturday. Thunderous celebratory gunfire shook the Libyan capital as the news spread.

A spokesman for the Libyan fighters who captured him said Seif al-Islam, who has been charged by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, was detained about 30 miles (50 kilometers) west of the town of Obari with two aides as he was trying to flee to neighboring Niger. But the country's acting justice minister later said the convoy's destination was not confirmed.

ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo told The Associated Press that he will travel to Libya next week for talks with the country's transitional government on where the trial will take place. Ocampo said that while national governments have the first right to try their own citizens for war crimes, he wants to make sure Seif al-Islam has a fair trial.

"The good news is that Seif al-Islam is arrested, he is alive, and now he will face justice," Ocampo said in an interview in The Hague. "Where and how, we will discuss it."

Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, at 39 the oldest of seven children of Moammar and Safiya Gadhafi, had long drawn Western favor in by touting himself as a liberalizing reformer in the autocratic regime but then staunchly backed his father in his brutal crackdown on rebels in the regime's final days.

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