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ICC delegation jailed in Libya, accused of spying

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Ilona Lo Iacono
WVoN co-editor

A four-member International Criminal Court (ICC) delegation has reportedly been jailed in Libya, following their visit to Muammar Gaddafi’s detained son, Saif al-Islam, last week.

Melinda Taylor, an Australian lawyer, was detained in the mountain town of Zintan on Thursday and accused of “exchanging papers with the accused Saif al-Islam”, according to Ahmed Jehani, Libya’s envoy to the ICC.

The ICC issued a warrant for the arrest of Gaddafi’s son on June 27, 2011. He is charged with two counts of crimes against humanity (murder and persecution).

Taylor, who has been appointed by the ICC as one of Saif’s defence lawyers, was reportedly searched by female guards after her visit to Saif was cut short when she allegedly tried to pass him a letter.

Jehani claims that the search revealed she was carrying a pen camera, a recording device and, among other papers, a coded letter from Mohammed Ismail, Saif’s former henchman, who is now on the run.

“According to Libyan law, it would be spying, communication with the enemy,” Jehani said.

Alajmi Ali Ahmed al-Atiri, the head of the brigade that initially detained the delegation, and which also captured Saif in 2011, said: ”They were transferred yesterday to a prison on the orders of the prosecutor general.”

He said the ICC team had asked to meet alone with Saif but the request had been declined.

“We tricked the ICC team by presenting them with one of our men who we told them was deaf and old and illiterate but he is actually a wise man who can speak four languages including English,” Atiri said.

“That is when we found out the lawyer had a letter written in English that they wanted him to sign admitting that there is no law in Libya and asking to be transferred to the ICC. When we searched the woman we found she had a letter from Mohammed Ismail for Saif and another one written back to Ismail.”

Taylor was also allegedly carrying blank papers signed by Saif.

Ismail, speaking to Time by phone from Cairo on Sunday, said: “She was carrying letters from family and friends.”

Taylor had complained in April that Saif was being cruelly treated in a “legal black hole“, held in complete isolation and refused treatment for tooth pain.

The Zintani rebels are unwilling to hand him over either to the National Transitional Council in Tripoli or to the ICC. They say he is safe from the bloody fate of his father, and also unable to escape, as long as he is held in Zintan.

The Zintanis also say that Saif has information that could implicate Libya’s interim leaders and foreign countries in wrongdoing.

In May, Libya filed a legal challenge, contesting the Hague-based court’s right to try the case. The ICC recently ruled that he could stay in detention in Libya while the court decides if it has the jurisdiction to try him.

Taylor and her interpreter, Lebanese-born Helene Assaf, were initially detained in a guesthouse. Assaf is accused of being an “accomplice” to a crime.

The two other members of the delegation, former Russian ambassador Alexander Khodakov and Spanish law professor Esteban Peralta Losilla, were reportedly allowed to leave but opted to stay with Taylor and Assaf.

”A decision was made to put them in preventive detention for 45 days while investigations are conducted,” an official in the Libyan Attorney-General’s office told Agence France-Presse.

The ICC President, Judge Sang-Hyun Song, has requested their immediate release, saying: “We are very concerned about the safety of our staff in the absence of any contact with them. These four international civil servants have immunity when on an official ICC mission.”

Australian authorities are seeking consular access to Taylor, and the nation’s Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, has called on the Libyan government to “expedite the end of Ms Taylor’s detention.”

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