THE HAGUE, February 2, 2012 (AFP)
The International Criminal Court rejected Thursday a request by slain Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi’s daughter to give information about her brother Seif al-Islam, who is wanted for crimes against humanity.
ICC judges said the application by Aisha Kadhafi was aimed at obtaining permission to contact her 39-year-old brother rather than providing the court with information on the accused, as she had claimed.
Her lawyer Nick Kaufman said she had “concrete” information that could help ICC decide whether the Libyan authorities “truly desire to provide Seif al-Islam Kadhafi with effective legal representation or to afford him a fair trial”.
Aisha’s application said she wanted to “protect the interests of her brother”, who was arrested on November 19 and is being held in the custody of the military council of Zintan, a town southwest of Tripoli.
Seif al-Islam is wanted by the ICC on charges of crimes against humanity allegedly committed during the conflict in Libya, but the National Transitional Council has said it wants to try him on Libyan soil.
The ICC issued a warrant for Seif al-Islam in June and this week denied that it had agreed that Kadhafi’s most prominent son can be tried in Libya, saying it had not made a decision.
Aisha, her brothers Mohamed and Hannibal and their mother Safiya have been given shelter in Algeria for “strictly humanitarian reasons,” according to Algiers.
