ALGIERS, June 4, 2012 (AFP)
A court in Algiers has sentenced an Algerian man to four years in jail for spying and giving France and Switzerland sensitive information on the former Libyan regime, press reports said Monday.
The criminal court on Sunday convicted Skander Senani of spying “on behalf of foreign countries to the detriment of the diplomatic and military position of Algeria and its economic interests,” according to the charges reported by the official APS news agency.
After two years in Libya working for Hannibal Kadhafi, the son of the late Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi, who was ousted and killed last year, Senani fled home to his native Algeria because of bad treatment, the daily Le Temps reported.
Shortly afterwards, on May 7, 2010, Senani, now 36, was arrested for giving confidential information to French and Swiss diplomats. He was charged with handing over “secret and sensitive information concerning several officials and leaders” in the former Libyan regime.
Senani acknowledged “having indeed contacted the embassies of France and Switzerland and given the latter secret information” regarding Kadhafi’s regime, according to a court document.
He reportedly warned the foreign diplomats of planned terrorist attacks on their countries, including a plan to attack Geneva airport.
But Senani confessed that he had “invented the scenario of planned attacks to avenge” himself on Hannibal Kadhafi for the bad treatment in Libya.
In court on Sunday, according to Le Temps, he also confessed that he had failed to inform the Algerian authorities or security services of the whole afair.
Officials in the Swiss embassy offered him political asylum and other services and gave him a mobile phone, a SIM card and a sum of money, before breaking off the relationship for reasons Senani did not know, according to court papers.
Hannibal Kadhafi ran up against the courts in several Europpean countries and was placed in preventive detention in Geneva on July 15, 2008, following a complaint of bad treatment by two of his household employees. His father took two Swiss businessmen hostage for a year, until the Bern government withdrew the measure and prevented an apology.
On May 20, 2009, the then Swiss president and finance minister, Hans-Rudolf Merz, presented apologies to the “Libyan people” for the “unjustified” arrest of Hannibal Kadhafi, during a visit to Tripoli.
Hannibal Kadhafi took refuge in Algeria on August 29, 2011, with his brother Mohammed, his sister Aicha, their mother Safiya and their children.
