Melinda Taylor, a lawyer for Saadi told RT that the man in the video does appear to be him: “He looks the same in sense [that] his head…”
Advertisement
Segments show him sitting blindfolded and forced to listen to screams of other detainees being beaten in an adjacent room. The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment obligates Libya to investigate and prosecute all those responsible for torture in its territory. He answers: “What kind of question is this? My feet”. Nor has Human Rights Watch been able to verify the sequencing of all elements in the video. At one point in the video Gaddafi tries to reason with the interrogators to stop the abuse.
Libya has been in chaos since the overthrow of Col Gaddafi, with two factions claiming to control the country.
Saif’s captors, the Zintanis, are at war with the Islamist militias Libya Dawn and have refused to hand him over, saying they do not trust the self-declared government seated in Tripoli.
State prosecutors in Tripoli are attempting to identify the guards in a video that appears to have been filmed in the al-Hadba prison.
According to RT, Libya’s state prosecutor has launched an investigation to find out who the guards are in the footage. Saadi Gaddafi was extradited from Niger in March 2014 and taken to a jail in Tripoli where other high-ranking figures of the former regime are being held.
He faces charges over the killing of a football player when he headed the Libyan Football Federation, as well as other crimes. The videos showed Gaddafi, in a blue prison suit, apologizing to Libya’s people and the authorities for any “destabilization” he may have caused, asking for “forgiveness”, confessing to having worked against the country’s political system, and detailing his interactions with prominent figures in Libya prior to his extradition from Niger.
The video was posted every week after a Tripoli courtroom sentenced Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam and eight former regime officers to dying over crimes through the 2011 rebellion that toppled his father, who was later captured and killed by rebels. The remaining 23 former officials received between five years and life in prison.
The UN human rights agency said “we had closely monitored the detention and trial and found that global fair trial standards had failed to be met”, citing a failure to establish individual criminal responsibility, lack of access to lawyers, claims of ill-treatment, and trials conducted in absentia.
Advertisement
The footage has come to light just a week after Saadi’s older brother Saif was sentenced to death in a Libyan court.
