The trials of more than 30 affiliates of the Gaddafi regime opened in Tripoli on Thursday last week. The first session in this extraordinary and momentous event in Libya's modern history took place in the South Tripoli preliminary court where 38 defendants were brought in amidst high security precautions and a throng of onlookers. A number of representatives of the press and other media, and of domestic and international rights organisations, were prevented entry into the indictments chamber. Authorities explained that they feared it would be difficult to maintain order in the courtroom where the judge read out the charges against the defendants. The list of defendants includes General Mustafa Al-Kharoubi, former chief of intelligence under Muammar Gaddafi Abdallah Al-Senussi, Gaddafi's foreign security chief Abu Zeid Dorda, commander of the “Popular Guards” and Gaddafi's personal guard Mansour Dou, secretary of the General People's Council — the equivalent of prime minister — Al-Baghdad Al-Mahmoudi, secretary of the General People's Conference — the parliament — Mohamed Al-Zawi, and Gaddafi's last foreign minister, Abdel-Ati Al-Obeidi. Libyan sources that were present at that session told Al-Ahram Weekly that all the defendants denied the charges brought against them. These included collusion in attempts to undermine the 17 February Revolution, mass murder, involvement in acts of plunder and destruction, ordering live random fire into crowds of civilians, engaging mercenaries in the ranks of Gaddafi's brigades, inciting strife, organising mob violence and creating militias to kill innocent people. Noticeably absent from the historic proceedings was Gaddafi's son, Seif Al-Islam, who is being held in the city of Zintan, southwest of the capital. The Libyan News Agency reported that the reason why the trial's star defendant was not present for the indictment proceedings in South Tripoli preliminary court was that this session coincided with a hearing in Zintan preliminary court in the espionage case against Gaddafi's son. Seif Al-Islam is charged with communicating intelligence to foreign agencies that would be detrimental to national security. He is alleged to have had “suspicious” communications with a delegation from the International Criminal Court (ICC). Earlier this year, those detaining him in Zintan claimed that he had conspired with a visiting ICC delegation to have him smuggled out of Libya. At the time, the ICC delegation, itself, had been detained for more than a month until international authorities and some Western governments succeeded in securing its release. Nevertheless, sources in Tripoli, Misrata and Zintan itself offered a different explanation for Seif Al-Islam's absence from the courtroom in Tripoli. Speaking to the Weekly on condition of anonymity, they said it was too risky to transfer the defendant from Zintan to Tripoli in view of the security crisis in the country and the political strains and tensions between various political players in the capital. As one of these sources put it, the suppressed animosity between the revolutionaries of Zintan and the revolutionaries of Misrata made it difficult if not impossible to transfer Gaddafi's son to Tripoli for trial. Militias from the two cities, both of which have detained high-profile figures, have been trading accusations and engaging in tit-for-tat kidnappings recently. At the same time, Zintan believes that once Seif Al-Islam is handed over to the capital he would never be handed back and, indeed, could be murdered by one faction simply to spite another. Seif Al-Islam, himself, confirmed such assessments. In a video recording posted on Zintan's Facebook page, he said that he feared being transferred to Tripoli because his life would be at grave risk. A commentator on that Facebook page complained of the successive campaigns being waged against Zintan in order to have Gaddafi's son moved from his current place of detention to Tripoli where he would be at the disposal of the Libyan Combat Group and the Muslim Brotherhood. “Those who are behind this campaign are not the honourable citizens of the capital but a group that has been involved in scandals with Seif Al-Gaddafi, such as the Libya of Tomorrow project and the reconciliation processes with Islamist groups that were supervised by Al-Salabi, Al-Saedi, Belhajj and others.” Sheikh Al-Salabi acted as an intermediary in talks between the Gaddafi regime and the Libyan Combat Group led by Sami Al-Saedi, Abdel-Hakim Belhajj and other individuals who had become influential in the post-Gaddafi period. “These are the people,” the Zintan Facebook continued, “who do not want the details of [these scandals] to become public because the information that would be revealed would be very dangerous [to them].” It added, in a warning to those people, that Seif had told investigators everything, and that “his confessions with regard to you, along with the archive on the reconciliation talks with the Islamists in prison are documented on recorded video.” This was the first indication that the leaders of Zintan's revolutionaries, who have been guarding Seif Al-Islam in a secret place since his detention over two years ago, have obtained recordings documenting investigations with him. The revelation of the existence of such evidence could trigger a new shift in the tug-of-war over Seif Al-Islam in the coming days. Interestingly, both South Tripoli and Zintan preliminary courts deferred hearings into their respective cases for three months, scheduling them to resume on the same day; 12 December. Obviously, Seif Al-Islam will not be able to be present at both sessions. Among the crowds that packed the area in front of the courthouse in Tripoli on Thursday were families of the martyrs of the revolution and the victims of the Abu Salim massacre. Numerous pictures of the victims were held in the air along with placards calling for just retribution against the accused. In the infamous Abu Salim Prison massacre in 1996, the Gaddafi regime slaughtered more than 1,200 political detainees, most of whom were Islamists. Although the media was banned from the courtroom, ordinary people were not. According to sources present, defendants were assailed by a barrage of insults and profanities. Many were aimed in particular at Al-Senussi, the notorious intelligence chief who secured Gaddafi's iron grip on the country. Indeed, the court's security officers took the precaution of smuggling him out the back door before he was mobbed by the angry crowd.
